Month: August 2025

Book Review: Death on the Nile

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Death on the Nile
Hercule Poirot #18
by Agatha Christie
read by Kenneth Branagh

My rating: 4.5 / 5
Genre: Classic mystery

I really enjoyed this Poirot novel; I think it was actually one of my favorites. Of course, part of that might be the fact that I actually pegged the bad guy for once. I may have come up with alternate theories a time or two, but that’s just because Christie still does well with the obfuscation. I even correctly guessed the why, but not exactly the how. I also really liked it when Poirot is involved from the start, rather than coming in halfway through the book. And when he has someone else to work with, even if it’s not Hastings. The setting in Egypt doesn’t really play into the story as much as one might think, since most of the story takes place on a boat, though that aspect does provide some interesting aspects to the plot and mystery. I listened to the audiobook narrated by Kenneth Branagh, which was unsurprisingly really good. I did struggle a little to understand his Poirot accent early on, but it seemed to even out as I went. Overall, this was a great addition to the series.

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Book Review: Al Capone Throws Me a Curve

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Al Capone Throws Me a Curve
Tales from Alcatraz #4
by Gennifer Choldenko

My rating: 4.5 / 5
Genre: Middle grade historical fiction

Thirteen-year-old Moose Flanagan’s dad is the assistant-warden on the island of Alcatraz, but even living amongst some of the most infamous criminals in the world isn’t enough to get Moose and his friend Scout onto the high school baseball team as freshmen. He has all summer to try to figure out how to please the team’s captain, but it won’t be easy. Meanwhile, there are rumors that the convicts are going to strike and that Moose’s father might become even more of a target.

The series finishes strong, with another compelling story and the title coming into play in a way I didn’t expect. I was glad that the awkward teen-romance triangle between Moose, Piper, and Annie was non-existent in this book, because Annie was gone for the summer. Though on the other hand, Scout was a bit annoying to me this time with his insistence on Moose pandering to the captain of the baseball team in ways that would be dangerous at best. There was one particular aspect in this book involving a signed baseball that felt a little weak—the baseball was a factual item, but its use in the story didn’t really work for me.

The climax of this book is full of excitement. As I’ve said before, one of the things I love about this series is that it doesn’t pander to the young audience for which it’s intended. The stakes are high, the danger is real (not just physical danger, but the danger of Moose’s dad losing his job during the Great Depression), and Moose has to make some truly impossible choices. He is a true hero in many ways in this book, and I really liked how everything came out in the end. I also found it interesting that Al Capone, who has been sort of idolized by most of the kids throughout the series, is brought down off his pedestal, at least for Moose, in this book. And I again enjoyed reading the author’s notes at the end of this book. I applaud Choldenko’s research and inclusion of history in this series. I recommend the whole series (but start at the beginning!) for pre-teens and young teens, as well as any adults who enjoy younger-audience books.

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Book Review: I Know What You Did Last Summer

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I Know What You Did Last Summer
by Lois Duncan

My rating: 3 / 5
Genre: YA mystery

Is it a prank? Or something more? When Julie James finds the note addressed to her that says, “I know what you did last summer,” she thinks she knows exactly what it means. Someone has discovered the terrible event that occurred last summer that she and the three others she was with at the time agreed to cover up. And though the others try to convince her it’s unrelated, when the attacks start, it’s hard to believe it’s a coincidence.

If you’ve seen the movie, forget everything you know about it. This is not a horror/slasher story. It’s really more of a mystery, maybe even a thriller. I didn’t feel particularly thrilled, so I wouldn’t label it that myself, but that might be because I was distracted here or there, partly because of the movie. It came out when I was a teenager, right alongside Scream, and though I’m not really much of a horror fan, I did see both movies. And then a year later, Urban Legend. I’m pretty sure it all involved hanging out with friends. I was vaguely aware that this book wasn’t exactly the same as the movie, but I didn’t realize how different it was. (By the way, Lois Duncan was horrified by the movie.)

I tried to put aside my thoughts about the movie and start fresh for the book, once I realized how different it was, and that worked to a degree. But then there’s talk about making a phone call from a car, and I was distracted again. If the movie came out in the late 90s, when was the book written? Oh, 1978…then why do these teens have cell phones? Apparently this book was updated in 2010 to be more modern, which mostly includes the addition of cell phones, while some of the dialog still feels fairly dated to me. I wish I’d known in advance this was an updated version, as I might have tried to get my hands on an original instead. Of course, none of this review so far really talks about the story itself.

Overall, I have to admit to being fairly bored during this book (which is why I said above that I wasn’t particularly thrilled). There is a mystery involved in learning who is sending the notes and hunting Julia and her “friends,” and I’ll admit that I didn’t guess all of it. There’s a little bit of a twist, but getting there was just kind of…not terribly interesting. And at least half of the characters are just terrible. Maybe that’s on purpose, but if I’m supposed to feel any sympathy for Barry the misogynist, something went wrong. Still, it’s a quick read and overall not too full of sex, language, or even violence. So not a slasher novel. There are references to teen sex and drug use, but it’s not really overt. If you’re a fan of the movie, you might want to skip this unless you’re really interested in its origin. If you enjoy YA mysteries that are fairly short and slow, you might want to give this a try.

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Book Review: Mystery Ranch

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Mystery Ranch
The Boxcar Children #4
by Gertrude Chandler Warner
Read by Aimee Lilly

My rating: 2 / 5
Genre: Children’s classic

This one really left me scratching my head. The mean, old aunt is instantly won over by the too-perfect kids, and apparently minors were able to own property in the time this was written, without needing an adult to be the trustee or anything like that. When the aunt talked about some men trying to get her to sell her ranch to them, it started to feel like a Nancy Drew story, but it resolved far too quickly and easily. In fact, though I didn’t compare the length of this to the previous stories, it felt super short in general. Also, the narrator for this book was even less enjoyable than the previous, who I already didn’t care for. Maybe if I had a young child to read these with and discuss the good and bad, it would be worth continuing with the series, but I don’t really have any motivation to do so.

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Book Review: Deck the Hounds

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Deck the Hounds
Andy Carpenter #18
by David Rosenfelt
read by Grover Gardner

My rating: 3.5 / 5
Genre: Mystery

When a homeless man is attacked and his dog bites the attacker, the dog is quarantined and the man is heartbroken. Andy Carpenter’s family insist that he offer the man some help, since, after all, it’s Christmas! Things take a turn when the man is arrested for murder, putting reluctant defense attorney Andy in the position of having to decide whether to represent him or not.

This was a sort of middle-of-the-road read for me, in the context of the rest of the series. It didn’t stand out in any way as better or worse than average. Of course, since this series is a comfort read/listen for me, “average” is still plenty enjoyable. The ending seemed a little harder to follow than usual, and I kinda kept waiting for a little more to come out. There was one plot arc that seemed to be unrelated to the case, but I saw its connection coming pretty much the whole time, though not every detail. Of course, I have the benefit of knowing that this is a fictional story, so the author isn’t going to include something that won’t eventually factor into the main plot. Overall, though I wouldn’t necessarily recommend starting the series here, I do recommend this book for fans of mysteries and court dramas. And if you’re an audiobook listener, definitely consider going that route for this book/series, since Grover Gardner is always great at bringing Andy’s wit and sarcasm to life.

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Book Review: The Guard

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The Guard
Lorien Legacies: The Lost Files #12
by Pittacus Lore

My rating: 3 / 5
Genre: YA sci-fi

Spoiler notice: The following review may contain spoilers for the main series, starting with I Am Number Four.

While the Garde hide and grow, Lexa waits in the shadows, doing whatever she can to help them from a distance, until such time as they might need her. Since Lexa has always felt a bit mediocre to me, this book was mostly mediocre too. There isn’t much new here or particularly interesting. It’s really just a way to re-visit the world of the main series and possibly get excited for the next book of the series. For those who have already read the main series, you can probably skip this one unless you just love the books so much you want to read everything that was written.

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Book Review: The Hawthorne Legacy

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The Hawthorne Legacy
The Inheritance Games #2
by Jennifer Lynn Barnes

My rating: 3 / 5
Genre: YA mystery, romance

Spoiler notice: The following review may contain some spoilers for the previous book in the series, The Inheritance Games.

Avery Grambs is still trying to understand why a complete stranger, Tobias Hawthorne, left her his vast fortune when he died, and a recent development has left her, and other members of the Hawthorne family, reeling. Never truly knowing who is friend and who is foe, Avery and at least some of the Hawthorne brothers attempt to unravel the mystery about the presumed-dead, long-lost Hawthorne son.

Like with the previous book, I kind of had to try to push aside my annoyance with the “romance” angle in this book. It’s based way too much on physical attraction for my preference, though I will at least say that there was a little deeper connection happening here than the previous. Still, Barnes’s idea of romance is not at all the same as mine, and some of her decisions on how she wrote that side of the story and then how things stood at the end made me scratch my head.

Fortunately, I was much more into the mystery side of this book than I was in the previous, at least for a while. Because Avery has already had time to get past the initial shock of the inheritance, meeting the family, and learning how crazy the house is, there’s more going on in the search for answers. But I should have been suspicious when major answers seemed to come way too early in the book. “What could the rest of the story be about?” I found myself wondering. Oh, if only I were less trusting…. One of my biggest grips about the plot of the previous book was that there weren’t really any solid answers about what I thought the main mystery was (why did the old man leave his fortune to Avery?). There was an answer, but it was weak and didn’t seem to be all of the story. I was much happier with how things started to pan out during this book…until Barnes basically undid everything she’d set up by the end. And this point, I don’t know if the “new” answer at the end of this book is any more the “real” answer than what we ended the last book with, or if the next book will start with Avery or one of the Hawthorne brothers unearthing a clue that starts them on the hunt to the real “real” answer. Maybe the intention here has always been for the mystery of the unknown heiress to stretch across the entire trilogy, but Barnes’s way of keeping that going is to pretend to give us an answer, then go, “Fooled you! That’s not the real answer; you have to keep going!” And I don’t particularly care for that kind of story. Subversion is one thing, but this is giving me mental whiplash.

I would definitely stop reading here, not remotely caring enough to see how Avery finishes her required year living in Hawthorne House, but my daughter, who loves this series, wants me to finish it out, so I will do it for her. It’s still difficult for me to recommend this book to anyone, but if you read my review and don’t feel that what bothered me would bother you and you’re interested in the story, you might consider trying it out yourself (it’s a continuing story, though, so you definitely need to start with the first one).

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Book Review: Dumb Witness

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Dumb Witness
Hercule Poirot #17
by Agatha Christie
read by Hugh Fraser

My rating: 4 / 5
Genre: Classic mystery

This story was a bit different than the rest of the series so far, in that the death that starts it off is billed as natural. However, the dead woman had an accident not long before, chalked up to her tripping over the ball that her dog left at the top of the stairs, but something about that scenario leaves her suspicious of her family. She writes to Poirot, who doesn’t get her letter until it’s too late but is still compelled to investigate the original attempted murder. The large cast of suspects is standard fare, though, as is the path we go down with Poirot and Hastings on the way to the solution. And as is the fact that most of my many theories about whodunit and why turned out to be wrong. It was overall an average Poirot for me, not as slow as the early ones but not a stand-out either, except for Bob the dog (whose ball was blamed for his owner’s fall). Any time Poirot and Hastings are at the house and encounter Bob, Hastings tells us what the dog is likely thinking, and it’s hilarious, especially the way Hugh Fraser narrates it.

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