Month: January 2024

Book Review: Masterminds

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Masterminds
Book #1
by Gordon Korman

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

Serenity, New Mexico may seem like the perfect small town, but five teenagers are about to discover that there’s a lot more going on, both in their town and in the rest of the world, than they ever knew. 

This is the kind of book that is difficult to explain the premise of without giving too much away. There are five main teenagers, and each of them has their turn as the POV character. That is a lot of different perspectives to keep straight, and while so often that many doesn’t work out, Korman did a good job of keeping them all different. In fact, the story is in 1st-person from each of these perspectives, yet their voices are all unique enough to keep me from being confused (for the most part). I really enjoyed the way everything played out, though, and how the five teens got started on their investigation. While the main catalyst for the teens’ investigations comes from the main character, Eli, having bizarre symptoms when he rode his bike out of town with his friend, the other teens basically start on their own questioning and digging in other ways. When their individual quests come together, the story really picks up. The synopsis compares the book to Stranger Things, and unlike the last book I read that had that comparison, this one works.

I didn’t realize this was the start of the series until I got to the end, and while it’s not an outright cliffhanger, it definitely left me wanting more! My 13-year-old daughter read this book before me, and she and I are both excited to continue the series. We also both recommend this book for teens and even adults who enjoy suspenseful teen books.

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Book Review: The Mysterious Affair at Styles

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The Mysterious Affair at Styles
Hercule Poirot #1
 by Agatha Christie
read by Hugh Fraser

My rating: 4 / 5
Genre: Classic mystery

This is the first Agatha Christie book I’ve ever read, and now I’m wondering what took me so long, especially since I’ve been a fan of mystery books all my life. I think when I was younger, I figured older books would just be boring, but as an adult, I definitely appreciate the simplicity of books written or set in historical time periods. Though I think the narrator, Hastings, needed more development as a character, Poirot is an interesting detective-type character, and I look forward to getting to know him more. I had some theories about the mystery, though I don’t know that the clues to the true answer are really given to the reader. Poirot plays things pretty close to the vest, allowing Hastings, who acted as his sidekick, to go down quite a few wrong paths. Though some say it’s not the best idea to start with this book if you’ve never read any in this series before, because Christie was still figuring out who Poirot is or for other reasons that might keep someone from liking the series enough to want to keep going, to me, that just means it’ll get better from here. And though Poirot may have over-explained after the mystery was solved, I enjoyed the story overall. I listened to the audiobook narrated by Hugh Fraser and thought he did a great job. I’m looking forward to continuing on in this series!

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Book Review: The Traitor

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The Traitor
Michael Vey #9
by Richard Paul Evans

My rating: 1 / 5
Genre: YA sci-fi adventure

Spoiler notice: The following review may contain some spoilers for the previous books in the series, starting with The Prisoner of Cell 25.

The Electroclan has to decide how to stop the Chasqui from destroying a town, free their friends, and deal with their friend who betrayed them.

I can’t pretend to know Evans’s motivation in opening this series back up again after a clear ending, but this book in particular made me feel like he doesn’t really care about the series anymore. The bad guy has (no surprise) turned out to be pretty much a slightly different version of Hatch. Multiple major side characters die, which might not seem like a big deal, but it’s quite different for this series. And the big kicker, to me, is that it appears that Evans completely forgot that he’d killed off an entire tribe of people way back in book #3. While, yes, the news that the Amacarra tribe had been wiped out could have been false, it has never been revealed to us that any (or apparently all) of them survived. Yet when they suddenly appear again in this book, no one is surprised, confused, happy, anything (except me). To me, that kind of huge continuity issue smacks of apathy.

Books 1-7 of this series have an overarching plot—the Electroclan trying to stop Hatch’s schemes and eventually bring down the Elgen. Whatever issues I had with those books, the desire to see the Electroclan triumph was basically what kept me going through 7 books. No matter what the real reason is that Evans continued the series after neatly wrapping it up, after only 2 books, I’ve lost my motivation to keep reading. I don’t care enough about the new bad guy, because he’s far too much like the old bad guy (plus, spoiler, he’s already stopped by the end of this 2nd book), and the new threat just doesn’t seem as globally dangerous. 

Rather than continue to complain about style issues, Evans’s weird pacing decisions, and other things that I’ve mentioned in multiple previous reviews already, I’m just going to say that this is the end for me, and be done with it. This is the last published book to date, but since it came out only 4 months ago, given what was left hanging, I assume at least one more is planned. I won’t put myself through the frustration of reading any further, though. As for recommendations, though I mildly enjoyed much of the first 7 books, I don’t know that I’d recommend this series, especially for adults. Teens are probably better able to overlook some of the shallow characterization and style issues I had with it.

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Book Review: Joy in the Morning

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Joy in the Morning
Jeeves #8
 by P.G. Wodehouse
Read by Jonathan Cecil

My rating: 3.5 / 5
Genre: Classic British humor

If I could forget a lot of what I had read in previous books in this series, I think I would have enjoyed this installment a lot more. The problem is that the problems that arise around Wooster tend to not be different enough to be interesting. A friend’s engagement is in danger, so Wooster takes it upon himself to help them reconcile. A woman he doesn’t care for randomly decides that he must want to marry her, so he finds himself engaged, despite his utter lack of desire for such. And he’s too much of a gentleman to say, “No, thank you,” so he has to plan some scheme to get out of it or, oops! He might just find himself married! I will say, at least, that the intricacies of how some of these mostly unrelated messes are twined together so that one solution can somehow fix them all is usually clever enough to provide some fun while I’m listening. And Wooster’s trademark humor, combined with Jeeves’s straight-man wit, still makes me laugh, even amongst the feeling that we’ve “been there, done that.” Jonathan Cecil is a great narrator for these books (though I still miss Kevin Theis).

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Book Review: Once a Queen

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Once a Queen
by Sarah Arthur

My rating: 3 / 5
Genre: YA fantasy

When fourteen-year-old Eva Joyce visits her grandmother in England with her mom who’d left home after getting married and never returned before now, she doesn’t expect to find out that her grandmother might have been the subject of one of Eva’s favorite fairy tales growing up. The manor might even contain a portal to another world, but no one is willing to talk about it much, her grandmother least of all. Tragedy in her grandmother’s past overshadows the wonder and magic, and Eva begins to believe it’s her job to help her grandmother heal.

Packaged as a portal fantasy, this book is more about Eva’s grandmother’s past trauma, after losing someone close to her when she was a young adult. It’s difficult to separate what is part of the fantastical element of the other world(s) and what is just a reflection of the grandmother’s brokenness. There are questions about all of that that I never really understood and questions about whether Eva’s mom believed any of the tales or not, considering that she doesn’t want to talk about it now, doesn’t seem to believe it now, yet Eva grew up with the stories.

It’s clear that the author is heavily influenced by The Chronicles of Narnia books, though she makes no secret that she’s a major fan. I’ve only just recently read all of that series for the first time, and I saw some pretty obvious parallels. This book takes place almost exclusively in our world, though, with references to the other world(s), which wasn’t what I was expecting at all. Some history from the other world is told between chapters, but I wasn’t completely sure how much of it was important. In the end, this feels a lot more like a book for older teens or adults than teens around 14, with more of an emphasis on grief and trauma than fantasy adventure. The writing is poetic and elegant (and dialog and history related to the other world(s) is basically KJV-type writing, to put it simply), which is not really my preferred style and might be lost on the teens it’s meant for. Considering that the book is in 1st-person from the perspective of a 14-year-old girl, I question the style choice; perhaps if the narrator were to mention that she wrote down her memories decades after it happened, it would make more sense when she describes old manor houses using terminology I’d be surprised an American teen would know. The language also added to the slow feeling of the book as a whole. In the end, not much really happens, and while it sets up a series, it didn’t leave me wanting more. However, the other reviews for this book are generally positive, so please check them out if you’re interested. I wonder if people who have long been fans of Narnia would enjoy this more than I did or if they’d actually enjoy it less.

Thank you to Netgalley and WaterBrook & Multnomah for providing me a copy of this book to review.
Publication date: January 30, 2024

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Book Review: The Lassoed by Marriage Romance Collection

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The Lassoed by Marriage Romance Collection
by multiple authors (see details below)

My rating: 3.25 / 5
Genre: Christian historical romance, short stories

This book contains short stories from 9 different authors, taking place in the late 1800s, mostly in the western USA. Each story contains a marriage-of-convenience-type romance, which is my favorite kind, when done well. My overall rating for the book is an average of my ratings for each story, shown below. Below the ratings is a brief review for each story.

“Substitute Bride” by Angela Bell – 5 / 5
“Bridal Whispers” by Angela Breidenbach – 4.5 / 5
“Mule Dazed” by Lisa Carter – 2 / 5
“Sweetwater Bride” by Mary Connealy – 1 / 5
“A Highbrow Hoodwink” by Rebecca Jepson – 4 / 5
“Not So Pretty Penny” by Amy Lillard  – 2.5 / 5
“All’s Fair” by Gina Welborn – 3.5 / 5
“The Colorado Coincidence” by Kathleen Y’Barbo – 3 / 5
“Railroaded into Love” by Rose Ross Zediker – 3.5 / 5

“Substitute Bride” (5 / 5) is the only story that takes place in England, diving right into a story patterned after Jacob and Leah (from the Bible). It’s short enough not to get too much into the deceit that brought Elliott and Gwen together, but if too much time had been spent dwelling on it, it might have gotten annoying. The culmination of Gwen’s self-perception and Elliott’s odd hobby was very well done and the only moment in this book that brought tears to my eyes.

“Bridal Whispers” (4.5 / 5) is full of bad assumptions and misunderstandings, but not so much to make me roll my eyes (and that’s considering I have a low tolerance for these things). In fact, they were probably completely understandable in this story of a widower marrying the cousin of his late wife. I have to say, though, that the long shadow of the first wife would have been a huge problem for me, especially when Burton took her portrait into his bedroom so it wouldn’t hang over his new wife.

“Mule Dazed” (2 / 5) contains one of the worst male leads in the book, the local sheriff forced to marry a woman he was locked in his own jail with overnight. He spends most of the story lusting after his wife, Hattie, while still meanly telling her that he can’t wait to be rid of her when the judge returns and they can annul their marriage. Then he blames her for his own rash outburst in bidding higher than necessary at a basket auction. He’s just a jerk!

“Sweetwater Bride” (1 / 5) has the one male lead that’s worse than the one in the previous story. He’s not quite so rude overall, but he hogties an isolated woman who lives alone in a secluded valley so that he can take her to his parents, because she’s afraid to leave her valley, even though he first offered to bring his parents to her. Then he kisses this girl that he knows is innocent and naive and knows nothing of men or the world in general. How creepy! On top of that, this woman who has barely seen anyone but her dad for years somehow knows that the eyes of the guy who kidnapped her are an unusual color, plus she stops talking like someone who’s been stunted socially far too quickly. Add the author’s writing style that is full of poor grammar and confusing dialogue, and it’s my least favorite in the collection.

“A Highbrow Hoodwink” (4 / 5) is nice and sweet with an overall theme of forgiveness and leaving the past behind. I wasn’t a huge fan of the plan to lie and say that Katie’s son was Henry’s, rather than his brother’s, in a Christian setting, since at no point do they regret or repent of this. But I did like the way everything ended up with this small family.

“Not So Pretty Penny” (2.5 / 5) is not bad, but not great either. The romance part wasn’t bad, but the rest of the plot was weak. Wash, the male lead, was wrongfully convicted of killing his sister, framed by the actual killer. And Wash’s plan now is to find Wash and somehow get him locked up for the crime, neat and simple, even though the man had already convinced everyone that Wash was the guilty one based on only his own testimony? There was a major unexplained coincidence in the climax, and I just do not buy this happy ending.

“All’s Fair” (3.5 / 5) is the first story in this collection that I felt like would have been better with room to expand. A quickie marriage of a man and woman on opposite sides of a family feud to keep members of both side out of prison calls for a bit more depth than this story was able to get into, and there really wasn’t much resolution. On the other hand, though the story starts with an incident that leads to strong hatred between the two MCs, and by the time the bulk of the story starts 4 years later, it’s been mostly resolved on both sides (independently of each other), so the only obstacle to this couple’s happiness is weak and feels contrived.

“The Colorado Coincidence” (3 / 5) was an overall forgettable story for me. I struggled to remember much about the story for the review. So it wasn’t bad, but since I’m not a fan of major coincidences and this story hinges on one, it wasn’t destined to be a favorite. I was at least relieved that Mack didn’t trick Gloree into marrying him by letting her believe that he was the man who’d been sent by her late husband to marry her. I also liked Gloree challenging Mack to ask God to show up.

“Railroaded into Love” by Rose Ross Zediker – (3.5 / 5) is another one where I feel like there needed to be at least a little more time to explore part of the story. I like the way that Molly took to the street urchin, and he clung to her kindness. But since Molly’s brother’s guilt or innocence was a big part of both the marriage of convenience and the rest of the plot, it didn’t get enough resolution, in my opinion. I think this feeling in more than one of these stories is due to the fact that I always prefer a romance be more in the background of a solid plot, and by necessity, the romance in stories as short as these tends to be pushed to the front.

In the end, though my overall rating for this collection isn’t great, there were a few gems in there that I’m really glad I read. The Old West setting isn’t my favorite, and I’m not a huge fan of short stories, but my husband brought the book home from the library for me, thinking I’d like it, and I always give his random book finds a try. I’m glad I did in this case, and I think that others who enjoy Christian romance from this time period will probably like more of these stories than I did.

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Book Review: The Cat Who Had 60 Whiskers

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The Cat Who Had 60 Whiskers
Book #29
by Lilian Jackson Braun

My rating: 2 / 5
Genre: Cozy mystery

I’m not sure I have the motivation to write an actual review for this book. It’s feeling like deja vu anymore, since I don’t have much different to say than I did for the last few books in this series. I’ll get to a few specifics from this book in a little bit, but first I just want to say what an overall pleasure it’s been reading through this series. Though the last few weren’t spectacular, and overall, there were some duds (for me), in a series of 29 books, one thing Braun did well throughout this series is give me a sense of community. Once Qwilleran arrives in Moose County for the first time in book #5, the county and especially the town of Pickax becomes a character unto itself, growing and changing, going through tragedy and triumph, like a well-rounded addition to the family. After almost 30 books, I feel connected to the county and its people and am sad to bid them farewell.

My biggest issue with this book isn’t that the mystery was light or that Qwilleran again has the solution sort of handed to him. It’s the way Braun seemed to thumb her nose at long-standing institutions from her series. (Warning, spoilers ahead.) It feels like the intentional end of a series, but evidence shows that she had a 30th book planned to follow this one. So why did she destroy both Qwilleran’s relationship and home, to start anew in the next book, this late in the series? If she was bored with them, then considering her advanced age, a better solution would have been to call this the end, and leave us happy, knowing that Qwilleran would continue with his life as we have known it. And even worse, Qwilleran doesn’t seem particularly bothered by either of these losses. I kinda get the barn being almost a relief, since he expressed frustration in this book at having a home that people always wanted to tour and gape at. But minimal effort is given to make it believable that he not only didn’t care that Polly was moving to Paris but also was ready to move on within days.

After all is said and done, I do recommend the overall series to fans of mystery, especially with a somewhat old-fashioned mindset, but definitely start at or near the beginning. I can see myself re-reading this series again someday, but I’ll probably stop at about #24, the last one I remember liking much at all. After that, even the love of the community around Qwilleran isn’t enough to sustain me through lackluster mysteries.

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Book Review: The False Prince

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The False Prince
Ascendance #1
by Jennifer A. Nielsen
read by Charlie McWade

My rating: 3.5 / 5
Genre: Middle grade adventure

Street-smart orphan Sage is tagged as one of three candidates to pretend to be the king’s long-lost son, in order to prevent a civil war that would lead to destruction by the nation’s enemies. He’s not so sure he wants to be the prince, but the alternative is death.

By halfway through this book, I was really beginning to wonder what so many people saw in it. It was slow and not terribly interesting, with cliched characters and politics that caused the story to drag. Characters make terrible decisions, and Sage himself doesn’t seem to know when to quit while he’s ahead. Just the fact that nothing interesting seemed to be going on caused intrigue as I tried to figure out what kind of twist might be coming that would cause so many people to give the book 4- and 5-star ratings. Then came a twist, like I was expecting, but not quite what I was expecting. And to say much more at all would be a spoiler, so before I get into that, I’ll say that, though I did appreciate the twist and how it made me look back on the rest of the story in a different light, it wasn’t quite enough to completely redeem that first 75% of the book. Also, the narrator is fairly monotone, and while I do intend to continue the series with the audiobooks, it’s mostly because his voice is already so ingrained in my head as the voice of Sage, I’ll hear it either way, so I might as well listen to him reading it. Now, read on if you choose, but beware that at least mild spoilers are ahead.

What this book taught me is that I’ve become far too trusting with narrators. I’ve always known about the potential of an unreliable narrator, but I haven’t come across them often and certainly not one to the degree that this book has. What I took as other characters making incorrect assumptions or Sage being unnecessarily cagey was actually just the reader being kept in the dark. And the sad thing is that even when it started to be revealed to me that some things had been kept from me, I didn’t follow that through to the Big Secret. I made guesses about the Big Secret, but the only way I could see it being true would be if the author used a really cliched trope. When I began to realize that Sage was keeping secrets from the reader, I should have realized…but I didn’t, so the twist mostly caught me off guard.

My guess is that most of the readers of the age group this is intended for would be blown away by the twist and would learn a good lesson in being too trusting of a narrator in fiction (like I did). While I do wish that the first 75% of the book had been more engaging overall, I still recommend this book to kids around age 10-13 and to anyone else that is interested in the premise.

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Book Review: Open and Shut

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Open and Shut
Andy Carpenter #1
by David Rosenfelt
read by Grover Gardner

My rating: 5 / 5
Genre: Mystery

When defense attorney Andy Carpenter dad dies and leaves him with a request to appeal the murder conviction of a man whose case his dad prosecuted and an unexpected inheritance of $22 million, Andy suspects that there’s more going on than a wrong conviction. He has to dig into the past to find the truth, and he might not like what he finds.

I have read 2 books from much later in this series, and liked them enough to start back at the beginning. It was interesting to read about where Carpenter’s money came from—money that in those later books allow him to be more discriminate in the cases he chooses to take on. Though this reference will likely be lost on most, this first book reminded me a lot of the pilot of Due South, an underrated Canadian show in the 90s. Though Andy Carpenter is certainly no Benton Fraser. I enjoyed the mystery in this book, the various paths Carpenter treads to build his defense case for the convicted murderer while also following thin threads related to his dad and the money he left. What makes this book stand out a bit from other mystery novels, to me, is the wit and snark of the main character. I often found myself smiling or even chuckling along the way.

I listened to the audiobook, and it didn’t take me as long to warm up to the narrator as it often does. Gardner did a great job bringing Carpenter’s often-sarcastic voice to life. I look forward to making my way through the rest of the series in the same format. Fans of mystery, crime fiction, and courtroom dramas should consider reading this book.

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Book Review: Tasty

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Tasty: A History of Yummy Experiments
by Victoria Grace Elliott

My rating: 3.5 / 5
Genre: Middle grade nonfiction, graphic novel

This history of certain foods told by “food sprites” in a colorful graphic novel is a fun, unique book for kids. It may work better for the age group it’s intended for than it did for me, not that I didn’t enjoy it overall. However, I had hoped for a little more of the science promised at the beginning of the book, especially at certain points when a statement is made that leaves me wanting to know more (like how does the wheel shape help cheese stay dry and avoid spoiling?). It makes sense that this wouldn’t be a comprehensive look at the foods chosen to be included—cheese, pickles, gelatin, etc., but some of the information goes by so fast, it’s hard to absorb it all.

Outside of the history told, there’s (sort of) a story going on with the sprites, but it’s really confusing to me. The main sprite, Peri, seems to have some kind of rivalry with a water sprite that pops in to talk about liquids sometimes, but why? I have no idea. I guess the author felt that giving the sprites a little of their own story would make it more engaging to kids, but I paid little attention to their little asides, other than the bizarre contention between Peri and Maia, which stuck out quite a bit. And there’s a place in the pickles section where the characters cry, “THE SAUCE” like a battle cry, like something we’re supposed to “get”…but I don’t. Maybe some of this connects back to the pervious book by this author, Yummy: A History of Desserts, but not having read that one, I can’t say for sure. While I do think that kids who are interested in food or cooking would probably enjoy this graphic novel, I don’t know that I’d recommend it for adults, unless they’re really into food history. Though in that case, they probably already know all of, or more than, what this book provides.

Thank you to Netgalley and Random House Children’s Books for providing me a copy of this book to review.

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