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Book Review: The ABC Murders

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The ABC Murders
Hercule Poirot #13
by Agatha Christie
read by Hugh Fraser

My rating: 4.5 / 5
Genre: Classic mystery

The story of the magnanimous serial killer was one of the better Poirot novels I’ve read so far. Christie pulled me in and had me looking exactly where she wanted me looking, which was in the wrong direction. I did start to realize my mistake before the turn came in the book, and I was pretty excited to realize there was more going on. I didn’t guess the culprit or the motives behind the murders, though—my theories were pretty far off—but I still had a lot of fun coming up with them and then learning how wrong I was. It was also nice to see Hastings back. Though several of the Poirot books have been less enjoyable for me, gems like this make my quest to keep listening worthwhile.

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Book Review: The Navigator

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The Navigator
Lorien Legacies: The Lost Files #11
by Pittacus Lore

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

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

Decades before the main series begins, when the Mogodorian attack begins on Lorien, Lexa is conscripted to fly an old-fashioned space ship in an attempt to escape. Once on Earth, she and her companions must try to track down the other Loric that made it off the planet, but more than that, they have to survive in this alien world.

I don’t remember having any particular attachment to Lexa when reading the main series or wondering about her backstory, but this was still an interesting read. I appreciated seeing Lorien before and during the invasion and also getting an idea of the culture and political climate from the perspective of someone who actually lived there. I enjoyed this novella a little more than the previous, which could be due in part to Sarah (my least favorite of the major characters from the main series) not being involved at all. For those who have read and enjoyed the main series and want to revisit the world, you definitely consider reading this as well.

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Book Review: Face of Death

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Face of Death
by Blake Pierce

My rating: 3 / 5
Genre: Crime drama

Zoe Prime is an FBI agent with the ability to see everything in numbers, measurements, patterns, etc. She does her best to keep this side of her hidden from co-workers, even while using it to solve crimes. But when a series of murders seems to have no pattern, Zoe is worried she won’t be able to stop the killer before he completes his spree.

The mystery aspect of this book was decent overall. Murders are shown from the POV of the soon-to-be-dead, which is an interesting style choice. It lends itself to some fairly disturbing scenes, when the attack occurs and the victim becomes aware of his/her impending death. The killer also has some POV scenes, which I felt may have taken away some of the suspense of the mystery. Because in the end, Zoe’s work to solve the crime ends up feeling like a rehashing of what we already know from the killer’s POV. And I think I would have liked a little more explanation as to the motives in the end.

Zoe understandably has some major social shortcomings, which I can relate to, though hers take a different shape than mine. What bothered me the most was the fact that she felt she had to hide her ability, which was really an incredible boon for her job. I think the author attempted to make sense of that by giving her some trauma about her ability from her childhood, but even in that, I was annoyed, because it was an unnecessary poke at Christianity. Zoe’s mom claimed Zoe’s abilities were from the devil. Zoe’s mom was “strictly religious, and that meant intolerant.” A very tolerant statement on the author’s part… And frankly, just not great writing, because it’s a weak argument for why Zoe needs to hide her investigatively helpful abilities from her colleagues and superiors.

In the end, this book wasn’t for me on multiple fronts. It wasn’t a bad book, and for a book that is either self-published or at least published with a super small press, it’s decently edited. It could have been paced better, but it’s clear from other reviews that this book (and the following series) has an audience that I’m just not part of. If it sounds like something you’d be interested in, please check out other reviews at the link below.

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Book Review: Night Swimming

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Night Swimming
by Aaron Starmer

My rating: 3.5 / 5
Genre: YA fantasy romance

After graduating high school in 1994, Sarah and Trevor decide to swim every pool in their small town, without permission, in an effort to make the last summer before they move on with their lives last as long as they can. Then they hear about a natural pool in the woods that they know they need to check out. And what they discover there might just turn their dream of making the summer last into a reality.

The premise of this book was fairly vague but intriguing, so at only around 240 pages, I decided to give it a try. The book is fairly straight-forward for a while—Trevor likes Sarah, but she has an on-again-off-again boyfriend and keeps him at arm’s length. He goes along with her plan to swim all of the pools as a way of spending time with her, though he understandably begins to get annoyed with her flirtation, since she’s not ready to let go of her boyfriend yet. Then when they get to the mysterious pool in the woods, the story takes a turn. It becomes more of an introspection on life, romance, youth, and moving on. It’s a little slow overall, a little bizarre, and has an odd, yet not unsatisfying, ending. It’s interesting, but I don’t really feel like it added a lot of value to my life, especially since there’s a fair amount of emphasis on alcohol, drugs, and sex as normal parts of life for teenagers (even in the 90s). I am not sure what kind of reader to recommend this to, so I’d just say that if the premise sounds interesting to you, by all means check it out.

Thank you to Netgalley and Penguin Young Readers Group for providing me a copy of this book to review.

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Book Review: The Inheritance Games

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The Inheritance Games
by Jennifer Lynn Barnes

My rating: 2.5 / 5
Genre: YA mystery, romance

When Avery Grambs finds out she’s been named in the will of a recently deceased billionaire, it turns her world upside-down, especially considering that she’s been practically living out of her car. On top of that, in order to be eligible to inherit, she has to live in Tobias Hawthorne’s massive estate for a year. The only problem is that the rest of his family still lives there, and for the most part, they aren’t happy with this young usurper. It doesn’t help that no one knows why the fortune was left to Avery at all. But one of Hawthorne’s grandsons explains his grandfather’s love of puzzles and suspects that Avery is just another puzzle to solve…if only she can survive long enough.

I went into this book expecting to be bothered by the teenage drama. I liked the idea of the mysterious inheritance and puzzles and such, but I’d read enough reviews to decide that it would probably be too angsty for me. Then my daughter got it for Christmas and read it and loved it, so…well, now I had to at least give it a try. And yeah, I got about what I expected. The story isn’t bad, but it’s so bogged down by the “romance”/love triangle. Every time Avery is in a room with one of the two middle brothers, she practically quivers. There is no chemistry or romance, really, just…way too much physical attention and tension for my preference. So since the actual story of why Tobias Hawthorne left everything to Avery takes a backseat to an aspect I didn’t like at all, it’s understandable that I didn’t enjoy the book as much as I could have.

Then the resolution to the mystery was incredibly lackluster—one might even say non-existent—so that detracted from my enjoyment even more. I think that some of the issue is that I thought the answer to why Avery was given the entire Hawthorne estate was the story goal for this book, but really, it turned out to be discovering who is behind some attempts on Avery’s life. But that means that either the set-up isn’t done very well, or I just didn’t follow along very well. I plan to keep reading the series, not so much because Barnes hooked me with this first book but because my daughter loves the entire series and says some of what I didn’t like about this one gets better later. For now though, it’s difficult for me to recommend this book to anyone, but I do think I might have liked it more if I’d read it as a teenager. And 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.

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Book Review: When Tides Turn

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When Tides Turn
Waves of Freedom #3
written by Sarah Sundin

My rating: 3.5 / 5
Genre: Historical Christian romance, mystery

Tired of only being used as a saleswoman in her job and wanting to be useful to the war effort, Tess Beaumont joins the newly established Navy WAVES program for women. She knows her tendency to be outgoing and peppy makes her look shallow to someone like Lt. Dan Avery, a deeply serious man who hopes to make admiral someday. Unfortunately, he’s been taken off the sea and assigned to a position that he doesn’t feel is as helpful to the Navy or to his own career advancement. As both Tess and Dan struggle to make themselves more useful, they also struggle to not be distracted by each other.

I’d put this book somewhere between the first (3 stars) and the 2nd (4.5 stars) in the series. Tess is a fun, energetic character, though difficult for me to identify with, since she’s far more outgoing than I am. I appreciated her desire to be known as more than just a pretty face (though again, I can’t identify, because that’s not an issue I’ve ever had) and actually be useful. Dan drove me crazy for a while with his strict workaholic ways, but I think that just made his character’s progression in the book that much more satisfying to me. I liked the emphasis on rest and integrity in his arc.

The mystery in this book was less engaging than the mysteries in both of the previous books. I think that was at least partly because it’s really just Tess alone working it out. Dan helps a little when he’s on land, but I like the way the mystery stretched across both MC’s stories in the previous book, and that didn’t happen here at all. In fact, after a while, I tended to start skimming during the scenes when Dan was at sea. I struggled to understand or frankly care about the work being done to help the Allies be able to find and combat German subs–not that that wasn’t super important work during WWII, but I’ve known Sundin to make history much more interesting in the past than this book did. That’s probably just personal preference though.

Overall, this is not my favorite of Sundin’s books or series. Still, I think many others wouldn’t be as bothered by those things that detracted from the book for me, so I do recommend it for fans of Christian romance, especially those set during WWII.

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April in Review

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I read 11 books last month, a book less than the last 2 months, but still close or higher than the page count from those months, so apparently it was still an average amount of reading, even though I felt like I read a lot less last month.

Here are the books I read in April:

Guernsey
Martian
WoW4
monster
Framed
Poirot 13
Cahills vs 6
39 11
Murder
Carpenter 14
Waves 3
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The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer & Annie Barrows (5 / 5)
The Martian by Andy Weir (4.5 / 5)
World of Warcraft, Vol. 4 by Walter & Louise Simonson (3 / 5)
The Monster in the Hollows by Andrew Peterson (5 / 5)
Framed by John Grisham & Jim McCloskey (4 / 5)
Cards on the Table by Agatha Christie (3 / 5)
Day of Doom by David Baldacci (3 / 5)
Vespers Rising by Rick Riordan, Peter Lerangis, Gordon Korman, Jude Watson (4 / 5)
Murder Between Friends by Liz Lawson (3 / 5)
Outfoxed by David Rosenfelt (4.5 / 5)
When Tides Turn by Sarah Sundin (review pending)

This list includes 2 ARCs and 4 re-reads. My favorite book from April (that wasn’t a re-read) was Outfoxed. I started 0 series, continued 3 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.

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: Outfoxed

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Outfoxed
Andy Carpenter #14
by David Rosenfelt
read by Grover Gardner

My rating: 4.5 / 5
Genre: Mystery

When a program to bring dogs into a prison for the prisoners to help train them results in convict Brian Atkins escaping, then Brian’s wife and former partner, whose testimony helped put Brian away, are found murdered, Andy Carpenter finds himself defending another fellow dog lover. But when the case inevitably turns out to be deeper than it looks on the surface, Andy may not be the only target this time.

There were a few new things about this book, enough to keep it fresh and keep me engaged. The basic formula is still intact, though, and in fact, this one seemed to have less of the 3rd-person narration showing us the more in-depth parts of the conspiracy. That’s just fine with me. I always prefer to stay with Andy and his crew anyway. I got a kick out of this technology-heavy case, because Andy is so out of his element, it’s endearing. If I ever go back through this series from the beginning (which I expect to do when I reach the end or catch up with new additions, because it has become a wonderful comfort read/listen for me), I may start keeping a tally of pocket-Marcus plots and Pete distrusting Andy, despite Andy being proven right so many times. I don’t want to make these sound like tired elements, though, because they’re part of what I love about the series. As always, Grover Gardner is the consummate Andy Carpenter, and I recommend this book for fans of mysteries and court dramas.

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Book Review: Day of Doom

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Day of Doom
The 39 Clues: Cahills vs. Vespers #6
by David Baldacci

My rating: 3 / 5
Genre: Middle grade adventure

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

The Vespers have a doomsday device and still have control of the hostages that they’ve been using to control Amy and Dan for a while now. Can the Cahills free their friends and save the world?

The only reason I give this book 3 stars instead of less is because I still overall enjoy the world that has been set up here. But like the main series of books, the ending to this story arc left a lot to be desired. There were continuity and characterization issues, as well as story points set up earlier in the series that were forgotten or fizzled. I was cautiously excited to see how some of it played out, and it really wasn’t anything special in the end. I don’t know how much of that could be attributed to another brand-new author to the series, though, and how much was just a bad set-up. I have wondered throughout this entire series how much each author got to choose what was going to happen in their book and how much was dictated by someone at the publishing company.

The ending was fairly anti-climactic and contained one of the largest out of character moments in the entire season. I wonder if it would have been better if one of the authors who wrote many of the other books had written this one, but it is what it is. I do tend to think that this being a series meant for kids/teens has led the powers that be to feel that it’s good enough to throw action, adventure, and interesting locations out there and not worry so much about good plots and continuity of characters. Yet for all of that, as I said at the beginning of my review, I really do still like the story world and would recommend at least the first series to anyone who is interested in this kind of fiction. And I plan to read more of what was published later. But my interest in the overall series has diminished a bit at this point, so I may lose my momentum at some point.

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Book Review: Murder Between Friends

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Murder Between Friends
by Liz Lawson

My rating: 3 / 5
Genre: YA mystery thriller

Grace, Henry, and Ally have been friends for a long time, growing up near each other. Then Henry’s brother Jake was arrested for the murder of a teach at their school, and Claire’s testimony helped clinch the conviction. Two years later, Jake’s conviction has been vacated due to impropriety during the trial. Ally wants to help her best friend’s brother by starting her own investigation, and even though Claire is beginning to question what she saw the night of the murder, Ally wants nothing to do with her traitorous ex-friend. 

I wanted to like this book, as much as anything because I wanted to be able to recommend it to my teenage daughter who loves YA mysteries and thrillers. But in the end, the characters kind of killed it for me. The plot was okay—nothing more or less than you’d really expect for this genre, but decent enough. The story is told in alternating POVs between the three once-friends, 1st person and present-tense in each. (Note on that: an author needs to be really good at writing different voices to pull off multiple 1st person POVs well, and this author probably should have made a different choice. The characters mostly all sounded the same.) Ally got on my nerves with her constant and never-ending, or even lessening, hatred and anger toward Claire. Claire starting to doubt what she thought she saw the night of the murder was an interesting angle that wasn’t used well. Her POV was kind of bogged down by “domestic” minutiae. And Henry mostly just seemed sort of wishy-washy. I didn’t connect with any of the characters, which made the book feel a bit like a slog.

In the end, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with the book, exactly (well, other than a larger-than-normal number of typos for a traditionally published book, but those might have been fixed before it was published), but I was probably the wrong audience for it. Even my daughter, who often enjoys books that I don’t, is planning to pass on reading this after I told her about my issues with the characters. Still,  if you’re a fan of young adult mysteries and thrillers, you might consider checking out other reviews at the link below to see what others who liked it more than I did thought.

Thank you to Netgalley and Delacorte Press for providing me a copy of this book to review.

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