fiction

Book Review: The Woman from Lydia

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The Woman from Lydia
The Emissaries #1
by Angela Hunt

My rating: 5 / 5
Genre: Biblical fiction

When Euodia, a Christ-follower in AD 51, sees a young slave girl being treated terribly by her master, she buys the slave to free her. But though the slave no longer brought a profit for her masters after a Jewish rabbi had robbed her of her “gift” of divination, one of her masters claims the sale was not done legally. He takes the girl back and travels to find someone who can restore her gift so she can continue to earn money for him. Euodia and her servants follow the master and slave in the hopes of rescuing the girl who should rightfully be free.

Hunt takes a couple of passages from the book of Acts and weaves them into a rich, heart-filled story that I absolutely loved! The bulk of the story is the journey east from Philippi, Euodia trailing behind Hector Hostilius, hoping to catch up to him before he manages to restore the slave girl’s gift with an unclean spirit or sells her for being worthless to him. Even before that, though, and throughout, I was caught up in the setting, from the work Euodia does making purple clothing to the travel on the Via Egnatia and so many other things. A warning for those who might be bothered by this kind of thing—Hunt doesn’t shy away from the harsh realities of life during this time period—violence, idol worship, sexual immorality, etc.

Euodia’s faith in Christ came from an encounter with the apostle Paul, who is also the rabbi that “cursed” the slave girl Sabina by casting a demon out of her (these are both of the parts that came from Acts). While most of us don’t face the kind of situation Euodia is in here, trying to literally free a girl in captivity, I mentally cheered her resolve and wholehearted trust in God. I was on the edge of my seat waiting to see how it was all going to play out. The book goes back and forth between Euodia and Hector for much of the book, and I’ll admit that that led me to expect a far different outcome to the book than it has. An unpredictable plot is a good thing, though, and there was not one thing about the plot or the ending that I would have changed. Well, maybe one thing, but it’s small and would be a spoiler to explain. And I did notice a few weird name discrepancies, wherein a slave was first given one name then later referred to by another and Hector’s business partner had 2 slightly different spellings for his last name. If either of these things was intentional, I didn’t pick up on it.

There is some romance in the story, but it also was not what I expected from early in the book, and it was my favorite kind—subtle and sweet. I appreciate that Hunt didn’t give us more than necessary in the way of physical interaction between the two involved, which I feel happens far too often in Christian fiction. Overall, I earnestly recommend this book for those who enjoy biblical fiction, especially from the time after Christ.

Thank you to Netgalley and Bethany House for providing me a copy of this book to review.

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Book Review: His Last Bow

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His Last Bow
Sherlock Holmes #8
by Arthur Conan Doyle
Read by David Clarke

My rating: 3 / 5
Genre: Classic mystery

This collection of short stories did not impress me overall. Based on synopses I’d read, I expected there to be more in the way of Holmes helping the British government during wartime than the one story, but there was only one. Most of the stories in the collection were either not particularly interesting to me or just felt too similar to many of the other Holmes stories I’ve read. However, the last two in the collection—”The Adventures of the Devil’s Foot” and the one for which the collection is named—were much more engaging and enjoyable. For those alone, I would probably have given the book 5 stars. The final one in particular, though I struggled to follow it early on, was quite different, being told in 3rd person and not really being a mystery. 

All I have left to read in the entire series now is The Hound of the Baskerville, and I will feel quite accomplished having finally read this well-known series in its entirety. Whether I will re-visit any of the Holmes stories in the future…I probably will, but not all of them.

Regarding the audiobook, I started listening to the narration of Frederick Davidson, but it reminded me too much of Cary Elwes’s impression of Winston Churchill in Robin Hood Men in Tights, and I couldn’t take it seriously. So I switched to David Clarke, and it was much better.

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Book Review: Fall of Hades

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Fall of Hades
Michael Vey #6
by Richard Paul Evans

My rating: 4 / 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.

Along the way to trying to cripple Hatch and the Elgen’s, Michael Vey and most of the rest of the Electroclan are sent on not one, but two rescue missions.

I am absolutely baffled by my own reaction to this book, and to a greater degree, to this series. I struggle so much with some of the writing—the teen drama, the dialogue, the over-attention to food details, and the overabundance of facts that we’re supposed to believe are all in one kid’s head—and yet, I generally have enjoyed the series and want to know what’s going to happen in the next (but no longer final) installment. I do appreciate that this book has more forward motion than the previous, and it also has a killer ending. 

On the other hand, how on earth has Hatch not already been overthrown by his people when he leads like he does? He basically “makes an example” of everyone who looks at him the wrong way. I’m not sure it would be as easy as it’s portrayed here to keep the loyalty of as many subordinates as Hatch does. But I’ve said since book #2 that Evans has made his villain so over-the-top evil that it’s a little disturbing, and that hasn’t lessened…only worsened, really. On top of that, these “good guy” kids are starting to get way too cavalier about killing anyone that does them wrong in the slightest bit, which bugs me a little, especially in a YA series. There’s also an over-abundance of random thug-type characters (gang members, elk hunters) that are way too quick to jump to violence and even murder as well. 

I think that what I’m realizing is that I’m just not a fan of Evans’s writing, and I will most likely never re-read this series, yet there is enough intrigue in the overall plot that I want to see it through. So that’s something, even though I usually have more complaints than compliments. And though this review may not seem like a 4-star review, I felt like even 3.5 was just too low for what I thought of the book in the end. It’s the highest rated book in the series, which I suspect has something to do with the ending.

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Book Review: Adventures with Waffles

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Adventures with Waffles
by Maria Parr

My rating: 4 / 5
Genre: Children’s fiction

Trille and Lena are neighbors in a small, close-knit coastal town in Norway. Through summer and into the school year around the time they’re both 9 years old, they have adventures, get in trouble, and deal with tragedy.

For the first several chapters of this book, I wasn’t quite sure what the overarcing plot was, or if there even was one. And really, much of the book is a series of adventures that these two kids get up to in this otherwise-sleepy Norwegian cove. But there is a thread that runs through it, in which Trille, who thinks of Lena as his best friend, isn’t sure whether he is her best friend. And it’s not really surprising, since she is quite an outspoken, antagonistic girl, while Trille is more meek. My own daughter has gone through something similar, more than once, so Trille’s plight hit close to home for me.

As an entire year passes, a few bigger side plots emerge, and more than one of them caused me to tear up a little. Though it’s true that Trille and Lena don’t obey their parents very well and face some consequences for their disobedience (though not always are those consequences very severe), there is quite a bit of heart in this book, and that’s what I was left with at the end. This would be a great book to read together with kids, recommended for 7-10-year-olds.

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Book Review: Ramona and Her Mother

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Ramona and Her Mother
Ramona Quimby #5
by Beverly Cleary
Read by Stockard Channing

My rating: 4 / 5
Genre: Children’s classic

This book did not stand out to me as much as previous in the series did. I think that’s just because a lot of it felt like rehashing of things Ramona did, misunderstandings, etc. from previous books. After how much I loved the previous book in the series, this one felt a little like a letdown. It seems like she could really do with a little more discipline, but on the other hand, she’s at a young enough age that both of her parents being gone full-time would have to be very difficult on her. I feel for Ramona in some of the situations she gets herself into, and there are also some nice moments in the book, as in previous ones. Stockard Channing’s narration is pretty great, too, and I recommend it for anyone who might be interested, young or old.

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Book Review: The First Four Years

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The First Four Years
Little House #9
by Laura Ingalls Wilder
read by Cherry Jones

My rating: 3.5 / 5
Genre: Children’s historical classic

I can understand now the claims that this book is so vastly different from the rest of the series. The main thing I noticed is that there is a lot of hardship, just like the rest of the books have, but while the rest of the books also make sure to talk about the happy things mixed in, this one barely does. I get the feeling that Laura Ingalls Wilder, or perhaps her daughter Rose Wilder Lane, who edited the previous works, intentionally included those happy moments to soften the difficult ones. No one did that for this manuscript. Not that there weren’t a few happy moments, but they were meager compared to the loss of crops time after time, the bad weather, the fire, the sickness. And Almanzo comes across pretty terrible in this book. He convinced Laura to give farming 3 years when she tells him that she doesn’t really want to live a farmer’s life due to the hardship (which she was absolutely correct about, obviously) before they were married, so it’s not like she waited until afterward to tell him she didn’t want him to farm, and that, if farming isn’t so much a success for them that she’s okay with continuing, he’ll quit. After 3 years of losing their crops every year, though, he talks her into “just one more year.” To me, that sounds like a man who has no plans to ever give up his own way. I haven’t read Wilder’s diaries from after this time, and I don’t plan to at this time, but I do hope that he wasn’t as manipulative as he seems in this book.

For this whole series, my enjoyment of the book was greatly enhanced by the audiobook narrator, Cherry Jones, who does a fantastic job. If you’ve ever considered reading this series, or have already read it and have occasion to listen to the audiobooks, I say do it!

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Book Review: Click Here to Start

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Click Here to Start
by Denis Markell

My rating: 2.5 / 5
Genre: Middle grade mystery, adventure, fantasy

Twelve-year-old Ted Gerson meets his namesake, his great-uncle Ted, for the first time shortly before the man’s death. At that meeting, his great-uncle asks about his penchant for escape-the-room video games, and then makes him promise to never stop looking for answers. This cryptic message is followed by Ted being given all of the contents of the great-uncle’s apartment after his death. But then Ted discovers that the newest escape-the-room game on his computer is set up just like his great-uncle’s apartment and that the clues in the game are in the apartment in real life!

I really wanted to love this book for more than one reason. First, my daughter is the one who recommended it to me, which is always a special situation. Second, I’m an escape room player (real life games more than computer ones though), worked as a game master and game builder for a while, and still make escape room-type games for my job now. You might say they’re a big part of my life. But it’s probably because of that second reason that this book wasn’t so great for me. The main story about Ted’s great-uncle, whose history Ted got to know through the hunt, was interesting. The sub-plot with the mysterious person who is on Ted’s trail and clearly lying about being a reporter named Clark Kent wasn’t bad, though the reveal and conclusion were underwhelming. The three main characters—Ted, his best friend Caleb, and new girl Isabel—left a bit to be desired, but that didn’t really bother me much.

However, one of my pet peeves involving games that are included in TV shows, movies, or books was a huge part of this book. The way some of the escape room elements were solved just made no sense. There is NO way someone, especially a kid, could have figured out some of these puzzles. Some of them were just huge logic leaps that can absolutely ruin a game for players. Throughout the story, a new online escape room game will present itself to Ted, and it will be exactly what he needs to progress in his mystery. While this is, of course, a stretch, I can accept it as a fantastical element to the story (though, spoiler alert, it is never explained how this happens or who is behind it). However, the first of these games that Ted plays, he plays for 5 hours, then gets stuck, then goes to the apartment and walks through the same steps in a very short amount of time. Yes, he had already done the solving when he’d played the computer game, but 5 hours? To solve what took maybe 10 minutes to get through in real life, and some of that time was spent trying to give the others a chance to feel like they were solving it? I don’t buy it. Then, later in the story, somehow a book that is part of Uncle Ted’s mystery ends up being a clue to the home alarm system of someone completely unrelated (literally and figuratively) to Uncle Ted. How does that make any sense? 

It’s certainly difficult to translate something like escape room puzzles to a novel, though several authors have tried. Sometimes it works okay (the Mr. Lemoncello’s Library series is an example of it working okay, though it’s fairly light on the puzzles), but sometimes it doesn’t. In this book, it doesn’t. And unfortunately, for me at least, the rest of the book wasn’t enough to make up for that. For people who aren’t quite as into escape rooms as I am and just like a good puzzle-light mystery in the middle grade category, you just might find this a good read. If you’re a major escape room enthusiast, I don’t recommend it.

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Book Review: Very Good, Jeeves

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Very Good, Jeeves
Jeeves #4
 by P.G. Wodehouse
Read by Jonathan Cecil

My rating: 4.5 / 5
Genre: Classic British humor

This was definitely one of my favorite collections of the series. Maybe the outlandish situations Bertie Wooster gets himself into should be getting stale, but I’m only enjoying them more as I go. Maybe because I’m starting to get into the overall feel of the stories more? There were several moments that made me laugh out loud or at least smile; I regret that I was listening to the audiobook and couldn’t make note of them at the time. Bertie fooling himself into thinking Jeeves doesn’t always get his own way, though, is one such moment. I only wish I could have continued to listen to Kevin Theis, but apparently he only narrated 4 of the books. Though I still like Theis more, Jonathan Cecil was good too, excepting for the strange speech impediment he gave to Bingo Little. I can say with certainty at this point that I will listen to these audiobooks again someday.

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Book Review: A Spy on the Home Front

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A Spy on the Home Front
American Girl Molly Mysteries #1
by Alison Hart

My overall rating: 3.5 / 5
Genre: Children’s historical mystery

Having just read the main Molly series, I read the first Molly mystery to follow it up. It wasn’t bad, but it didn’t really have the style and heart of the main series. No one from the main series, besides Molly herself, is in this book, and Molly’s summer friend Anna doesn’t really have much of a personality. I do like the historical information regarding German-Americans placed in internment camps, the pro-Nazi Silver Legion, and the WASPs, of which Molly’s aunt is one. This book also has a “Looking Back” section like the main series books, which goes into detail more on each of these points. The mystery in the book, which involved tracking down a Silver Legion member who was sending anti-American propaganda flyers out via planes at a local airfield, was not terribly complicated, but it was a decent vehicle for the history, keeping the book from feeling dry. Molly’s strategic and slightly manipulative personality from the main series does continue here, making it a decent follow-up for anyone who has read the main series, though it could be read as a stand-alone too.

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July in Review

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I read 23 books last month, shattering my old record by 5. That number is mostly owing to quite a few short kids’ books, which I read to get my Goodreads goal back on track, considering it’s been a rough year for reading so far. Still, my page count for the month is only a few hundred behind my record, so short books or no, I still read a lot (for me).

Here are the books I read in July:

The Novice
39-4
jeeves-3
tcw-20
ralph-3
mockingjay
facing
mcgee-5
tcw-21
little-house-8
molly-1
ramona-4
mv-5
signs
sherlock-case-book
39-5
royal-christmas
mohicans

The Novice by Taran Matharu (4 / 5)
Beyond the Grave by Jude Watson (5 / 5)
Carry On, Jeeves by P.G. Wodehouse (4 / 5)
The Cat Who Sang for the Birds by Lilian Jackson Braun (5 / 5)
Ralph S. Mouse by Beverly Cleary (5 / 5)
Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins (4 / 5)
Back to the Drawing Board by Bill Myers (5 / 5)
Facing the Enemy by DiAnn Mills (2 / 5)
The Cat Who Saw Stars by Lilian Jackson Braun (3 / 5)
These Happy Golden Years by Laura Ingalls Wilder (4 / 5)
Meet Molly by Valerie Tripp (5 / 5)
Ramona and Her Father by Beverly Cleary (5 / 5)
Storm of Lightning by Richard Paul Evans (3 / 5)
Molly Learns a Lesson by Valerie Tripp (5 / 5)
Molly’s Surprise by Valerie Tripp (5 / 5)
Happy Birthday, Molly by Valerie Tripp (5 / 5)
Molly Saves the Day by Valerie Tripp (5 / 5)
Changes for Molly by Valerie Tripp (4 / 5)
Signs of Life by Creston Mapes (3 / 5)
The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle (4.5 / 5)
The Black Circle by Patrick Carman (4.5 / 5)
A Royal Christmas by Melody Carlson (4 / 5)
The Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper, adapted for younger readers by Eliza Gatewood Warren (4 / 5)

This list includes 2 ARCs and 1 re-read. It was really hard to pick one favorite from this many books, but my favorite book from July was Ramona and Her Father. I started 2 series, continued 8 series, and finished 2 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.

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.