Strangers on a Train anthology

TITLE: Strangers on a Train
AUTHORS: Samantha Hunter, Serena Bell, Meg Maguire, Donna Cummings, Ruthie Knox

COPYRIGHT: 2013
PAGES: Each story about 60-80 pages
PUBLISHER: Samhain Publishing

SETTING: Contemporary US
TYPE: Romance
SERIES: The stories are not related to each other

Over the past few years I've got better at not feeling I have to read every story in an anthology. Sometimes I'll even go straight for the one I bought the book for and not even try the others (see: JD Robb's short stories).

I acted unlike myself with this one. Samhain helpfully offers each of the 5 stories in the collection for separate purchase, but even though I was initially interested in only 2 of the stories, I decided to read them all.

I randomly started with Samantha Hunter's Tight Quarters. The heroine, Brenna, is a travel writer who suffers from claustrophobia after being in a bad car accident. Any enclosed space, even a car, is difficult for her -not good for someone in her job.

For the last few years, Brenna has been trying to get on a train that does a tour through New York State. This year, finally, she's managed to get on, only to find that her carefully chosen berth has been double booked by retired detective Reid Cooper.

What follows is an unconvincing setup of two strangers sharing a berth and a romance developing. It wasn't very good at all. Neither of the characters felt real. Brenna, especially, never really gelled. Her claustrophobia was inconsistent and not particularly interesting. As for the romance, it was much too fast to be remotely believable.

It was a quick read and I did manage to get to the end, but that's as much as I can say in favour of it.

MY GRADE: A C-. It was not-quite-average.

Next came Ticket Home, by Serena Bell, an author whom I haven't read yet, but whose books I'm aware of (in fact, I've a recent one of hers in my TBR).

Amy left Jeff when he showed that in his view, her ambitions and aspirations were clearly less important than his. This only added to the many, many instances of his putting his work before her. Amy moved across the country and, in the months since, has built another life. And then Jeff shows up on Amy's commuter train, clearly determined to win her back.

I really liked this one. It's a story where the 'falling in love' bit has already happened, so the focus is on working out the issues that have made the relationship fail. They are very real issues, too. I thought Bell judged it all exactly right. Amy's doubts and reluctance are very reasonable, and Jeff starts out as clueless, but is determined to understand and fix what's gone wrong. It's not easy, and it's not portrayed as such. By the end of the story, I was satisfied that I was seeing the start of real change, so the HEA ending really worked for me.

In fact, the story worked really well for me on the whole. It felt fresh and different and the author really dug into the characters and their motivations. I'm now really looking forward to trying the book by her in my TBR.

MY GRADE: A B+.

My favourite of all the stories was the one I read third, Thank You For Riding, by Meg Maguire. It's a simple set-up. Caitlin, on the way home after an embarrassing and disappointing break-up at her office's Christmas party, gets talking and flirting with a guy she'd first noticed a few days earlier at the blood bank where they both donate. They're so busy talking that they don't quite realise the station is closing, and things proceed from there.

I adored this story. I tend to find that with short stories it usually works better if the couple are already in love... if it's simply a vignette covering a later stage of their relationship, basically. Maguire proves that a good author can do a "falling in love" short story perfectly well. Caitlin and Mark don’t know each other at all at the start of the story, and yet I was completely convinced by the end that they were perfect for each other and that they were well on their way to falling in love, if not there already.

Seeing Caitlin and Mark interact was a delight. The dialogue was sparkling and the chemistry between them evident. They found each other incredibly charming and hilarious, and so did I! It was completely show, not tell.

Thank You For Riding goes straight on my list of best romance novels of 2013 (which I'll post soon, I promise!). Maguire also writes as Cara McKenna, and her After Hours is also on that list, making her the only author with 2 books there. I think I've found a new favourite author!

MY GRADE: A-.

I then moved on to a story by the second author I hadn't ever heard of, Back On Track, by Donna Cummings. It wasn't good.

The story is set on a train during a wine tour of Napa Valley (that did sound wonderful!). Allie, who's in a dating dry patch, is pushed by a friend to approach a random hot guy. He turns out to be this huge baseball star, whom she just happens to be courting to appear in a charity calendar. She doesn't recognise him initially, and this is very refreshing to him.

This was boring. It's a setup I find annoying, and the story didn't really recover from it (I read over half of it). It was clearly gearing up for a scene with a big reveal in which Matt finds out who Allie is and assumes she only approached him because she wanted something from him. I couldn't be bothered with it.

I think the reason it was boring was because it was exactly the opposite of Thank You For Riding, in that it was all tell, no show. We’re told how much fun they’re having and how their conversation is so incredible, but their interactions read as forced and silly to me.

MY GRADE: This was a DNF.

I left Ruthie Knox's Big Boy for last because it was the one that had received the best reviews.

While looking around after joining and online dating service, Mandy runs across a very odd profile. It's a man dressed in period clothes, who offers the chance for a role-playing date. Something about this appeals to her, and she agrees. When the book starts, she and her stranger have already had a number of dates, all "set" in different time periods and appropriate trains in the train museum, and have become lovers.

The story looks at what happens when Mandy decides she might want more. It's a sweet, quite melancholy story. Mandy is a well-developed character, and though for most of the story her stranger remains a bit of a cypher, Knox does a really good job by the end of making us understand him. She also succeeded in getting me to buy that this was a romance with a real future.

Still, it was a story I admired more than liked, and it didn't give me the visceral enjoyment that others did.

MY GRADE: A B.

---

No real surprises here. The three authors I already knew, and either knew I liked or suspected I might, wrote stories I enjoyed, while the stories by the two unknown-to-me authors weren't good. Shame, when I do read unknown authors in an anthology I'm always looking for some amazing discovery. Eh, well, the Meg Maguire story alone was worth the price of the 5.

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In The Clear, by Tamara Morgan

TITLE: In The Clear
AUTHOR: Tamara Morgan

COPYRIGHT: 2013
PAGES: 109
PUBLISHER: Self-published

SETTING: Contemporary US
TYPE: Romance
SERIES: None

Fletcher Owens is full of secrets.

Few people know he spends his nights volunteering for a Search and Rescue team, saving lives while risking his own. Even fewer know he's in love with his best friend's sister. And since he's not willing to give up their friendship for a chance at something more, that's exactly how things will stay.

Lexie Sinclair has nothing to hide.

The zany daughter, the wacky sister, the quirky fundraiser for a children's charity -- Lexie couldn't hide her true self even if she wanted to. So when her brother's best friend is revealed to be a local hero, she's determined to stand up and prove she's ready to be more than just friends.

Fletcher Owens has been in love with his best friend's younger sister for years, but has always assumed it was hopeless and not worth risking their friendship to find out for sure. And then his 'secret life' as a Search and Rescue volunteer is revealed, and everything changes.

This came highly recommended and I started it with great hope, only to feel my heart sink. It's a really weak start. There's Fletcher’s hiding of his search and rescue activities, which made no sense whatsoever and seemed pointless. There's the reactions from pretty much everyone when this is revealed, which had no relation to how most normal people would react (well, except the 'why the hell have you kept this a secret?' reactions). Also, Lexie initially came across as scatty and silly and generally annoying.

Fortunately, the novella recovered from that rough start quite quickly. Well, Fletcher's secretiveness never did make complete sense, but the focus changed to him and Lexie interacting, and that was just wonderful. Once Lexie realises Fletcher's feelings for her, especially, I felt like my stomach was in knots and I savoured every word.

The characters started making sense, too. I particularly liked what Morgan did with Lexie, how my initial reaction was so close to what she was dealing with from everyone in her life. Everyone underestimates her completely, and she has a horrible time being taken seriously, because anything going wrong is seen as proof that she’d screwed up yet again. One of my favourite scenes is when it becomes clear that Fletcher doesn't see her that way at all, and that he sees the things she's good at, sometimes without even her realising.

Very nice.

MY GRADE: A B+. When it got good, it got really good!

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The Edge of Never, by JA Redmerski

TITLE: The Edge of Never
AUTHOR: JA Redmerski

COPYRIGHT: 2012
PAGES: 481
PUBLISHER: Self-published

SETTING: Contemporary US
TYPE: New Adult
SERIES: Not that I know of

Twenty-year-old Camryn has always felt different from everyone else around her – not content to be tied down by life's conventions, she’s always known that she wants a life less ordinary. But when tragedy forces her to abandon her plans, she vows never to let her walls down again – and never to fall in love.

But one night in the hottest club in town, her world is turned upside down. Desperate to escape, Camryn packs up the bare necessities and boards the next Greyhound bus leaving town, to find the true self she knows is out there. What she finds instead is a young man who is more like her than she knows. Andrew Parrish needs to find himself too, and harbours his own dark secrets…

Zig-zagging across the country together, Camryn finds herself doing things she never imagined, as Andrew shows her what it’s like to live by your own rules and what it feels like to give in to her deepest, darkest desires. Before she knows it, he’s become the centre of her world. But as the electric love and lust between them intensifies, a dark shadow is looming. Will Andrew’s secret push them together – or tear them apart?

The Edge of Never tells the story of Camryn Bennett, who sets off on a bus journey to nowhere after a fight with her best friend (it's one of those 'blame the messenger' deals, where the best friend flips out and blames/doesn't believe her when Camryn tells her that the best friend's boyfriend has made a pass at her).

On the bus to Idaho she meets Andrew Parrish, who's on the way to Wyoming to his father's deathbed. They get talking, and end up continuing their running away from themselves together.

I had big issues with this one, so much so that I gave up after reading about 40% (it was, at least, a quick read).

The main thing was that Camryn and Andrew were so hilariously up their own arses it was unbelievable. There's a point at the beginning when Camryn, after mocking her best friend for fantasising about sex with her boyfriend, boasts that she "dream[s] about things that really matter. What the air in other countries feels like on my skin, how the ocean smells, why the sound of rain makes me gasp. 'You're one deep chick.' That's what Damon said to me on more than one occasion". Oh, yes, Camryn, your utter twaddle has got a depth that amazes me! And please note that later she and Andrew also have a "really deep" conversation about the mystery of why there are often single shoes by motorways. She shares that conversation with the reader. It wasn't deep.

In addition to having the depth of a puddle, Camryn is annoyingly holier-than-thou and judgemental. I got tired of her calling all other women "sluts" and using it to set herself off against them and reinforce how much better she is.

As for Andrew, we have some scenes from his point of view, though fewer than Camryn. I found him marginally less annoying, although in the section I read he does show a worrying tendency towards violent possessiveness, which is presented as oh-so-sexy. He's also just as much of a pretentious teenager as Camryn, even though he's 25. He doesn't feel 25. There's this conversation they have about music, with Andrew questioning Camryn's supposed taste and being really sententious about how only classic rock is good. Camryn makes the mistake of claiming to like a band she thinks he'll think are cool, and then she's scrambling around trying to remember the name of one of their songs when Andrew dares her to name one. I had those conversations in my teens. Camryn's 20, so I don't really blame her, but at Andrew's age, surely you grow out of this crap?

I suppose that's the thing about this book. The characters feel really authentic as very young, heads-up-butts kids, but those are exactly the sort of annoying teens that I don't really feel like spending time with.

These two can keep driving on their own, I'm getting off.

MY GRADE: DNF.

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I'm back!

Hi, everyone, I'm back! Lovely holiday, spent a lot of time with family (especially my baby nephew, who's beautiful and a lot of fun) and did lots of reading.

I read loads. Not everything was good (in fact, I had several DNFs, including some which I really, really didn't expect to be DNFs at all), but quite a few were incredibly good reads. I'll be posting reviews over the next weeks.

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On hiatus and a request

Bye for a month or so! I'm in Uruguay visiting family for the next month or so, and will be back mid-January.

In the meantime, could I ask you all for some suggestions? My book club have asked me to select a genre romance novel for us to read in February, and I'm not quite sure what to choose. I want something really well-written, obviously, and I'm thinking something that is mainstream. What I mean by that is that the romances I most appreciate these days are the ones that do something different and subvert the usual tropes in some way, but that's probably because I've read so much in the genre. These are people who've read little if any romance, so they would not appreciate that aspect of them.

So far, I've thought of 3:

- Lord of Scoundrels, by Loretta Chase, which I can tell them is the classic romance

- Bet Me, by Jennifer Crusie, as I lent my copy to one of my other non-romance reading friends and she loved it. However, this is one that's not very typical romance, what with its childfree characters.

- The Viscount Who Loved Me, by Julia Quinn, mostly for the Mallet of Death scene.

All three are books I found hilarious, although they also gave me that angsty stomach-knotting feel. Do you think this approach is a good idea or should I go for more 'serious' books? Thanks for any opinions and suggestions!

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Emma, by Jane Austen

TITLE: Emma
AUTHOR: Jane Austen

COPYRIGHT: 1815
PAGES: 512
PUBLISHER: Penguin

SETTING: Early 19th century England
TYPE: Fiction
SERIES: None

'I never have been in love; it is not my way, or my nature; and I do not think I ever shall.'

Beautiful, clever, rich - and single - Emma Woodhouse is perfectly content with her life and sees no need for either love or marriage. Nothing, however, delights her more than interfering in the romantic lives of others. But when she ignores the warnings of her good friend Mr Knightley and attempts to arrange a suitable match for her protegee Harriet Smith, her carefully laid plans soon unravel and have consequences that she never expected. With its imperfect but charming heroine and its witty and subtle exploration of relationships, Emma is often seen as Jane Austen's most flawless work.

Of the Austens I've reread so far, Emma has been by far my favourite. I had a similar experience with it than I did with Northanger Abbey a couple of months ago, in that what I remembered of it happened pretty early on, and there was practically a whole book left where I wasn't sure what would happen. In NA it was the whole gothic parody bit, here it was the confusion about Mr. Elton being in love with Harriet. I remembered it as being what the book was about, so when that misunderstanding was over by the end of CD 2, I was nonplussed. The rest, though, was just as good.

Out of Austen's books that I like (i.e. excluding Mansfield Park, for which my only memory is of dislike for Fanny... hmm, maybe I should reread it), Emma is probably the one where the romance is least the point of the story. It's all about the comedy of manners, and it worked brilliantly because the characters involved are so rich and real. I said in my summary of the month that Austen had made me like, dislike, love, pity, despise and admire Emma, all in one book. She is a complex character, to say the least. And the brilliant thing is, I have no doubt that all of my reactions are fully intended. Austen is in full control here; I felt she had played with my feelings masterfully, and felt no resentment about it.

The rest of the characters were just as good. With some of them, Austen really exaggerates a particular characteristic, such as Miss Bates' inane babbling, or Mrs. Elton's vanity and bitchiness, but it never crosses the line into something cartoonish. There's too much truth underneath for that. They are all characters that feel so real that I couldn't help but react to them. I actually went "the bitch!" out loud once as Mrs. Elton spoke, getting some strange looks in my gym.

I did like the romance, as far as it went. It's interesting, because I tend to hate romances where the heroine is always wrong and has to be put right by the hero, and this was a bit the dynamic between Emma and Mr. Knightley. But it doesn't feel as if she's being humiliated because a woman has to be put in her place. Emma is wrong just because she's human and she's absorbed too well the lesson that, as the most socially prominent person in her little world she is the most important person, and therefore anything that would please her is, by definition, the right thing to happen. She has to learn that this isn't the case.

It wasn't a perfect book. There was a bit where I got kicked out of the story because the reaction Austen was intending to get was quite different from the one she got, and that was the very short episode with the gypsies. It's not a big part of a the book at all, but it did make an impression, as the prejudices and attitudes revealed (and quite clearly shared, to a certain extent, by the author) were so clearly ugly and horrible to me.

I also thought the book took a little too long to wrap up. Everything was pretty much settled and I still had a whole CD (which was almost 1.5 hours long) to go. There was a lot of rehashing. It sounded like the sort of discussions you have with friends after you find out something surprising about someone you know, the whole "ah, so when we met so and so in such and such a place this was why he was there and what he was doing". That's fun and very satisfying to do, but feels very tedious and static to read, especially when there are no surprising revelations there. That was the case here, we found out nothing that we couldn't have deduced quite easily.

MY GRADE: Still, although these flaws lower my grade somewhat, it's still an A-.

AUDIOBOOK NOTES: There are loads of audio versions of Austen's books available, and after listening to quite a few samples, I've realised Juliet Stephenson is by far my favourite. She made this a joy to listen to. She had me in stitches quite a few times, like with her rendering of Miss Bates' babbling. I absolutely loved it.

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Dark Witch, by Nora Roberts

TITLE: Dark Witch
AUTHOR: Nora Roberts

COPYRIGHT: 2013
PAGES: 368
PUBLISHER: Berkley Trade

SETTING: Contemporary Ireland
TYPE: Paranormal romance
SERIES: First in the Cousins O'Dwyer trilogy

With indifferent parents, Iona Sheehan grew up craving devotion and acceptance. From her maternal grandmother, she learned where to find both: a land of lush forests, dazzling lakes, and centuries-old legends.

Ireland.

County Mayo, to be exact. Where her ancestors’ blood and magic have flowed through generations—and where her destiny awaits.

Iona arrives in Ireland with nothing but her Nan’s directions, an unfailingly optimistic attitude, and an innate talent with horses. Not far from the luxurious castle where she is spending a week, she finds her cousins, Branna and Connor O’Dwyer. And since family is family, they invite her into their home and their lives.

When Iona lands a job at the local stables, she meets the owner, Boyle McGrath. Cowboy, pirate, wild tribal horsemen, he’s three of her biggest fantasy weaknesses all in one big, bold package.

Iona realizes that here she can make a home for herself—and live her life as she wants, even if that means falling head over heels for Boyle. But nothing is as it seems. An ancient evil has wound its way around Iona’s family tree and must be defeated. Family and friends will fight with each other and for each other to keep the promise of hope—and love—alive...

Dark Witch felt off. Just completely off, and it's one of Nora Roberts' very few misses in the last years.

We start out with an extended prologue which sets up the trilogy. 800 years earlier, dark witch Sorcha (who's the good one here; in this series a dark witch is not one engaged in dark magic) is besieged by the evil Cabhan, who wants to take her powers. She succeeds in escaping him and passes on her powers to her 3 children and their descendants, knowing that at some point in the future, 3 dark witches of her blood will come together to fight the final battle against Cabhan.

In the present, Iona Sheehan has decided to up sticks and move from the US to Ireland, where her beloved Nan was born. There's something about the place that calls to her, and she somehow knows she's meant to be there. And as soon as she knocks on the door of her cousins' place, it becomes clear why. She, and her cousins, Brenna and Connor, are Sorcha's descendants and the ones who are meant to finish off Cabhan.

As Iona trains and develops her powers, she also finds a job that's right up her street. She's always had a connection with horses (each of the three dark witches has that; Brenna and Connor with dogs and falcons respectively), and she's hired at the local stables. There she meets the owner, Boyle McGrath, whom she's immediately attracted to. Iona's always been on the diffident side with men, but she's never wanted one like she wants Boyle.

Ok, so, where to start? I suppose the first thing to say is that this felt derivative. Now, Nora's books have never been unpredictable, but I usually don't care at all. Until this one. It was a bit too much, a mix and match using bits of previous series. The biggest chunk is from the Three Sisters Island trilogy. There's the witches, there's the fight against an old evil, and then there's the characters. To me, that was the most striking bit. Iona reminded me a lot of Nell, the nervous, very unsure and tentative new arrival in the island, who's taken under the wing of the established, confident Brenna/Mia (Iona does prove to be a bit more confident than Nell was, especially with Boyle, but at the beginning, she was forever apologising and babbling). Brenna/Mia is clearly being set up for a romance with a man (Fin/Sam) with whom she shares a history and quite a bit of resentment, a man with his own powers, which will be needed for the final confrontation. Meara, who works with Iona at the stables, is a sort of blander version of Ripley, with some of her experience but none of her "I don't give a shit" abruptness. I liked Meara, but Ripley was much more fabulous To all that, we add a dash of the Ireland from the Gallaghers of Ardmore trilogy, and shades of the Circle Trilogy in the nature of the evil that must be confronted and there, new trilogy.

Then there's the plot about fighting Cabhan, which never even began to engage me. The problem starts with the immediate coming together of the group of 6 (Iona and her cousins, Boyle, Fin and Meara) and their absolute commitment to the future fight. Iona has learnt a bit about her magic from her Nan, but had absolutely no idea of the history or that she's meant to risk her life to fight Cabhan. And yet there is no hesitation when she hears the story. She experiences no doubt or wonders why she should do this or what might happen if she doesn't. She's all "risk my life to defeat this powerful being who's done nothing to me but killed an ancestress 800 years ago? Of course, sure, let's do it." Bizarre. I kept thinking of Iolanthe, in Sherry Thomas' The Burning Sky, whose first reaction in a similar situation was, very sensibly, "the hell I will, I want to live and this is a suicide mission!", but who was convinced of the necessity of the struggle by experiencing the reality of the evil of what they're up against.

I think that realisation of the reality of what they're up against was precisely what was lacking here. Because you see, Cabhan is just not scary. He's nothing more than a sort of cloud of... well, I can't really say "evil", because although our protagonists think he is, he doesn't really do much here to warrant that description. He attacks them because he wants their power and because he knows they mean to destroy him. Sure, you wouldn't want him to succeed, but evil? For all we know, he seems to have spent the ensuing 800 years waiting as this disembodied force. There isn't much of a sense of menace.

It didn't help that the magic in this book feels silly. It's all very twee, with rhyming spells (which made me giggle uncontrollably) and floating bits of fire and stuff like that. There are some scenes where Iona is supposed to do things that are spectacular, but they didn't feel so, they felt meh.

The romance just wasn't great. I did like how the otherwise shy Iona basically blurts out her feelings for Boyle in front of everyone and pursues him, but then the romance develops in a bit of a frustrating way. Everything's fine, and then there's a point where they experience a crisis which felt very forced, making what to me was a lot about nothing much. I didn't particularly care whether they got back together or not, and that's the mark of a very boring romance.

The final thing in my litany of complaints is the way Roberts approaches her setting here. It's an area she's usually great at. Her settings, both physical and thematic (by that I mean, say, the world of smoke jumpers in Chasing Fire) are big parts of her books, and they usually come alive and are fascinating. Ireland, though, she seems to fetishise, and that's a problem. There's no shred of anything that feels real in her setting here (for instance, this is a world where every small business is thriving and doesn't seem to have experienced any issues in the previous years), but the problem is how it's all romanticised. Things like the way her Irish characters spoke felt really off. I live in Liverpool, so I have a fair few Irish friends and acquaintances. Not one of them speaks like Yoda.

There were some things I did like here. Iona is the child of extremely distant parents, and it's lovely to see her begin to build a family with the rest of the circle. The developing friendship between her and Meara and Fin, and the way Brenna and Connor become her family were the strong points of the book. Other than that, though, this was a bust.

MY GRADE: A C-.

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November 2013 reads

Not my best month ever numbers-wise, in spite of lots of travelling. Not great in terms of quality, either. I loved Emma and had a couple of solid, good books, but a few disappointments as well.




1 - Emma, by Jane Austen: A-
review coming soon

Audiobook. Reread, after many years. Emma is such a brilliant character. Austen made me like her, dislike her, love her, pity her, despise her, admire her, all in one book. I was fully involved in the goings-on at Highbury and the engaging secondary characters, some of whom are true comedy gold. The narrator, Juliet Stephenson, had me in stitches with her rendering of Miss Bates' ramblings.




2 - The Burning Sky, by Sherry Thomas: B
review coming soon

Audiobook. YA fantasy. Iolanthe's life is turned upside down when it emerges she's the greatest Mage of her generation. She ends up reluctantly helping the young Master of the Domain, Titus, in his quest to defeat the evil Atlanteans, who have usurped real power in the Domain. The start is not great and the worldbuilding feels a bit rough, but I did get into it and enjoy it.




3 - Blood Atonement, by Dan Waddell: B
review coming soon

Audiobook. 2nd in a series featuring genealogist Nigel Barnes. The case this time concerns the murder of a woman and kidnapping of her teenage daughter, and then the ensuing deaths of further members of their distant family. Good, solid mystery, but didn't feel quite as enjoyable as the first one.




4 - Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error, by Kathryn Schulz: B
review coming soon

Non fiction. Epistemiology. The author examines what it means to be wrong and how we feel about it and how we react. Interesting stuff, although sometimes made a bit annoying by faux-folksy writing.




5 - Dark Witch, by Nora Roberts: C-
review coming soon

Starts trilogy about cousins who are witches and must struggle with a centuries-old evil. It takes place in Ireland, and the heroine of this first one is an American who's just decided to move there. Not great, I'm afraid. I only liked the family and friends relationships. The romance was blah, the paranormal stuff tedious (except when it was unintentionally hilarious), and the Irish characters a bit cringe-inducing.




6 - Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl Written by Herself, by Harriet Ann Jacobs: DNF
review coming soon

This is exactly what the title says, an autobiographical account written by a former slave. It was published in the 1860s and was intended to influence Northern women to support not sending runaway slaves back to the South. While I appreciated its importance and historical significance, the writing didn't work for me.




7 - In Love With a Wicked Man, by Liz Carlyle: still reading
review coming soon

The hero is the disreputable owner of a gambling hell who suffers amnesia after a fall and has to recover at the heroine's house. The first half has reminded me of a slightly blander My False Heart. Good so far (no more half-baked paranormal stuff, yay!), but not great.




8 - Falling Free, by Lois McMaster Bujold: still listening
review coming soon

Audiobook. I wanted to read this one before I immerse myself in Miles's story. It's set a few centuries before the main books and stars an engineer who's posted to a station where they're doing some very dodgy genetic manipulations. I'm enjoying it.

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