Demon's Fire, by Emma Holly

TITLE: Demon's Fire
AUTHOR: Emma Holly

COPYRIGHT: 2008
PAGES: 336
PUBLISHER: Berkley

SETTING: Alternate reality
TYPE: Erotic romance
SERIES: Part of the Tales of the Demon World series

The thrilling new erotic paranormal romance from the USA Today bestselling author

Fleeing the routine life her family wanted for her, Beth joins an archaeological dig spearheaded by her cousin Charles. For such an adventurer, the desert city of Bhamjran is perfect for making unusual discoveries-especially when it comes to forbidden appetites. Like his own unnatural desire for a Yama demon. And as he and Beth are about to learn, some Yama find humans equally irresistible...

This was this month's random pick from my TBR, and it was a random pick that made me happy when I saw what book it was. I like Emma Holly and most of her books have really worked for me, so I'm not too sure why it's been almost 10 years since I've read one.

This is part of Holly's series about the Yama. The earlier books were set in Ohram, which is basically an alternate version of Victorian England, where a race of very advanced beings who live underground have been discovered a few decades previously. The Yama (called "demons" by humans, due to markings on their tongues that make them look like they're forked) have all sorts of technology, which gives this world a quite steampunk feel. Queen Victoria quickly realised the potential benefits of access to their tech and allowed them to settle in her empire, but people are still really wary of them. Part of this is because of their physical appearance, but part of it is because of their penchant for feeding off humans' energy, an act that, although harmful to the human if uncontrolled, can be extremely pleasurable and sensual for both sides.

This particular book is set in what seems to be an alternate version of India, a country recently conquered by the Ohramese. This alternate India is matriarchal and people (particularly women) are a lot freer about their sexuality than in Ohram.

And in keeping with that attitude, what we have here is a ménage book. On one angle of the triangle we've got Prince Pahndir, who was a character in the previous book in the series, Prince of Ice (which I must confess I barely remember). Pahndir is a prince of the Yama, who lost his beloved soulmate when she killed himself. Since Yama get only one chance at a soulmate (and for royalty it's even worse, since they can't really have proper orgasms without this person), Pahndir fell to pieces at her death, which felt to him as a huge betrayal. His family, horrified at his lack of control, faked his death and sent him away, selling him to a brothel. He lived there for years, being used to train the prostitutes (this was where we met him in the previous book, where he was the heroine's friend). At the start of this book we see his rescue, and we see him again when he's running his own brothel (where everyone is wonderfully treated, of course).

Then we've got Charles, a young Ohramese working for an expedition that's excavating an ancient tomb close to the city. Charles's background has some things in common with Pahndir. He's not royal; in fact, he's far from it: his mother was a street prostitute. When she died he ended up in a brothel himself, but he carried with him her fear of the Yama, who had just started to get settled in Ohram, and although he was terribly intrigued and tempted by the concept of their feeding off his energy, he never allowed that particular act. He is still obsessed with this by the start of this book, and when he comes in contact with Pahndir, who makes it clear his kink can be easily accomodated, the temptation becomes too strong for him.

And then there's Beth. Beth is a sheltered young Ohramese woman working in the same expedition as Charles. She's the sister of the heroine of the first book in this series, and she doesn't have any horrible things in her past. She's just adventurous and fancies Charles madly. Turns out she also becomes fascinated by Pahndir.

For the first two thirds of the book, I mostly really liked this. I loved the main relationship. Pahndir is a vulnerable, lonely character, having almost accepted that there's no one out there for him. Charles is tortured by what he sees as his kinks and has to be dragged almost kicking and screaming into his relationship with both Pahndir and Beth. Beth... well, Beth is just horny. She might be a virgin, but she has absolutely no problem accepting her somewhat unorthodox desires and just going for it with Charles, with Pahndir, with both at the same time. She's up for pretty much anything, and I thought that was great.

But there was so much here that was problematic! There were some things in the first two thirds, but then things started getting really gross and horrible, and I ended up giving up about 75% in.

At the start of the book we've got a scene where Charles goes into Beth's room while she's sleeping and they do all sorts of sexual things while she sleeps. Definitely non-consensual, but fine, I was ok to go with this in this fantastical setting.

There's also a subplot about the ancient queen whose tomb Beth and Charles' expedition is excavating. The idea is that this queen, who was extremely powerful, was highly sexed, and by being in the tomb Beth has somehow been influenced by her and sort of absorbed her insatiable appetites and her powers. She has vivid dreams about the queen's life, and we get treated to the detail of one of them, in a long dream sequence. That dreams was clearly intended to be super hot, but it wasn't to me.  The queen has a harem of men, slaves sent in as tributes by all the many tribes she's conquered, and she chooses 5 each night. They're all desperate to serve her in that way. I was icked out by this. I know it's meant to be complete fantasy and I'm being humourless and earnest here, but the concept of having sex with slaves and this being portrayed as erotic is hugely problematic to me. I didn't really find that scene erotic in the least. Actually, I probably wouldn't have even if the men involved had not been slaves... this scene involved the queen being fucked by dozens of her slaves in one night.. all I could think was "gross" and "ouch!".

But since I could kind of ignore this and it didn't really affect the real protagonists' relationship, I kept going and mostly enjoying the book. What made me delete this angrily from my kindle was what happened when the suspense subplot got going. Basically, his family have found out that Pahndir has escaped the brothel, and fear he might try to come back. They have him kidnapped by a desert tribe of female assassins. And this casually leads to horrific sexual assault that is portrayed in a way that I thought was exploitative and titillating. There's loads of this, and even the rescue scene by Beth and Charles is horrendous (they decide that since they are outnumbered they need to pretend to be people sent by the villain to properly break their captive). I just could not stomach this crap, so gave up.

No. Just, no.

MY GRADE: A DNF.

Eleanor and Park, by Rainbow Rowell

TITLE: Eleanor and Park
AUTHOR: Rainbow Rowell

COPYRIGHT: 2012
PAGES: 336
PUBLISHER: St. Martin's

SETTING: 1980s US
TYPE: YA
SERIES: None

Eleanor is the new girl in town, and she's never felt more alone. All mismatched clothes, mad red hair and chaotic home life, she couldn't stick out more if she tried.

Then she takes the seat on the bus next to Park. Quiet, careful and - in Eleanor's eyes - impossibly cool, Park's worked out that flying under the radar is the best way to get by.

Slowly, steadily, through late-night conversations and an ever-growing stack of mix tapes, Eleanor and Park fall in love. They fall in love the way you do the first time, when you're 16, and you have nothing and everything to lose.

Set over the course of one school year in 1986, Eleanor & Park is funny, sad, shocking and true - an exquisite nostalgia trip for anyone who has never forgotten their first love.

I read this for my book club, although having loved Rowell's Attachments, I almost certainly would have picked it up at some point anyway.

This is the story of two 16-year-old misfits. Eleanor is resigned to the prospect of being the weird girl at her new school. With her horrible charity shop clothes, her crazy red hair and too-large body, she fully expects no one to slide over to let her sit on the school bus. Awful as that sort of thing is, it pales in comparison to her home life. Eleanor lives with her cowed mother, her siblings, and an abusive, alcoholic step-father. She's just come back to live with them after a year of living on family and acquaintances' sofas, after her step-father kicked her out.

She's shocked when Park silently moves over and wordlessly offers her the seat next to him. Park is not quite as much of a misfit as Eleanor, but he's definitely not mainstream. He's half-Korean in a neighbourhood where mixed-race families really aren't a thing, and he's into stuff like alternative music and comic books and wearing make-up. His parents love him (and each other), but they (and particularly his white father) don't get him at all.

Neither Park nor Eleanor mean to even talk to each other. They have enough trouble already. But they do, and they discover they have things in common. Slowly, they discover they like the same things and each other, and fall in love. But things aren't easy.

Eleanor and Park are fantastic characters. Reading about their lives is like a punch in the guts. Eleanor's life, in particular, was brilliantly done. We're not told everything at the beginning, we just know there is something obviously wrong in that house, and at the beginning we only get hints of the creepiness, like Richie not allowing shower curtains. As the book progresses, we see more and more details. How he's controlling. The way he turns the other kids into his allies. Eleanor has to be always on edge, always walking on eggshells, trying not to be noticed, not to set him off. Even thinking about living that way stresses me out, imagine actually having to go through it. Rowell builds the dread little by little by little, and it's very effective.

Eleanor's life is also a very affecting portrayal of poverty. There's one scene where she goes to her manchild dad's house to babysit and she thinks how he clearly has money, because there are all these luxuries lying around, and when she explains what she means, it's truly heartbreaking. She's talking about things like quilted loo roll.

Park's home-life, in contrast, seems like paradise to her. They're not rich, but there's enough to live well and for little luxuries (like a walkman). When she's there, she's liked and appreciated and treated with respect, even fondness. It's not perfection for Park, though. He knows he's not the son his father would like, a kid into sports and hunting and cars. His dad doesn't know what to do with a son like Park, and though he doesn't do it on purpose, this comes through loud and clear, and Park hurts.

I was completely into these two and their lives, fully absorbed and engaged. What I wasn't absorbed and engaged in, however, was the romance. And since this is a huge part of the story, it made the book as a whole not work that well for me. My problem was that it felt corny and, honestly, a bit cringey. YA romance is almost never my thing, and this one wasn't, either. I actually would have much preferred it if they'd simply been friends.

Also, there is a heavy dose of nostalgia here. The book is set in 1986 in Omaha, Nebraska, and the music and pop culture of the time are huge elements. I feel no nostalgia or fondness for any of that (it's not that I dislike it, it's just not something that's part of my culture), so all that was simply meh for me.

Still, I liked Eleanor and Park enough individually that it mostly compensates for the fact that I didn't care for them together.

MY GRADE: A B.

Graceling, by Kristin Cashore

TITLE: Graceling
AUTHOR: Kristin Cashore

COPYRIGHT: 2008
PAGES: 471
PUBLISHER: Harcourt

SETTING: Fantasy world
TYPE: Fantasy
SERIES: Graceling Realms #1, follows Fire chronologically.

In a world where people born with an extreme skill - called a Grace - are feared and exploited, Katsa carries the burden of the skill even she despises: the Grace of killing. She lives under the command of her uncle Randa, King of the Middluns, and is expected to execute his dirty work, punishing and torturing anyone who displeases him.

When she first meets Prince Po, who is Graced with combat skills, Katsa has no hint of how her life is about to change.

She never expects to become Po's friend.

She never expects to learn a new truth about her own Grace - or about a terrible secret that lies hidden far away...a secret that could destroy all seven kingdoms with words alone.

This is the first book in Cashore's Graceling Realm series. Well, it's the first one that came out, but chronologically, Fire takes place first, which is why I started with that one.

This takes place, not in the same place, but in the same world as Fire, some 35 years later. The Middluns is a place where a small number of people are born with what's called a Grace, an affinity and inborn ability to do something, to the point that they are incredibly good at it. Graces can go from the mundane (say, being a preternaturally good baker) to the dangerous. Katsa's is an example of the latter. Her Grace is killing.

You can't hide that you have a Grace (the mismatched eyes are a dead giveaway), and Katsa also happens to be the King's niece, so it was even more impossible. Graced individuals belong to the King by law, and King Randa finds Katsa very useful indeed. She takes care of all his dirty work and is crucial to his keeping an iron grip on power.

Having been raised to do this for her uncle, Katsa doesn't even consider the possibility of refusing to obey his orders. But she's not comfortable with the work she does, and this has led to after-hours work with the Council. The Council is a group set up by Katsa and the very few people she trusts fully to help fight injustice. The work they do makes her feel her Grace is finally being put to good use.

It is on a mission for the Council that Katsa encounters Prince Po. And that's when things start to change.

I don't want to say much more about the plot, because one of the things I absolutely loved about reading this was not knowing where things were going. All I'll say is that there is adventure and excitement and tough decisions, and through it, Katsa finally comes into her own. For all her power, the restrictions on how this power can be used have prevented her from being her own woman. The process of her throwing off her shackles and achieving true control over her own life is really, really satisfying.

Although there is so much plot and adventure here that I'd hesitate to call this a character-driven novel, I will say that the characters are really strong. Katsa herself is fantastic, but so are all the secondary characters (except, perhaps, the villain, who felt a bit more sketchily drawn). These people felt real, and I loved to see how the different relationships developed. I particularly loved the romance, even though it wasn't the focus of the novel. I loved that Katsa gains strength through it, and that Cashore never feels she needs to bring her down to make her and Po more evenly matched. And the conclusion is one that might be considered unconventional by some, but I absolutely thought it was the right one, and I loved it.

This series is amazing, and I hope Cashore publishes something (anything!) else soon.

MY GRADE: An A-.

The All You Can Dream Buffet, by Barbara O'Neal

TITLE: The All You Can Dream Buffet
AUTHOR: Barbara O'Neal

COPYRIGHT: 2014
PAGES: 400
PUBLISHER: Bantam

SETTING: Contemporary US
TYPE: Fiction (I don't like the term "Women's Fiction", but that's really what this is).
SERIES: None

Perfect for fans of Kristin Hannah and Susan Wiggs—Barbara O’Neal’s new novel of food, friendship, and the freedom to grow your dreams brings together four very different women longing to savor the true taste of happiness.

Popular blogger and foodie queen Lavender Wills reigns over Lavender Honey Farms, a serene slice of organic heaven nestled in Oregon wine country. Lavender is determined to keep her legacy from falling into the profit-driven hands of uncaring relatives, and she wants an heir to sustain her life’s work after she’s gone. So she invites her three closest online friends—fellow food bloggers, women of varied ages and backgrounds—out to her farm. She hopes to choose one of them to inherit it—but who?

There’s Ginny, the freckle-faced Kansas cake baker whose online writing is about to lead her out of a broken marriage and into a world of sensual delights. And Ruby, young, pregnant, devoted to the organic movement, who’s looking for roots—and the perfect recipe to heal a shattered heart. Finally, Val, smart and sophisticated, a wine enthusiast who needs a fresh start for her teenage daughter after tragedy has rocked their lives. Coming together will change the Foodie Four in ways they could never have imagined, uniting them in love and a common purpose. As they realize that life doesn’t always offer a perfect recipe for happiness, they also discover that the moments worth savoring are flavored with some tears, a few surprises, and generous helping of joy.

Lavender Wills is worried about her family farm. As a young woman, Lavender escaped life on the farm for an eventful career as a flight attendant, but when she finally returned, much later in her life, she fell in love with it. As she turns 85 she's worried that her only heirs, her nephews, will turn around and sell to a developer as soon as she's gone.

Lavender has embraced technology in running and marketing the farm, and through her blog she has become really good friends with three other food bloggers. Will one of them be the right person to take over the farm instead of her nephews? With her birthday coming up, she decides to invite them over, both to finally meet them in person and to see if one of them has what it takes.

There's Ruby, a young woman who runs a vegan blog and who finds herself pregnant months after a traumatic breakup. There's Ginny, whose cake blog represents an escape from a boring life full of people (including her husband) who want nothing more than to keep her as small and miserable as possible. And there's Valerie, a wine blogger and former dancer still recovering from the death of her husband and two of her children in an accident.

I liked the premise and, initially, I liked where I thought the story seemed to be going. The setting is beautiful and I loved the supportive female friendships. But I had so, so many issues with this book, and in the end, it didn't work for me at all. So the rest of the review is really going to be a litany of complaints.

To start with, for a book that supposedly features an ensemble cast, this was very uneven. O'Neal seemed to be most interested in Ginny (who, to me, was the most tedious character -more on her later), closely followed by Ruby. There was a fair bit about Lavender, as she was basically the catalyst for everything here, but there was pretty much nothing at all about Valerie. As she was written, I really didn't see what the point of having her there was. It might be that there was more in earlier versions and she was cut out in an edit, I don't know. I just know that out of the four characters who are set out to be equal protagonists the only one who doesn't do anything in the story and who's not a point of view character is the black woman. This left a bit of a bad taste in my mouth.

The focus on Ginny didn't work for me, because she annoyed me. I felt she needed to take a little bit more responsibility for her choices. Yes, her husband was a piece of work, and so were her "friends" and even her mother, but there are limits. There's a point when she goes on about how she feels her husband trapped her into marriage and a life she didn't want when he got her pregnant, and she wouldn't be at all surprised if he'd poked holes in their condoms (to be fair, she's consciously exagerating here). Whoa, hang on. This was the late 80s, early 90s. She had a choice if she didn't want to have a child so young. And every single other year she had a choice to confront things and try to change them. Her husband wasn't abusive or controlling, he was just immensely selfish. And honestly, I really have absolutely no idea what was going on on the sex front. It's not much of a spoiler, so I'll go into details: they haven't had sex in like 12 years, and he's refused to discuss it whenever Ginny's tried to bring it up. But in the end it turns out he's cheated on Ginny while she's been away? Huh?

Ruby was a lot more appealing to me. She's quite a sweet character, someone who had some miserable years as a child, when she became ill with cancer, but what that's done to her is made her very ready to see and appreciate the good things in life. But the break-up (which was unexpected and abrupt) has shaken her confidence a bit, and the time with Lavender and her friend does her good.

Lavender is ok, but the characterisation is shallow, and as I've mentioned, Valerie is paper-thin.

I also had issues with the characterisation of these women as bloggers. That element felt really off. There's a fair bit of WTF, like when Ginny's love interest, whom she meets on the road as she drives to Lavender's, rings her and tells her he was worried about her, so he looked up her phone number in her blog details. Yeah, no, no one with half a brain would put her phone number (not one of those voicemail thingies, either, but her regular mobile number) up on her blog! Then there's the way she refers to people who comment regularly on her blog as "backbloggers", which is a term I've never heard before, and I've been on this scene for 14 years now (google doesn't know the word, either). Those are all details, though.

More importantly, I found it really hard to believe that Ginny's blog would be as successful as it's supposed to be, to the point of her making oodles of money out of it. From what we see of it, it's basically really bland text and pictures of cakes. Even if the pictures are incredibly amazing, I can't see them being that revolutionary. Actually, all three of the blogs that we see (we see nothing of Valerie's, of course) were pretty unappealing to me. Ginny's is bland, as I mentioned. Lavender's is very commercial... paraphrasing here, but it's kind of "Lovely day at the farm today, remember we run tours every Saturday, cost is $X". That's actually fine for what it is, a blog attached to a business, but hardly inspiring. Ruby's I can see being more successful, but the whole emphasis on the health benefits of particular foods is exactly the sort of thing that annoys me... "This recipe uses ingredient X, which is packed full of antioxidants and vitamin whatever". Plus, her recipes didn't sound great, and I'm someone who eats mostly vegan, so I was looking forward to them. She seems to be the kind of vegan cook who takes regular meat- and dairy-based recipes and looks for ways to substitute the meat and dairy. I tend to prefer recipes that are naturally vegan, myself. That's just taste though; like I said, I could see her blog being pretty successful. The other two... hmm, nah.

The other thing that annoyed me was the whole attitude they had to the people who read their blogs. I'm not sure I can quite articulate it, but it was a bit like they're celebrities and the blog readers are their fans. It's that sort of condescending attitude. There was a thing near the end when they're all together when they decide they need to take a picture for their "backbloggers". It's sort of Hello magazine, and their readers are assumed to be desperate to live their lives vicariously through them. I think I might be being a bit harsh with this, but I didn't like it.

MY GRADE: A C-. Only Ruby saves it from a D.

It Happened One Wedding, by Julie James

TITLE: It Happened One Wedding
AUTHOR: Julie James

COPYRIGHT: 2014
PAGES: 304
PUBLISHER: Jove

SETTING: Contemporary US
TYPE: Romance
SERIES: None

SHE KNOWS BETTER THAN TO SAY “I DO”

After a humiliating end to her engagement, investment banker Sidney Sinclair is done with commitment-phobic men. But when her sister winds up engaged after a whirlwind courtship, Sidney is thrown into close contact with exactly the kind of sexy playboy she wants to avoid—the gorgeous best man. She’s stuck with him, for better or worse, until her sister walks down the aisle, but that doesn’t mean she has to give in to his smooth advances, no matter how tempting they are…

BUT HE MAKES IT HARD TO SAY “I DON’T”

Special agent Vaughn Roberts always gets his man on the job and his woman in bed. So Sidney’s refusal to fall for his charms only makes him more determined to win over the cool and confident redhead. Only what starts out as a battle of wills ends up as a serious play for her heart. Because the one woman who refuses to be caught may be the only one Vaughn can’t live without...

Sidney Sinclair has just come out of a relationship with a man she thought was 'the one', but who turned out to be a cheating bastard. She's very clear that she's ready for marriage and starting a family, so she's pretty dismayed that she's just lost years with this guy and has to start again. She's definitely not intending to waste any time with men who're not in the same place she is.

When Vaughan Roberts approaches her and tries to chat her up in a coffee shop, it's obvious to her he's one such time-waster. She makes it crystal-clear to him she's not interested, and exactly why. But it turns out that Vaughan's brother is getting married to Sidney's sister. In fact, that's why they were both in the same coffee shop; their siblings wanted to introduce the best man and maid of honour to each other. Before long, the proximity makes it difficult to resist the attraction.

The last couple of Julie James books have seen me falling a little bit out of love with her work. I still enjoy the books. I like her competent, professional heroines who feel much more modern than many romance heroines. I like the character-driven plots. I like the writing. All that said, the books are not resonating with me as they used to.

That was the case here. You can take it as read that all the usual stuff I like about this author's books was there. I did enjoy it. However, there were several niggles.

One of the main issues was that I found Sidney less interesting than I usually find James' heroines. She felt too perfect. There's work. Yes, I really appreciate James showing us women who are very good at high-powered careers, are confident in their own competence (and with good reason) and have no issues going for what they want at work. But usually James does more with their work. She'll look at issues of work-life balance, have her heroines deal with a little bit of adversity, something. For Sidney, her worklife is perfect. Period. She's a director at a private equity firm, she loves the work and has no issues at all with work-life balance. She's preternaturally good at what she does, to the point that she's almost fool-hardy in her confidence in her investment choices (but of course, that all works out exactly as planned, so she was 100% right). She's just as perfect on the personal front. She wants to meet a man to settle down with, she comes up with a list of criteria, she applies it and it works exactly as intended. She doesn't need to do anything, just wait for Vaughn to realise that he does fit the first of those criteria and does want to commit.

I guess I also didn't quite get why there was this vibe that Vaughn was doing something wrong with his life before he turned into Sidney's dream man. So he doesn't want to settle down; what's wrong with that? He's honest about it and doesn't jerk women around. But the vibe is that he must be made to realise the error of his ways.

The other issue I had was that everyone here is very affluent and there doesn't seem to be any awareness of their own privilege. I would appreciate some acknowledgment of this. I think the problem is that I've always identified a quite bit with James' heroines, so as I change (I've said it before, I'm doing the opposite of what conventional wisdom would predict and becoming more and more left-wing as I grow older), I feel annoyed at characters who feel like me some years ago.

MY GRADE: I'm still mostly enjoying these books, but a little bit less than I used to. A B-.

The God of Small Things, by Arundhati Roy

TITLE: The God of Small Things
AUTHOR: Arundhati Roy

COPYRIGHT: 1997
PAGES: 333
PUBLISHER: Random House

SETTING: India in the 1960s and 1990s
TYPE: Fiction
SERIES: None

More magical than Mistry, more of a rollicking good read than Rushdie, more nerve-tinglingly imagined than Naipaul, here, perhaps, is the greatest Indian novel by a woman. Arundhati Roy has written an astonishingly rich, fertile novel, teeming with life, colour, heart-stopping language, wry comedy and a hint of magical realism.

Set against a background of political turbulence in Kerala, Southern India, The God of Small Things tells the story of twins Esthappen and Rahel. Amongst the vats of banana jam and heaps of peppercorns in their grandmother's factory, they try to craft a childhood for themselves amidst what constitutes their family - their lonely, lovely mother, their beloved Uncle Chacko (pickle baron, radical Marxist and bottom-pincher) and their avowed enemy Baby Kochamma (ex-nun and incumbent grand-aunt).

This is one of those reviews where I have to make sure I mention my ratings are purely based on my enjoyment of the book in question. Because this is not a bad book. I wouldn't even contradict those who say it's great. It's just that it was spectacularly not to my taste.

This is the story of twins Esthappen and Rahel, who live in Kerala, in Southern India. Most of it is set in the late 60s, although sections are set later, when the twins are grown. From the later sections we know there's something awful that is going to happen, and after a while we even know what that something is. But the tension ratchets up and up until we actually see it happen.

My problem was that I absolutely hated every minute I was reading this. Pretty much all of the characters (except for the good and honourable unfortunate the awful thing happens to), are vile. And the book wallows in the vileness of people. This goes from big, life-changing evil to mundane, every-day nastiness, which can make just as big an impression. In fact, my most hated character was the twins' great-aunt, Baby Kochamma, a spiteful, repellent character whose evil is mostly of the domestic kind.

Roy creates some really vivid imagery, but loves to juxtapose the richness and colour with the disgusting... her images pause on the pus of the infected diabetic boil, the vomit, the saliva strings as dentures are pulled out of a mouth. It's effective, but that just meant that I spent all the book with my stomach turning.

She also has a clever way with her writing, but she goes overboard with her little trick of making two words come together to create a new one. She plays with words in a way that I should have liked, but I was so annoyed and sickened by all the other stuff going on that it felt annoying instead. On and on and on she went and the writing just pushed me away.

I felt like a bad reader for not liking this, but what can I say, if I didn't, I didn't!

MY GRADE: It was a D for me.

Me Before You, by Jojo Moyes

TITLE: Me Before You
AUTHOR: Jojo Moyes

COPYRIGHT: 2011
PAGES: 482
PUBLISHER: Penguin

SETTING: Contemporary UK
TYPE: Fiction
SERIES: There is a sequel

Lou Clark knows lots of things. She knows how many footsteps there are between the bus stop and home. She knows she likes working in The Buttered Bun tea shop and she knows she might not love her boyfriend Patrick.

What Lou doesn't know is she's about to lose her job or that knowing what's coming is what keeps her sane.

Will Traynor knows his motorcycle accident took away his desire to live. He knows everything feels very small and rather joyless now and he knows exactly how he's going to put a stop to that.

What Will doesn't know is that Lou is about to burst into his world in a riot of colour. And neither of them knows they're going to change the other for all time.

I read this one quite a while ago and wrote a bit of a brain-dump on my reactions to it, meaning to work it up into a proper review. I never did, but a sequel has come out and I'm planning to read it, so I've come back to it.

Me Before You wasn't what I expected. It comes dressed in chick lit clothes, so I expected comedy and an HEA ending. I got the comedy, but since readers of this blog are mainly romance readers, they'll probably appreciate knowing that I didn't get that HEA. However, I got the right ending for this particular story, in my opinion, and I explain why below after the spoiler space.

The book's main narrator is Louisa Clark, a regular young woman from a regular working class family who takes a job as a carer for a quadraplegic man. Will Traynor used to have an extremely privileged life: plenty of money, a satisfying job and lots of friends to travel and do extreme sports with. He still has the plenty of money, but after his accident, all that he loved about his life disappeared. It's been quite a while, but he still hasn't got to the stage of accepting his new circumstances and wanting to build a new life, so his mother is very worried. Luisa, who refuses to kowtow to Will or treat him like some tragic object of pity, seems like just the right person to help him find some joy in life.

And to an extent, it works. Lou and Will come to care about each other and they develop a relationship that improves both their lives. But Will is very certain about certain things, and Lou is determined to change his mind.

And on that cryptic note, I'll stop with the plot summary. Before I explain it better below, I should say I felt this book was very emotional, but in an honest, completely non-manipulative and non-maudlin way. There was a point when I discovered the big spoiler thing and I thought "Oh, shit, she's going to go all Jodi Picoult", but I was wrong. To me this did not feel at all exploitative. It's also an extremely funny book, which works wonderfully because it makes the very sad elements feel more bearable. With the subject matter it could have been very difficult  to read through, but the humour makes it easier to read and does not make it any less powerful.

So yes, I really liked it, and if this sounds good and you prefer no spoilers (well, beyond what I've already said about no HEA), stop reading now and go buy it. Because I'm now going to go into serious spoiler territory.

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Ok, so, the big thing I didn't want to mention above is that after a while, it becomes clear that what this book is actually about is the right to die. Will has decided that life as a quadraplegic person is not a life he wants, and he intends to travel to an assisted dying clinic. During the book he and Lou fall in love and he becomes a lot happier, but he does not change his mind. None of the tactics Lou comes up with to convince him work. In the end, he goes through with it, with Lou by his side.

It's obvious that this is potentially problematic, and it's probably why I've taken so long to write this review. It takes quite a while to process. I think with a book like this whether it works for you or not will depend on whether you feel the author is saying something about all people with a particular characteristic, rather than simply talking about a particular character. Is she saying being quadriplegic is so awful that death is preferable to even life with someone who loves you?

The reason I liked this was because I didn't think she was saying that at all, although I accept that other readers may interpret it very differently. Moyes makes a point of showing that plenty of people in Will's same circumstances have happy, fulfilling lives. A big part of Lou's efforts are about that. She begs Will to talk to people who have similar conditions, people she's been in touch with (and whose experiences we readers have been privy to, through their postings online and emails to Lou) and who are happy. Will's response is that he's sure they are happy, but this is his decision, and he, Will, wants this. I chose to take this at face value and accept that this was what Moyes was saying, nothing more, particularly because this made sense given Will's characterisation.

And in the end, I thought the ending, where he does go through with his plans, was the right one. Once the situation had been set up, I think I would have been even less happy with an ending where Will's choices had been taken away because other people thought he should want something different, or even one where he'd changed his mind because he'd realised they were right. I think I would have found that infantilising. Will is not less, he's not someone whose decisions should be made for him, and I would have felt that people arguing that he wasn't in his right mind and wasn't able to make decisions would have been a lie. Will has a very good idea of what his life will look like. He knows Lou loves him and he loves her and that they can have a very satisfying relationship. He's not in a situation where he only sees a hopeless future. He knows exactly what he's rejecting, and he has every right to reject it, if he so wants. To me, keeping him from doing so would mean saying that because he has lost much of his control over his physical body he therefore must lose control over his life, and I don't think that would be right.

So, it worked for me, but this is very definitely a YMMV book.

MY GRADE: An A-.

Unfinished opera singers and mathematicians

TITLE: The Queen of the Night
AUTHOR: Alexander Chee

Ah, this book. It sounded great. The world of opera in 1870s Paris. A heroine who's the most famous soprano of her time and has a mysterious past. An intriguing plot, in which our heroine, Lilliet, is offered every singer's ambition: a role written specifically for her, only it turns out to be based on her own past, which very few people know.

I tried. I really did! I read over 100 pages of it before giving up. I liked some aspects of it: the setting is lovingly and lusciously described, and the plot was as interesting as promised. However, you really need characters that make sense. Lilliet is paper-thin. By the time I stopped reading I knew a lot about what had happened to her in the past, but I knew nothing about her as a person. I didn't understand why she'd react in the ways I was told she'd reacted and didn't know why I should care about what happened to her. The other characters were just as sketchily drawn, but I could have lived with that, if Lilliet had felt more real. I wasn't crazy about the writing, either. It felt a bit pretentious and it also felt like it worked to distance the reader from the characters.

I picked this one up mainly due to raves in a bookish podcast I really like, called All The Books! I love the enthusiasm of the two presenters and they've sold me on quite a few books already. However, I don't think I've actually liked any of them, so I guess I need to accept these two people and I just have very different tastes. Too bad.

MY GRADE: A DNF.



TITLE: Sweet Deception
AUTHOR: Heather Snow

This was yet another failed attempt at getting back into historical romance. I'd liked a previous Heather Snow title well enough before, so I picked this one up next. The plot concerns Derick Aveline, an English nobleman who's been working as a spy during the Napoleonic Wars. His last mission before he returns to civilian life is to catch a traitor operating in the very same area as his country estate. When he gets there he finds himself faced with a murder, and his childhood friend Emma determined to investigate. See, Emma's taken on her magistrate brother's duties since he had a stroke, and she means to keep them.

There's nothing really wrong with this book. The fact that I gave up after 80 pages or so is simply due to me having read way too many books just like this. It felt tired, and many of the tropes were amongst my least favourites. I've had it up to here with gentleman spies. The heroine is still nursing a childhood crush on the hero, and has been more or less pining for him all the time he was away. She's some sort of mathematical genius, but the bit of the book that I read really didn't convince me that she was. I will quite happily read all these elements if the book has other things going for it or if the author is doing something novel or interesting with them, but that just wasn't the case here. I didn't buy the characters or the situation, and it felt very "only in a romance novel".

MY GRADE: A DNF.