Eleventh Grave in Moonlight (Charlie Davidson, #11)

Eleventh Grave in Moonlight
by Darynda Jones
Rating: ★★★★
isbn: 9781250078216
Series: Charlie Davidson #11
Publication Date: January 24, 2017
Pages: 310
Genre: Urban Fantasy
Publisher: St. Martin's Press

My entire life can be summed up in one sentence:
“Well, that didn’t go as planned.”
—T-Shirt

A typical day in the life of Charley Davidson involves cheating husbands, errant wives, missing people, philandering business owners, and, oh yeah...demons, hell hounds, evil gods, and dead people. Lots and lots of dead people. As a part time Private Investigator and full-time Grim Reaper, Charley has to balance the good, the bad, the undead, and those who want her dead.

Now, Charley is learning to make peace with the fact that she is a goddess with all kinds of power and that her own daughter has been born to save the world from total destruction. But the forces of hell are determined to see Charley banished forever to the darkest corners of another dimension. With the son of Satan himself as her husband, will Charley be able to defeat the ultimate evil and find a way to have her happily ever after after all?

Darynda Jones is quickly becoming the second author alive for whom I’d go out of my way to have a conversation with. Folded into a zany, quirky, funny urban fantasy series is some deeply well thought out theology; hidden amid the rapid-fire one-liners, Jones tackles head on the issues of God, free-will, and why He “allows’ pain and suffering. And she doesn’t take it lightly, and she doesn’t go for easy answers or glib reasoning. She’s successfully mixed silliness and the very opposite of silliness and I’m a little bit in love with her for pulling it off.

Eleventh Grave… clears a lot of the ongoing questions up, and I’d go so far as to say it brings the major story-arc to a close. The climatic scene was so shattering, the resolution was almost an afterthought. This is by no means the end of the series, as far as I know – there’s still a lot of questions unanswered so it had better not be.

It was mostly excellent but my complaints are twofold: The first – we don’t find out what happened to Strawberry Shortcake’s brother. I hate unresolved stuff like that. Second: I have to preface this with the disclaimer that I’m not a prude. Sex scenes don’t bother me in the slightest, but Jones went a little too far for my comfort in one of the scenes here. It wasn’t that it was deviant in any way, but after 11 books I feel like I’ve come to know Charlie and Reyes; like an invisible, unacknowledged member of the gang. And yeah, I’d rather not know as much about Charlie and Reyes as I got from that scene. At one point it stopped being sexy and started being really awkward. On the flip side, she wrote a hell of a homage to When Harry Met Sally in another scene.

Awkward sex aside, I’m with Jones and Charlie until the wheels fall off. I’d say until hell froze over but apparently, that’s a thing.

Page count: 310
$$: 3.00

The Matchmakers of Minnow Bay

The Matchmakers of Minnow Bay
by Kelly Harms
Rating: ★★★★
isbn: 9781250070616
Publication Date: August 9, 2016
Pages: 280
Genre: Romance
Publisher: St. Martin's Press

Lily Stewart has reached a crossroads in her life. Her painting career hasn't taken off, her best friend has changed beyond recognition, her relationship is a constant disappointment, and now she can't keep up with the rising cost of living in the city. With no one to turn to, Lily is forced to move from her beloved apartment, but while packing she comes across a piece of mail that had slipped to the back of her junk drawer: a letter detailing further action needed to finalize the annulment of a quickie Vegas wedding. From ten years ago!

Lily decides it's time to gather up the pieces of her life, and the first item on her list of things to fix is that annulment... but you can't just send a text ten years later reading, "Hey BTW we are still married." This is something that must be addressed in person, so Lily decides to track down her husband - the charming, enigmatic man she connected with all those years ago.

Ben Hutchinson left a high-profile dot-com lifestyle behind to return home to his family and the small lake town he loves, Minnow Bay. He's been living off the grid with the express purpose of making it hard to be found—so the last thing he expects is a wife he didn't know he had making her presence known.

I don’t normally draw parallels, but think Mary Kay Andrews, or Jennifer Crusie minus the purposeful hilarity, and you have a good idea of what The Matchmakers of Minnow Bay is going to deliver.

Lily is one of those artists who has the potential to make it big, but she’s a doormat; a cheerful, I-just-want-everybody-to-be-happy, doormat. Normally I’d have tossed this book aside because I don’t like reading about doormats, but Lily never wallowed, so that during the clueless stage of the story the irritating bits washed over me.

While packing to move out of her apartment, Lily stumbles across a 10 year old notice from Nevada telling her the annulment she applied for is incomplete. She’s been married to a guy she can’t even remember for a decade, and of course she’s feeling all her shortcomings, so determines to go to Minnow Bay to apologise in person and fix things. This is when she has her “I’m a doormat” epiphany, and while her turnaround is a work in progress, her wry humor about herself and the way she owns up to her shortcomings made it easy for me to relate to her and like her more than I normally would.

Added to her likeable qualities are the characters of Minnow Bay, all of whom are poster-small-town-perfect and quite a lot of them the kind I wish I had for neighbours. Colleen and Jenny’s antics trying to keep Lily in Minnow Bay are funny and Simone is acerbic but hilarious.

I thought the writing really readable and I easily finished it yesterday afternoon and evening; it’s not a long book and the engaging narrative sucked me in. I’m not sure I’d say it’s worth the sticker price, but it’s definitely worth the used bookshop price (in hardcover) and I thought it was a fun read, perfect for the mood I was in.

Total pages: 280
$$: $3.00

Etched in Bone (The Others, #5)

Etched in Bone
by Anne Bishop
Rating: ★★★★
isbn: 9780451474490
Series: The Others #5
Publication Date: March 7, 2017
Pages: 397
Genre: Fantasy, Urban Fantasy
Publisher: ROC Hardcover

Every book in this series have been marathon reads for me, and Etched in Bone was no exception. I picked it up yesterday morning and pretty much did absolutely nothing else until I read the last page about midnight last night (although I did stop, in the name of marital harmony, to shovel some dinner down; luckily, there was a footy game on last night, so the shovelling went largely unnoticed).

I have loved every moment of this series; been sucked into this world so thoroughly that interruptions leave me hazy about reality and I have been as attached to these characters as much as, or more, than any others. Possibly more than real people I know.

But… this one; this final book concerning Meg and Simon, was not as great as the first 4. Because this book deviated from the rules the author created for The Others. In any of the other books, Jimmy would have been a stain on the sidewalk before chapter 3. I get what she was trying to do here, I get what she wanted to explore, but it was not done as gracefully, and the effect felt forced; its execution more heavy handed. In short, Jimmy got on my nerves; I stopped being horrified and started getting irritated and mumbling ‘why isn’t this man dead yet???’.

Still, I’d recommend this to anyone who likes urban fantasy and/or parables. Because this whole series is one giant parable about the human race: our capacity for grace, our capacity for vice, and our wholesale destruction of everything in our path as long as we remain unchecked. As horrifying as The Others are, I can’t look around at what’s going on today and not sort of wish our Earth had Naimid’s teeth and claws to protect her.

I’m attached so thoroughly to these characters in the Courtyard, I’m not sure I’ll read the next book; which is apparently in the same universe but with a different setting and characters. I want more Tess! But I’ll definitely be re-reading these.

Silence Fallen (Mercy Thompson, #10)

Silence Fallen
by Patricia Briggs
Rating: ★★★★★
isbn: 9780425281277
Series: Mercy Thompson #10
Publication Date: March 4, 2017
Pages: 371
Genre: Urban Fantasy
Publisher: Ace

Attacked and abducted in her home territory, Mercy finds herself in the clutches of the most powerful vampire in the world, taken as a weapon to use against Alpha werewolf Adam and the ruler of the Tri-Cities vampires. In coyote form, Mercy escapes–only to find herself without money, without clothing, and alone in a foreign country.

Unable to contact Adam through their mate bond, Mercy has allies to find and enemies to fight, and she needs to figure out which is which. Ancient powers stir, and Mercy must be her agile best to avoid causing a supernatural war.

2021 Update: Still my favorite book, with very few flaws. I’ll add that I loved the inclusion of Kabbalistic myth, although her twist on it was … twisty. But what I appreciated most was that this was a book about a woman who saves herself. She still needs Adam to come to her aid, but the aid she needs from him is more administrative (passport, money, etc) than damsel needing rescue. Thoroughly satisfying no matter how many times I’ve read it.

Original review: Mercy is kidnapped by vampires and is taken to Europe, where she escapes, but has no clothes, no money and no passport and must stay on the run until Adam can find her and neutralise the threat to herself and her pack.

I’ll admit I was less enthusiastic about this one than I normally am about the books in this series, because my first thoughts ran along the lines of ‘oh, yay. Woman in peril who must fight to survive and over come obstacles over and over again.’

I could not have been more wrong. Yes, there are perils and obstacles, but they are more than balanced out by moments of control and action and intelligence. This book was also far more about political negotiations and intelligence analysis, if you’ll excuse the out-of-place term here, and I loved that. This felt like a far more intelligent novel that the previous books.

And for the first time in I can’t even remember how long, I was totally blown away by the twist. Never. saw. that. coming. I actually exclaimed ‘holy sh*t!’ out loud. Well played, Briggs. Absolutely brilliant.

There wasn’t anything I didn’t thoroughly enjoy in this book; I had no complaints at all.

The Big Over Easy (Nursery Crimes, #1)

The Big Over Easy
by Jasper Fforde
Rating: ★★★★½
Series: Nursery Crimes #1
Publication Date: January 1, 2005
Pages: 398
Genre: Fantasy, Fiction, Mystery
Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton

This book… I have so many random thoughts about this book. In no particular order:

1. Easily the most highly quotable book I’ve ever read. Including books of quotes.
One of my favourites:
Mr. Pewter led them through to a library filled with thousands of antiquarian books.

‘Impressive, eh?’

‘Very,’ said Jack. ‘How did you amass all these?’

‘Well,’ said Pewter, ‘you know the person who always borrows books and never gives them back?’

‘Yes–?’

‘I’m that person.’

Don’t know why, but that cracked me up.

2. I’m pretty sure Fforde had no intention of writing a satire (based on what I’ve found on the interwebs) about the sensationalism of the free press, but this is definitely a case of current events shaping a reader’s interpretation of the text. I had a really hard time reading this and not drawing parallels.

3. I’m equally sure he definitely meant to write a satirised murder mystery and this was easily the closest I’ve ever read to my blog’s namesake movie, Murder By Death, which in my totally biased opinion is the acme of mystery satire. Which brings me to another quote:

Dog Walker’s Face Body-Finding Ban
Anyone who finds a corpse while walking their dog may be fined if proposed legislation is made law, it was disclosed yesterday. The new measures, part of the Criminal Narrative Improvement Bill, have been drafted to avoid investigations looking clichéd…

Now this is legislation I can get behind.

4. I wish I’d picked this book up directly after reading The Well of Lost Plots. It makes no difference to someone new to Fforde’s books, but I think those that have read TN would feel a stronger connection to the characters here when The Well… was still fresh in the memory.

5. Prometheus has an incredible monologue on pages 271-273. A popular fiction novel that can weave serious philosophy into its narrative always earns huge bonus points with me.

6. Oh, yeah – good mystery plot too!

Off to order the second one…

A Perilous Undertaking (Veronica Speedwell, #2)

A Perilous Undertaking
by Deanna Raybourn
Rating: ★★★★
isbn: 9780451476159
Series: Veronica Speedwell Mystery #2
Publication Date: October 1, 2017
Pages: 338
Genre: Fiction, Historical, Mystery
Publisher: Berkley

I’ve been looking forward to this second book for months and while it wasn’t quite as good as the first book, it definitely wasn’t disappointing.

In the first book, startling revelations about Veronica were a big part of the plot, and Stoker’s past was shared in teasing bits here and there. I suppose, given those revelations, the author couldn’t resist using them to prop up the plot in this book, but I’ll admit I found the device (especially the you must investigate this!) trite. At a guess, the family angst bit was perhaps meant to show Veronica’s vulnerability and humanity – we all just want to be accepted and loved, dammit! But it just didn’t work for me. I found the scene with the butterfly in the garden to be far more effective and moving, without being a cliché. I did enjoy learning more about Stoker’s family though.

A BookLikes friend of mine wrote, in her review, that the themes throughout this book seemed chosen as much for their shock value as for their ability to showcase Veronica’s conscious independence. She’s not wrong. I’m not sure if the author wanted to shock, or just combat the general assumption that Victorian England was the apex of prudishness, purity and virginal thinking, but either way, this book is not for anyone who prefers a chaste story. There’s no overt sex, but boy howdy, is it talked about. A lot.

The murder reveal didn’t surprise me; the more the author asserts a character’s innocence, the more I suspect them, but I hardly cared. The banter between Stoker and Veronica–actually the banter between anyone and Veronica–were what I enjoyed the most about this book. If you want a strong, intelligent, pragmatic, rational female heroine you cannot do much better than Miss Speedwell. Raybourn knows how to write.

My favourite highlights: Patricia the Galapagos tortoise, and that final scene between Stoker and Veronica. That final scene might, in fact, make my top 5 favourites of all time.

The Mangle Street Murders

The Mangle Street Murders
by M.R.C. Kasasian
Rating: ★★★★
Publication Date: November 1, 2013
Pages: 336
Publisher: Head of Zeus

After her father dies, March Middleton has to move to London to live with her guardian, Sidney Grice, the country s most famous private detective. It is 1882 and London is at its murkiest yet most vibrant, wealthiest yet most poverty-stricken. No sooner does March arrive than a case presents itself: a young woman has been brutally murdered, and her husband is the only suspect. The victim s mother is convinced of her son-in-law s innocence, and March is so touched by her pleas she offers to cover Sidney s fee herself. The investigations lead the pair to the darkest alleys of the East End: every twist leads Sidney Grice to think his client is guilty; but March is convinced that he is innocent. Around them London reeks with the stench of poverty and gossip, the case threatens to boil over into civil unrest and Sidney Grice finds his reputation is not the only thing in mortal danger.

I bought this at a library sale because the cover caught my eye; I had no expectations, as I’d never heard of it before but it had a vaguely Holmesian feel to it.

I wasn’t wrong; there are both subtle and blatant nods to Doyle and Holmes throughout the story, but… I don’t know how to say this. The Mangle Street Murders reads like it was written by someone well-versed in the Holmes cannon but who resented the varnish put on the Victorian age and so set out to reimagine a Holmes worthy murder mystery in all its gory, gritty detail.

If that’s indeed what Kasasian set out to do, then boy howdy did he/she succeed. Sydney Grice, the famous personal detective is what Holmes might look like if he were actually a sociopath. Self admittedly greedy, vain, selfish and without a shred of courtesy or decency he’s almost a comic figure, until the reader is forced to witness his delight in public executions and other examples of his inhumanity. The author tries half-heartedly to hint at some underlying decency, but frankly fails; they are too few and too brief to have any impact. Add to that the grisly, graphic details in just about every scene of the book and it’s a wonder I kept reading past the first mortuary scene. There were times I honestly felt like the author was trying to punish the reader, beating them over the head with the reality of the 1880’s.

But I did keep reading; I really liked the MC, March Middleton. From the introduction it’s clear she’s Grice’s historian, in much the same way Watson was for Holmes, only she is (sorry Watson, I love you) much smarter than Watson and a far more invested participant. Of course she has a hidden pain – a tragedy in her past – that is shared piecemeal in the form of old journal entries. These are done perfectly: just often enough that they tug at your soul and keep you on the edge of your seat dreading what must be the inevitable. The inevitable, however, must be part of a multi book story arc because we don’t get to it here.

The plotting was competent. Of course Grice is secretive so neither Marsh nor the reader are every privy to crucial details until very nearly the end when he waves his superiority around in a nauseating way, but Marsh gets hers back, making for a more even read. The ultimate criminal was a person I pegged very early in the book, but there were so many layers and complexities that really all I’d done was identify the tip of the iceberg.

All said, the writing is excellent, the story and characters were compelling and I definitely won’t read the second one. I’m not at all ashamed to admit that I don’t want this level of factual realism in my books. I enjoyed the mystery but it was overshadowed by the author’s need for verisimilitude; if you don’t mind that level of grittiness, and you enjoy a good historical mystery, then this one is worth exploring. Otherwise stick with Holmes and Watson.

Travels with Epicurus

A Journey To A Greek Island In Search Of A Fulfilled Life By Daniel Klein

Published: Oct 28, 2014 by Penguin Books
ISBN: 9780143126621
Format: Paperback / softback | Trade paperback (US)

I bought this book because recent reading has me suspecting that Epicurus has been rather maligned over the centuries and I wanted to learn more about what his philosophical school was really about. But I didn’t want to find out via a dry, academic tome and I wanted to avoid anything that would hurt my brain (see: Heidegger’s question, “Why are there things that are rather than nothing?”); I enjoyed Klein’s Plato and Platypus Walk Into a Bar so this seemed a perfect fit.

Except that I didn’t read the summary close enough. This is a book about Klein’s reflections on old age and how he can live the most meaningful, authentic, old age he can. If I use my mom as a benchmark (and I will) then I’m still just slightly on the south side of middle-age, so I’m decidedly not this book’s demographic. Also, there’s very little about Epicurus here; he and his school of thought are mentioned in passing throughout, but Aristotle, Plato, Kierkegaard, Sartre and Heidegger get more specific play than poor Epicurus.

Still, I got a lot out of this book, even when I completely disagreed with him (and most modern philosophers, come to that). He discusses the paradox inherent in end of life choices, which even at my spring-chicken age I’m deeply interested in. He doesn’t offer any answers and ultimately questions whether there are any answers to be had, and that really, for me, is the heart of philosophy.

A worthy read, but one that will be far more relevant (God willing) in a few more decades. Until then I’m still on the lookout for an engaging narrative about poor, misunderstood Epicurus.

Find Travels with Epicurus at:
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Death Comes to the Fair

Death Comes to the Fair
by Catherine Lloyd
Rating: ★★★★
Series: Kurland St. Mary Mystery #4
Publication Date: November 29, 2016
Pages: 336
Publisher: Kensington

It’s harvest time in the village of Kurland St. Mary as Lucy and Robert prepare to take their vows—but a murderer has taken an unseasonable vow of vengeance…

As Miss Lucy Harrington, daughter of the village rector, and Major Sir Robert Kurland plan their nuptials, the major is beginning to wonder if he’ll ever hear wedding bells. He’s seen complex military campaigns that involved less strategy, and he’s finding Lucy’s meddling family maddening.

When the body of Ezekiel Thurrock, the church verger, is discovered crushed by a stone gargoyle that has fallen from the bell tower, the tragic death strikes a somber note and the wedding is delayed. But the evidence suggests this was no accident, and Lucy wonders if bad blood at the village fair had anything to do with the man’s mysterious demise, since there was much bitterness over Ezekiel’s prizewinning vegetables.

As Lucy and Robert uncover long-standing village feuds, the town’s dark secrets begin to take their toll and the couple soon finds they too are in grave danger…

Not quite the slump breaker I was hoping for, but not a bad little mystery either. The novelty the main characters had in the first novel has worn off (reasonably enough) and the author is left with the tried and true: killing off the villagers. From the sounds of this village, they may deserve it.

This book stumbled for me because a great draw is the chemistry and banter between the two MCs and they were kept apart quite a bit and their adventures when they were together lacked that certain something I enjoyed before. A well known, loathsome villager gets what’s coming by the end – which is great! – but there’s this giant hole at the end where we miss out on the reaction of at least one significant character whose life is directly affected by the outcome of events. That felt weird to me; the author couldn’t spare a few more pages to flesh that out?

But there was still a lot I liked about this cozy; I enjoyed it more than most of what I’ve been reading lately. It held my attention and the setting felt like an old friend. Given my general grumpiness lately, I’ll take that and be thankful for it.

An Unhappy Medium

An Unhappy Medium
by Dawn Eastman
Rating: ★★★★
isbn: 9780425282809
Series: A Family Fortune Mystery #4
Publication Date: April 5, 2016
Pages: 336
Genre: Mystery
Publisher: Berkley

Psychic Clyde Fortune and her zany family are back in the fourth in the national bestselling series from the author of A Fright to the Death.

Former cop and novice psychic Clyde Fortune finds herself in a race for justice when a Zombie Fun Run turns deadly…

All of Crystal Haven, Michigan, is psyching up to participate in a Zombie Fun Run organized by Clyde’s nephew Seth, but Clyde is fretful about the undead festivities. For one thing, her sister, Grace, has unexpectedly returned to town after fifteen years. For another, Clyde has the nagging feeling that something is about to go wrong…

When one of the zombie runners is found murdered and then Grace disappears, Clyde realizes her grim premonition is dead-on. Now, she and her police detective boyfriend Mac must find a ghoulish murderer before someone points the finger at Grace. And when a tangled web of family secrets and old grudges combines with a mysterious case of stolen diamonds, even someone as quick-witted as Clyde might not be able to outrun a killer…

If a book can hold your attention when you’re in a slump, it can’t be half bad right?

I enjoy this series as it’s one of the few rational cozy series out there; most of the characters are likeable, the small town setting is vivid and the plotting is usually pretty good. Clyde is a strong, normally intelligent main character trying to come to grips with a psychic gift she’s ignored most of her life and her family is just crazy enough to be realistic. Mac is a great romantic lead who doesn’t define himself by his ability to alpha male everyone around him.

This book’s plotting, though, wasn’t quite as strong as the others. I’m left with the impression that the mystery itself was just an excuse to further Clyde’s family’s story arc along. To string the mystery out, the author made Clyde dim: her visions were fairly easy for the reader to interpret as events unfolded, but Clyde remained clueless and the final denouement revealed a culprit that was never a suspect either for anyone in the book or the reader as there simply wasn’t any forward progression after the initial murder scene.

I was going to ding the rating for this, but my rating reflects my enjoyment and I did enjoy this book; the character sub-story was interesting enough that I didn’t miss what was missing from the mystery itself.