The Book Charmer

The Book Charmer
by Karen Hawkins
Rating: ★★★★
isbn: 1982105542
Publication Date: July 30, 2019
Pages: 344
Publisher: Gallery Books

I’m still fighting a book slump, and I need fluff. Industrial grade fluff. This fit the bill pretty perfectly.

Small town America, seventh daughter of the town’s founding family, all of whom have ‘gifts’, is the town librarian and the books talk to her. And nobody tries to medicate her, because it’s magical realism. A newcomer with a boulder on her shoulder comes to town and the books tell Sarah that miss-cranky pants is going to save the town.

I’m being a little snarky, which isn’t fair to the book. Even though the story is entirely predictable, it’s well written. Once I started it I was sucked into the magical little town of Dove Pond, and the characters all felt more real and well-adjusted than most of reality at the moment, so while it wasn’t high literature, it was an absolutely perfect antidote to current events.

An Inquiry Into Love and Death

An Inquiry into Love and Death
by Simone St. James
Rating: ★★★★★
isbn: 9780451239259
Publication Date: March 5, 2013
Pages: 355
Genre: Fantasy, Fiction, Historical
Publisher: NAL / New American Library

Boy howdy can St. James write a ghost story! I love this book; I woke up at 6.30 this morning and did nothing until I finished it and then I re-read a few passages just to make it last longer.

In 1920’s England, Oxford student Jillian Leigh’s uncle Toby, a renowned ghost hunter, is killed in a fall off a cliff, and she must drive to the seaside village of Rothewell to pack up his belongings.

Almost immediately, unsettling incidents—a book left in a cold stove, a gate swinging open on its own—escalate into terrifying events that convince Jillian an angry spirit is trying to enter the house. Is it Walking John, the two-hundred-year-old ghost who haunts Blood Moon Bay? Was Toby’s death an accident?

The arrival of handsome Scotland Yard inspector Drew Merriken leaves Jillian with more questions than answers. Even as she suspects someone will do anything to hide the truth, she begins to discover spine-chilling secrets that lie deep within Rothewell…

If you’re a horror or psychological horror lover, pass this review right on by; this book is a cream puff in comparison to your regular fare, but for the rest of us, this is truly an old-school, spooky ghost story with a mystery and a romance (oh the romance…). There’s nothing gothic about the story, but I keep thinking of the old gothics anyway, for lack of any better comparison.

I probably should have gone 4.5 stars because Jillian goes through an improbable – neigh, impossible – number of physical calamities to still be standing upright. Or breathing, really. But the story was just so good; I was sucked in so thoroughly that I was willing to overlook her superhuman regenerative powers. Inspector Merriken was incentive enough to spur on a rapid recovery.

Ok, anything else I say beyond this point would just be repetitive gushing. I loved this book; it gave me exactly the experience I hope for every time I start a new story and I’ll be looking for more of this author’s work.

The Readers of Broken Wheel Recommend

The Readers of Broken Wheel Recommend
by Alice Menzies (translator), Katarina Bivald
Rating: ★★★★
isbn: 9780701189068
Publication Date: June 18, 2015
Pages: 376
Genre: Fiction
Publisher: Chatto & Windus

Sara is 28 and has never been outside Sweden - except in the (many) books she reads. When her elderly penfriend Amy invites her to come and visit her in Broken Wheel, Iowa, Sara decides it's time. But when she arrives, there's a twist waiting for her - Amy has died. Finding herself utterly alone in a dead woman's house in the middle of nowhere was not the holiday Sara had in mind.

But Sara discovers she is not exactly alone. For here in this town so broken it's almost beyond repair are all the people she's come to know through Amy's letters: poor George, fierce Grace, buttoned-up Caroline and Amy's guarded nephew Tom.

Sara quickly realises that Broken Wheel is in desperate need of some adventure, a dose of self-help and perhaps a little romance, too. In short, this is a town in need of a bookshop.

I have a lot of thoughts about this book, all swirling around in my head avoiding cohesiveness.

This is not a gripping or exciting book and it isn’t a faced-paced one either. This is a slow moving book and I suspect it’s appeal is going to be limited to those readers who have more than a little bit of the characters inside themselves.

I’m one of those readers; as much as my RL friends would say I’m outspoken and intolerant of crap, a lot of me shares a lot with the Broken Wheel characters, or I have at some point in my life. So while I can’t say this book emotionally moved me or cause me to think Profound Thoughts, I did connect with it and enjoy the story.

3 things that nagged at me:

As lovely as the idea of sharing/selling Amy’s books might be, all I could think about was ‘who inherited those books, and are they ok with you liquidating the estate?!?’ I’m assuming it’s Tom, since no other relatives are ever mentioned, but never once is it brought up. What’s the Swedish word for probate?
They misspelled Jane Austen’s Sanditon (Sandition).
I forgot the third thing, dammit. Obviously something huge.

On a side note, my copy is a UK edition, so the translation from the original Swedish used UK words and idioms, which I thought was kind of funny for a story set in the middle of corn-field Iowa.

All in all, a book I enjoyed.

The Girl Who Chased the Moon

The Girl Who Chased the Moon
by Sarah Addison Allen
Rating: ★★★★½
isbn: 9781444706628
Publication Date: January 1, 2010
Pages: 273
Genre: Magical Realism
Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton

Emily Benedict came to Mullaby, North Carolina, hoping to solve at least some of the riddles surrounding her mother's life. But the moment Emily enters the house where her mother grew up and meets the grandfather she never knew, she realises that mysteries aren't solved in Mullaby, they're a way of life. Here are rooms where the wallpaper changes to suit your mood. Unexplained lights skip across the yard at midnight. And a neighbour, Julia Winterson, bakes hope in the form of cakes, offering them to satisfy the town's sweet tooth - but also in the hope of rekindling a love she fears might be lost forever. Can a hummingbird cake really bring back a lost love? Is there really a ghost dancing in Emily's backyard? The answers are never what you expect. But in this town of lovable misfits, the unexpected fits right in.

I bought this one on the strength of how much I enjoyed Garden Spells and I think I ended up liking this one even more.

The story centers primarily on two women: Emily, a teen-ager (who doesn’t act like one) who moves to Mullaby North Carolina to live with her grandfather after the death of her mother. She’s determined to learn about her mother’s history and finds a lot more than she bargained for. Julia Winterson has a plan; one that involves not being in Mullaby, but she has 6 more months of saving, scrimping, and avoiding Sawyer and her teen-age past before she can enact her plan.

I love the towns Sarah Addison Allen creates in her books; they’re small, magical, quirky and nobody thinks they’re odd. Living in Mullaby sounds like fun. In Garden Spells, I had a hard time liking or sympathising with the characters, but there wasn’t a character in this book I didn’t immediately like (at least none of the living ones).

The plot might not have been the most climatic one I’ve read, but I just lost myself in it and stayed up last night long after the point of reading comprehension because I just didn’t want it to end. It was a magical surprise.

Persuasion

Persuasion
by Jane Austen
Rating: ★★★★
isbn: 9781435127432
Publication Date: January 1, 2012
Pages: 228
Genre: Fiction, Literature
Publisher: Barnes and Noble

Well, this is where I wish I paid more attention in my English Lit. classes. Then I could use this review to wax lyrical (or at least literate) about the exposition, the rising action, the climax and the ultimate resolution of Anne Elliot’s story in Persuasion. Unfortunately, I didn’t pay attention in class (or attend class very often) so here I am floundering for a way to adequately discuss one of Jane Austen’s finest. (Does this make me a cautionary tale?)

I’m going to start by saying I still like Pride & Prejudice better. I’ve heard many people describe Persuasion as Austen’s most mature work – which makes sense because it was also her last – and I can definitely see the truth in that. But Persuasion lacks the humour, the lightness, of her earlier works, although it still retains all of the bite.

If Miss Austen wrote from life she lacked any positive parental role models. In every book of hers I’ve read, at least one parent was vapid, shallow, vain, neurotic, dyspeptic, a hypochondriac or a combination of any of the aforementioned. I’d argue it’s the single uniting factor in all her work (although I’ve yet to read her juvenilia or Sanditon). Anne Elliot gets the rawest deal of all of JA’s MC’s – her family has no affection for her at all. She is the Cinderella in their lives: useful only for propping them up when they’re down, being the person applied to for attentiveness, while never receiving any attention or affection in return.

Thank goodness for Lady Russell; only Lady Russell persuaded Anne to cut off her engagement to the man she loved 8 1/2 years ago because his prospects were not guaranteed. Now that man is back and he’s rich. He might also be a tiny bit bitter about having his heart broken all those years ago.

I enjoyed the story; I definitely liked it more than Emma (sorry mom) and probably more than Northanger Abbey. Maybe. It’s a more staid, more serious work than the others. What little frivolity there is ends in disaster and is used to illustrate a defect in character. As I prefer characters who ‘dearly love to laugh’, Elizabeth Bennett holds pride of place on my favorite Austen list – but Persuasion and Anne Elliot aren’t far behind.

(NB: While the edition information is correct for this review, the cover is not. And I hate not having the correct cover on my reviews.)