Twisted, by Laura Griffin

TITLE: Twisted
AUTHOR: Laura Griffin

COPYRIGHT: 2012
PAGES: 400
PUBLISHER: Pocket

SETTING: Contemporary US
TYPE: Romantic suspense
SERIES: 5th in the Tracers series

ALLISON DOYLE’S NEW CASE WILL MAKE HER CAREER . . . IF SHE LIVES TO SOLVE IT.

Motive, opportunity, and no alibi—rookie detective Allison Doyle knows it’s as close to a slam dunk as most investigations get. But even though her small-town Texas police department has identified a prime suspect in a young woman’s vicious murder, she can’t rest easy. And when legendary FBI profiler Mark Wolfe shows up with a startling new theory, all her doubts are amplified. If Wolfe is correct, the real killer is an elusive psychopath who has left a trail of bodies behind him. And he’s just days away from his next kill. . . .

Allison was supposed to be Wolfe’s way into the case, nothing more. But she’s ambitious, stubborn, and far too tempting. With the help of her contacts at the Delphi Center crime lab, Wolfe is within striking distance of the monster he’s pursued for ten years. Except the closer Allison and Wolfe get, the more reason there is to fear. Because with a predator this brutal, every thread of evidence can make a difference between hunting a madman—and becoming hunted yourself.

I have tried Laura Griffin again and again and I always end up disappointed. I keep trying her because everyone seems to love her books, so I feel I must be missing something, but I think this was my last.

The plot concerns a serial killer. Detective Allison Doyle works for a small-town police department. She's one of the least experienced detectives and mainly does grunt work. The most recent case her department is investigating is the murder of a young woman. They think they've got a pretty good suspect, the woman's ex boyfriend.

But then FBI profiler Mark Wolfe turn up, convinced that the murder is actually the work of a serial killer, one he's been pursuing for years. Allison's boss is not convinced, but Mark's theories are enough to get Allison suspicious and start looking at the evidence again.

There's nothing wrong with the basic plot here. It could be done really well and be the basis of a great book. It just isn't. It's boring. The case is kind of interesting, but nothing particularly novel or great. But it was the characters that bored me to tears.

Allison and Mark never completely clicked for me as individuals, and there were a washout as a couple. There was utter and complete lack of chemistry between them. The romance just never took off for me, I never cared, and mainly I thought it felt inappropriate, like they should have been concentrating on the case rather than angsting about having sex.

Also, I've noticed in the few books I've read by her that Griffin’s heroines always feel like they get put at a disadvantage. Allison starts out that way, by embarrassingly being caught off guard during a hold-up, right at the beginning of the book, and having to be rescued by Mark. She never really recovers. She does notice a few clues and does all right in that, but mainly she’s constantly doing stupid/foolhardy things, and that annoyed me. There was the scene in the jail, when an unarmed prisoner gets the drop on her, then the end, where the killer captures her (twice, really). I found it extremely annoying.

This series was originally built around the Delphi Institute, a private forensic lab that engages in cutting-edge science and helps outclassed police departments. That element is interesting enough, but it's quite peripheral here, in a way that's typical of a late entry in a series. While in early books it has been a main player in the way the stories have developed (usually one of the protagonists works there), here it felt kind of shoehorned in.

Disappointing.

MY GRADE: A C-.

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The Girl With All the Gifts, by MR Carey

TITLE: The Girl With All the Gifts
AUTHOR: MR Carey

COPYRIGHT: 2014
PAGES: 416
PUBLISHER: Orbit

SETTING: Near future in what's now England
TYPE: Horror / speculative fiction
SERIES: None

Melanie is a very special girl. Dr Caldwell calls her "our little genius."

Every morning, Melanie waits in her cell to be collected for class. When they come for her, Sergeant keeps his gun pointing at her while two of his people strap her into the wheelchair. She thinks they don't like her. She jokes that she won't bite, but they don't laugh.

The Girl With All the Gifts is a groundbreaking thriller, emotionally charged and gripping from beginning to end.

When I posted my favourite books of 2014 a few weeks ago, several people whose tastes tend to be similar to mine shared their own top reads. The Girl With All the Gifts featured in several people's choices. Turns out my book club had just chosen it for our January read, and even though I couldn't make this meeting (I was in London having dinner and rhapsodising about the Vorkosigan saga with CD instead! *g*), I read the book anyway. And I was wowed!

The book starts with a little girl called Melanie. Melanie lives in a cell and knows about the world she lives in only through what she learns in class. She knows the place where she and the other children in her class live is surrounded by "Hungries", but she's never seen them. She knows about flowers and animals and the population of Birmingham, but she's never seen any of these either. All she remembers is her current existence, spending most of her time in her cell, except for when she's wheeled out, limbs and head strapped to the chair, to class or to the weekly feeding. It's an existence where she's never, ever touched.

We, of course, know that Melanie and her classmates are Hungries themselves, but of a different kind from the mindless, lumbering majority. And when things happen and Melanie's world widens, we find out a whole lot more about what's out there.

And that is all I will say about the plot, because the originality of this book makes it all the more enjoyable. I find that more and more, I really like reading books and having absolutely no idea where they are going. I still like the certainty of romance novels, but these days I crave unpredictability. But it has to be unpredictability with all characters behaving like real human beings, where the motivations make sense. If you get your unpredictability from making characters behave in unbelievable ways, you've lost me. Carey never lost me.

Melanie felt real, as did the people who become her companions. Dr. Caldwell is a driven doctor, determined to understand the infection that turns people into hungries if it's the last thing she does (and no matter whom she needs to sacrifice or endanger). Miss Justineau, Melanie's beloved teacher, is idealistic and moral, but in a way that sometimes leads her to act in self-destructive ways. Sergeant Parks is determined to keep those around him safe, and just as determined to see Melanie as a monster. And Private Kieran Gallagher is just heartbreakingly young.

It's an incredibly compelling, compulsive read. It can be tough, it can be tender, it's always surprising. And the ending was one of the most brilliant endings I've ever read. It makes complete sense, and it was still a surprise. And the way it brings things full circle feels strangely satisfying. I know it won't work for everyone (one of my friends at book club hated it), but to me, it felt just right. It felt like it was actually a happy ending, of sorts. The world itself has been redefined, why not happy endings too?

MY GRADE: An A-.

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Agnes Moor's Wild Knight, by Alyssa Cole

TITLE: Agnes Moor's Wild Knight
AUTHOR: Alyssa Cole

COPYRIGHT: 2014
PAGES: 40
PUBLISHER: Self-published

SETTING: Medieval Scotland
TYPE: Romance
SERIES: None

.
.
.Agnes Moor knows her place in the court of King James IV—as one of the “exotics” in his employ. When the king makes a kiss from Agnes the prize of a tourney, a mysterious knight plows through his opponents to claim it. But it isn’t chance. The Wild Knight has come for her, and her champion is after after the most elusive prize of all: her heart..
.

The premise of this story sold me on it immediately, without even looking at reviews (especially at 77p!). It’s an interracial romance set in medieval Scotland, in the court of James IV. Agnes is a black woman who has been taken in by James and his wife, Margaret, and is an important part of the court. As the book starts a tourney is taking place called the Tourney of the Black Lady (based on a real event, according to the author’s notes), where the winner’s prize will be a kiss from Agnes. And it’s becoming very clear that a particular, mysterious knight is determined to win. He’s basically cutting through opponents like he’s on a mission, and Agnes can’t help hoping he’s a certain highland laird, even though she knows it’s impossible he should be.

Unfortunately, I’m afraid I liked the idea and the setting more than the actual story I got. There are good points. For instance, the writing is vivid and the story has a good sense of place. And there were elements of the story I liked… for instance, that Agnes was valued for her diplomacy skills, not just for being a novelty who can act as an ice-breaker and conversation starter. In fact, she doesn’t like the latter, but she accepts that it’s got its uses for her diplomatic role.

The problem is that this was much too short. It’s a short story, rather than a novella, but that’s not necessarily a problem. I’ve read plenty of short stories that felt satisfying. This one didn’t. It feels undeveloped as a romance. I did more or less get a sense of who Agnes was, although I would really have liked to have known more about her background… how she came to the court, that sort of thing (there are hints that it’s quite an interesting story). However, I had no idea who the hero was, really. He’s a highland laird who fell for her pretty much on sight and is determined to have her. That’s all. There are some conversations, but mainly the few pages available are used on them having sex. And not even sex where the characters are developed, just plain generic sex. Any proper courting happens off-stage, and we're just told it happened.

Disappointing.

MY GRADE: A C.

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I Want It That Way, by Ann Aguirre

TITLE: I Want It That Way
AUTHOR: Ann Aguirre

COPYRIGHT: 2014
PAGES: 352
PUBLISHER: HQN

SETTING: Contemporary US
TYPE: New Adult
SERIES: Starts a series

Nadia Conrad has big dreams, and she's determined to make them come true. But between maintaining her college scholarship and working at the local day care to support herself, dating's the last thing on her mind. Then she moves into a new apartment and meets the taciturn yet irresistible guy in 1B….

Daniel Tyler has grown up too fast. Becoming a single dad at twenty turned his life upside down—and brought him heartache he can't risk again. Now, as he raises his four-year-old son while balancing a full-time construction management job and night classes, the last thing he wants is noisy students living in the apartment upstairs. But one night, Nadia's and Ty's paths cross, and soon they can't stay away from each other.

The timing is all wrong—but love happens when it happens. And you can't know what you truly need until you stand to lose it.

When there was all that to-do about this new genre, New Adult, I got quite excited about the idea. The issues people face during and right after the transition from high school are quite different from those they face in their late 20s-early 30s (the usual age for romance). I was really interested in reading about people going through that time, whether in college or right afterwards. It's all about setting up a life as a grown-up, which often is an interesting, challenging time, and there really wasn't all that much out there looking at this.

Unfortunately, there still isn't much out there, even in the New Adult genre. That seems to have been turned into a vehicle for wish-fulfillment fantasies and daydreams about plain Jane dating the quarterback, which really does nothing for me. And I should make it clear, I don't have a problem with the subject matter itself. That can be done in a way I enjoy. What I have a problem with is books where, if the subject matter is not a fantasy of yours, there's nothing else there for you. And way too many NA books have that problem.

All that ranting is my introduction to saying that I Want It That Way is what I wanted when I got so excited about New Adult. It's got regular people living normal but interesting lives and dealing with conflicts that are not larger than life, but nonetheless are pretty big in their own lives. More like this, please!

Our narrator is Nadia Conrad, who's in her next-to-last year at university studying special education. Nadia and three of her friends have got tired of living in dorms and have clubbed together to rent a flat off-campus. Ty, only a couple of years older than Nadia, lives directly downstairs from her and they meet cute when Nadia is almost flattened by her sofa as they try to push it upstairs. There's an instant strong attraction, but Ty is single dad to a 4-year-old, Sam, and this complicates things (even more because Sam starts attending the same day care where Nadia works part time). But as they start hanging out and talking, Nadia on her balcony, Ty right downstairs in his patio (very Romeo and Juliet), resisting the attraction becomes hard.

There are no huge, dramatic developments here. It's just about Ty and Nadia coming together despite their best intentions, carving out some time in their very busy lives (they're both ridiculously hard workers... Nadia has classes, practicums and her part-time job, while Ty has a full-time job and is going to night-school to get an architecture degree, not to mention raising a 4-year-old. They could be in a Nora Roberts novel!). And Nadia's flatmates have their own issues going on, in which Nadia becomes involved, as they're all really good friends. I really liked that aspect of the book, actually. These are secondary characters who feel fully formed and real. Some of them will have their own stories in the series, but it sounds like not all of them, and those feel real too.

Something else I loved was the way Aguirre dealt with Diana, Ty's ex and the mother of his son. Basically, what happened was that she became pregnant accidentally when they were about 20. She wanted to have an abortion, but Ty badgered her into having the baby. She never wanted to have it and had a miserable pregnancy and birth, so she took off pretty much as soon as she'd given birth, and disappeared into thin air. Many romances would demonise her for even half of what she's done. A woman who would consider abortion? Evil! A mother who doesn't see her son? Unthinkable! That's absolutely not the case here. There's understanding and compassion from both Ty and Nadia towards a woman who was clearly caught in a shitty situation and did what she felt was necessary. I particularly liked the ambiguity of Ty's reactions. He feels awful about pushing Diana and pressuring her into something as important as having a child, but at the same time, he can't regret Sam's existence. Anyway, I loved how this was done, and I'd really love to read Diana's story.

This experience has obviously had had an impact on Ty, and it informs much of his reluctance to be with Nadia. But I must say, Ty's complete insistence that he and Nadia couldn't have any sort of proper relationship beyond friends with benefits felt a bit extreme, considering Sam and she already have a relationship and he adores her. His thinking seems to be that he's already ruined Diana's life so he doesn't want to do it to Nadia, too, but if you really think about it, what he did to ruin Diana's life was to dictate her choices, and he's doing exactly the same thing to Nadia!

Things do end happily though, and coming back to what I was saying about wish fulfillment fantasies, this is the perfect demonstration of what I mean. Nadia and Ty's relationship is very much not what would be a happy ending for me. What makes her happy (i.e. basically becoming mum to a 4-year-old when she's 22) is very definitely not a life that would make me happy. But you know what? She's a solid enough character that I have no problem believing that they're a life and a relationship that are going to make her happy, and that's really all I want in a romance.

Beyond the romance, there is maybe a bit too much emphasis on the mundane detail of life as a college student living off campus, things that add colour but don't really have any effects on the plot and conflicts (e.g. they go to a club and have fun dancing, Nadia's first attempt at a lesson plan is pretty bad, but she comes up with a much better idea next time). I actually really liked having some of that detail there, but I think Aguirre didn't quite get the balance right. I will be reading the other books in the series and hope she gets it right there!

MY GRADE: A strong B.

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Last To Die, by Tess Gerritsen

TITLE: Last To Die
AUTHOR: Tess Gerritsen

COPYRIGHT: 2012
PAGES: 512
PUBLISHER: Ballantine

SETTING: Contemporary US
TYPE: Mystery
SERIES: 10th in the Rizzoli / Isles series

For the second time in his short life, fourteen-year-old Teddy Clock has survived a massacre. Orphaned once more when his foster family is murdered, the traumatized teenager has nowhere to turn—until the Boston PD puts Detective Jane Rizzoli on the case. Jane spirits Teddy to the exclusive Evensong boarding school, a sanctuary where young victims of violent crime learn vital skills of survival. But even behind locked gates, Jane fears that Evensong’s benefactors aren’t the only ones watching. And when she learns of two other students whose pasts bear a shocking resemblance to Teddy’s, it becomes chillingly clear that a circling predator has more than one victim in mind. Joining forces with medical examiner Maura Isles, Jane races to stop an obsessed killer’s twisted quest—before an unspeakable secret dooms the children’s fate.

It's become a bit of a tradition for me to listen to the next-to-latest Tess Gerritsen while I'm on holiday in Uruguay (not the latest because what if there's a cliff-hanger on the personal stuff and I need to know straight away what happens next?). It's a bit strange to read her dark, often gory books while on my morning walks by the beach, but it works for me.

In Last to Die, Detective Jane Rizzoli and medical examiner Maura Isles are called to a really bad crime scene. A couple and all but one of their foster children have been killed, almost execution style. The sole survivor is a little boy called Teddy Clock, and Jane is shocked to discover this is not the first time the same thing has happened to him. Only a few years earlier his parents and siblings were all killed as well, leaving only Teddy alive. And when someone tries to break into the foster home the police have placed Teddy, Jane decides she needs to stash Teddy somewhere really safe and really secret.

And what do you know, one such place falls right into her lap. Readers of this series will remember Julian, the teenager Maura befriended during her adventure in Ice Cold. Well, he's been placed at a boarding school called Evensong, run by Anthony Sansone and staffed by people who are members of his Mephisto Society (yeah, there is quite a lot of history between all these characters by now. You'd have to read The Mephisto Club to fully understand, but basically, these are people who believe evil is real and are determined to fight against it). Anyway, Maura has gone to visit Julian there and she discovers a couple of kids there have had the same experience as Teddy: families exterminated, with them being the sole survivors, and then the same thing happening again with the people they go to live with next. Evensong is a secure location (if there's something that can be said about the Mephisto Society is that they are paranoid about security) and it makes sense to keep these 3 kids where they can keep an eye on all of them, so Jane takes Teddy there. And then strange things start happening, from bloody dolls hanging from a tree to mysterious deaths.

Oh, I'm so conflicted about this one! I was fully engaged and interested in all that was going on and I had to force myself to not just wander round the house with my headphones on (I was staying at my parents' and they wouldn't have appreciated that). The setup was really interesting and well done, and I thought both the premise and the development were good. I also really cared about the personal, non case-related stuff going on. But on the other hand, I had Quibbles. Lots and lots of them.

The dénouement was the main thing that I had quibbles with. On one hand, it really surprised me, and yet it made sense, psychologically. I love it when that happens. On the other, there were some threads left hanging. Some of the creepy things that happened (a particular suicide that wasn’t really a suicide, creepy figures hanging from trees outside Evensong school) didn’t make any sense, given the resolution and who ended up being responsible. No sense at all. They weren’t necessary to what this person was trying to do, and they seem to suggest a sort of person this person is not, according to the narrative (how's that for cryptic?). These things were great at the moment they happened, really gave the book an eery, scary feeling, but the lack of sense at the end made me feel those scares weren’t earned at all.

Also, I felt I was being asked to root for and be sympathetic towards a character I thought was morally horrible. This will be very spoilerish, so read on only if you don’t plan to read this book or if you've already read it:

Basically, the reason for the family massacres was that one of the parents in each family was a CIA agent, and another agent wanted to silence them. All had been involved in a particular episode in which the murderous agent had been bought off and the others had figured this out. But one of the three agents survived, and he shows up at the end. And we’re supposed to think it a happy ending when he survives with his kid and goes off into the sunset. I really, really didn’t. This is a person who was involved in kidnapping foreign nationals (which caused the death of innocent bystanders), extraordinary rendition and torture (sorry, “enhanced interrogations”). And I’m supposed to feel positive about him, just because the people whose lives and human rights he had no regard for weren’t Americans? Fuck that.

In addition to the case, we get some development in the soap opera of Jane Rizzoli’s parents. Previously in this series, sexist lout Frank Rizzoli left his wife for a younger woman (a bimbo, Angie calls her). Angie was devastated, but after a while fell in love with Jane’s former partner, Vince Korsak, who cherishes her and treats her so much better than Frank. As this book starts, they’re planning their wedding, as soon as Angie and Frank’s divorce goes through. Well, now Frank’s girlfriend has left him, and he realises he screwed up. He wants his wife back, with things exactly as they were before. And he and his equally loutish son, Frankie Jr., want Jane to pressure her mother into going along with this. They’re FAMILY, you see, and "that means something”. Oh, this section made me sooooooo angry. We don’t have a resolution here, and I really hope Gerritsen makes Angie stand firm against all the revolting patriarchal pressures that are pushing her towards going back to an entitled prick who treats her like shit. I will absolutely stop reading this series if she goes back to him. My problem in this book was Jane. I hated her for even contemplating agreeing to her father’s and brother’s demands, for thinking she doesn’t know what to do, and that their arguments have any value at all. She is married to a man who loves her and respects her and treats her well. She knows that wasn’t how Frank treated Angie, and she knows very well that nothing will change if he gets his way. He himself admits that what he wants back is the unpaid maid who cooks him good food and waits on him hand and food. Ohhh, I hated him so much, more than the killer, even. I wanted him to end up castrated with a rusty spoon. Maybe the plot of the next book? (I can only hope!)

Finally, this is quite minor, in the grand scheme of things, but it's an issue that has been bothering me later. Now, Evensong school is amazing. It sounds just like Hogwards, and I want to go there. But there was one thing that didn't make sense to me, and that was that Gerritsen seemed to feel she had to include “mean girls” and bullies. This is a school where the teachers (and there are a lot of them) pay a lot of attention to what’s going on and it’s suggested they’re perfectly aware of this. Every single kid has therapy sessions every week. Why is this allowed to go on? I don’t know, this is something that bothers me when I read books set in US high schools. It’s kind of suggested bullies are an essential part of the school experience. They are there in every single school, and teachers NEVER do anything about it. Is this what it's like, really? I can understand nothing happening when you’ve got a school with underpaid, overwhelmed teachers, but in a school like Evensong?

MY GRADE: Contrary to what it might seem with all my ranting, I did, on the whole, enjoy this. A B-.

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Mars Evacuees, by Sophia McDougall

TITLE: Mars Evacuees
AUTHOR: Sophia McDougall

COPYRIGHT: 2014
PAGES: 336
PUBLISHER: Egmont

SETTING: Future Earth and Mars
TYPE: Middle grade YA
SERIES: Not sure

From bestselling UK author Sophia McDougall comes one fresh and funny, adventure-filled tween debut about a group of kids evacuated to Mars! Perfect for fans of Artemis Fowl, this laugh-out-loud series is packed with nonstop fun. When Earth comes under attack by aliens, hilarious heroine Alice Dare and a select group of kids are sent to Mars. But things get very strange when the adults disappear into thin air, the kids face down an alien named Thsaaa, and Alice and her friends must save the galaxy!

For when plucky twelve-year-old Alice Dare learns she's being taken out of the Muckling Abbott School for Girls and sent to another planet, no one knows what to expect. This is one wild ride that will have kids chuckling the whole way through.

This is sci-fi, set in a future where aliens are threatening the Earth. Apparently, when they showed up and offered to sort out global warming for us we just agreed and didn't ask for any details. So they fixed it, and then some. The mirrors they set up in space to reflect back sunlight are cooling the Earth to the point of sparking off a new Ice Age (presumably, the aliens prefer their new homes on the chilly side).

Our heroine is Alice Dare, whose mother, a fighter pilot, is currently the big heroine and symbol of the Earth's defence forces. That makes Alice pretty important, and gets her in the group of teenagers chosen to be evacuated to Mars, far from the war taking place on and around Earth. They're meant to be educated and trained so that they can join the fight when they turn 16. But things don't go as planned.

Sigh. This was a disappointment, and the setup was so cool that it makes me really cross that the execution really wasn't my thing. Things started out well, and even when the kids first arrive on Mars, I was fully on board. Some of the details (e.g. the toy-shaped robots programmed a bit too young for the age-groups they’re supposed to be teaching) were funny and interesting. I liked the diversity of the characters. I was also interested to see what would happen.

But then it all started feeling a bit too young… I was expecting YA, but I kind of think of YA as mid-to-late teens. This felt younger, which is not my thing. The problem might have been that the main character was 12. I thought when I started that maybe she’d age quickly through the story… after all, she’s not supposed to be ready to fight until 16, but by the time I stopped (about a third in), only a couple of months had gone by.

And worst of all, I didn't buy any of the characters. They didn't feel like real people. The point I stopped was when things turned into Lord of the Flies in Mars. Basically, at one point all the grown-ups just suddenly disappear, and the kids are left on their own, with no instructions or knowledge of what is going on. And the way people started behaving had no emotional believability whatsoever. The older kids were evil just because they were evil, and the younger ones felt awfully blithe and unconcerned. It annoyed me and bored me and I didn’t want to keep reading.

MY GRADE: It was a DNF.

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The Book of Strange New Things, by Michel Faber

TITLE: The Book of Strange New Things
AUTHOR: Michel Faber

COPYRIGHT: 2014
PAGES: 512
PUBLISHER: Hogarth

SETTING: Near future Earth and planet of Oasis
TYPE: Fiction
SERIES: None

A monumental, genre-defying novel that David Mitchell calls "Michel Faber’s second masterpiece," The Book of Strange New Things is a masterwork from a writer in full command of his many talents.

It begins with Peter, a devoted man of faith, as he is called to the mission of a lifetime, one that takes him galaxies away from his wife, Bea. Peter becomes immersed in the mysteries of an astonishing new environment, overseen by an enigmatic corporation known only as USIC. His work introduces him to a seemingly friendly native population struggling with a dangerous illness and hungry for Peter’s teachings—his Bible is their “book of strange new things.” But Peter is rattled when Bea’s letters from home become increasingly desperate: typhoons and earthquakes are devastating whole countries, and governments are crumbling. Bea’s faith, once the guiding light of their lives, begins to falter.

Suddenly, a separation measured by an otherworldly distance, and defined both by one newly discovered world and another in a state of collapse, is threatened by an ever-widening gulf that is much less quantifiable. While Peter is reconciling the needs of his congregation with the desires of his strange employer, Bea is struggling for survival. Their trials lay bare a profound meditation on faith, love tested beyond endurance, and our responsibility to those closest to us.

Marked by the same bravura storytelling and precise language that made The Crimson Petal and the White such an international success, The Book of Strange New Things is extraordinary, mesmerizing, and replete with emotional complexity and genuine pathos.

I haven't read Faber before, but the premise of this book really intrigued me. We meet Peter and his wife Bea on their way to Heathrow, where Peter is about to start a journey which will take him unfathomably far from home. His final destination is Oasis, a planet several galaxies away, where he is to become a Christian missionary. We follow him throughout his journey, as he explores his new environment and works with the native Oasans. They are the reason he is there, as they are hungry for him to share the stories in his Bible, the book of strange new things of the title.

But as he takes forward his mission, Peter is in contact with Bea, and things aren't going as well on Earth. Through her written messages, we find out that environmental catastrophe is making things on Earth increasingly desperate. And that distance in their experiences, more than the physical distance between them, tests what was a solid, loving relationship.

I'm not usually attracted to books that deal with themes of faith or troubled marriages, but the space exploration and colonisation aspect intrigued me. And, it turns out, I ended up enjoying all these aspects of the story.

I found myself fascinated by the world Faber created and by the characters. Objectively, this was a bit slow at the start. It takes Peter about 4 hours (as in, 4 audiobook hours, much longer to him) to even get out of the main base in Oasis, but I really didn't mind. It's all so interesting and different that I was absorbed by it. The world is strange and compelling, and the contrast to the mundane reality of living in the base, run by a mysterious corporation, really worked.

Peter is a really interesting character. His most prominent characteristic is his goodness. It's very important to him to be a good, decent person who treats others respectfully. His interactions with the native inhabitants of Oasis are a good example. I was a quite leery at the beginning (the very idea of missionaries is fraught with all sorts of negative associations for me), but Peter is very careful to respect the Oasans' culture (I use the term 'Oasans' here, but Peter calls them by the name they use for themselves, which is rendered in the book in symbols the audiobook narrator pronounces something like 'Shishoda'). His approach to missionary work is not to try to 'civilise' or change their culture in any way, but to share the joy of the religion that gives him such a sense of meaning with people who are explicitly demanding he do so (in fact, getting someone to teach them about the 'book of strange new things' was one of the the conditions the Oasans demanded before they would agree to help the people on the base survive).

But Peter is good in a believable way, which -I'll be honest- made him feel incredibly annoying at times. And that's what Faber was going for, I'm pretty sure, because clearly he exasperates Bea at times, too. His serene goodness and self-satisfaction when Bea's world is falling apart is more than she can bear. He's especially infuriating when he really can't grasp what Bea is going through and is clearly more concerned that she, say, uses the word 'godforsaken' than the fact that the world around her is falling apart and she feels forsaken by her God. He shows an almost psychopathic lack of empathy... or rather, it's more a difficulty taking in problems that are not right next to him. I totally identified and sympathised with Bea's anger with him.

In fact, even though we are always in Peter's POV and in Oasis, I was mentally and emotionally with Bea. With her, I found myself getting angrier and angrier at his lack of response and empathy, and at how he could remain so detached from what Bea was saying. Because I was getting only Bea's letters as well, and with me, she's just a character in a book, whereas with Peter she's real and his wife, and I was getting a lot more emotionally upset than him about what she was going through! There's an episode close to the end (basically, what leads to the final breakdown of her faith in God), where I wept at what had happened to her. It's something that's minor, on the grand scheme of things, but I could feel her heartbreak and completely identified with it. And Peter goes around blithely feeling more worried about the state of her faith than the state of her life. Faber made me really feel in this book.

The exception was Peter's big crisis of faith. I could intellectually understand his faith and his utter certainty that losing it would be the worst possible thing that could happen to him, but I couldn't really feel the anguish of this. I'm agnostic and have absolutely no interest in being part of any religion, even from a 'tradition' point of view. And I lead a life that makes me happy and is full of meaning. I just can't understand emotionally the way losing your faith can feel like a tragedy (although I'm perfectly willing to believe the lived experience that says that for many people, it is). So that aspect didn't resonate with me very much.

Still, speaking of faith, one of the most intriguing aspects of the book is Peter's gnawing suspicion that what the Oasans are getting from his teachings about Christianity is not quite what he intended or expected. I won't reveal much here, because one of the most intriguing things about the book is trying to figure out what's going on with the Oasans, why the fascination with Christianity and what they're interpreting. I really came to care for them. Faber creates people who are almost unbearably vulnerable and made me feel tenderness and fear for them.

It's not a perfect book, especially from the plot mechanics point of view. And strictly speaking, there are some issues with the logic. It somewhat strained my credibility that Peter would go so far, in a journey on which he is fully and completely dependent on the goodwill of the mysterious corporation who runs the trading post in Oasis, without asking certain questions. But that seems to be who he is, his faith that God will take care of things makes it credible. That just seems to be how he rolls. But still, it was a book that made me think and feel, the sort of book I really, really want to discuss with people. So please, someone read this!

MY GRADE: A B+.

AUDIOBOOK NOTES: The narrator, Josh Cohen is really good. This must have been a challenging book, mainly due to the Oasan characters. Some of them speak English (the base has been going for a while, and a couple of people before Peter spent quite a bit of time with them), but there are sounds their physiology really struggles with, and Cohen comes up with a credible way to pronounce those sounds (the 't', the 's'). I wondered whether he was making it up, but I've had a look online and Faber actually substitutes those letters with strange symbols in the Oasans' speech, which would have probably worked just as well as Cohen's narration.

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Love’s Persuasion, by Ola Awonubi

TITLE: Love’s Persuasion
AUTHOR: Ola Awonubi

COPYRIGHT: 2014
PAGES: 250
PUBLISHER: Ankara Press

SETTING: Contemporary Nigeria
TYPE: Romance
SERIES: None

Things are changing for the staff of Lagos firm City Finance, and not necessarily for the best. But for Ada Okafor, a bright, dedicated and beautiful trainee accountant, the only change worth noticing is the dashing, British-trained new assistant managing director Tony Okoli.

Ambitious and determined, Ada ignores her feelings for Tony and focuses on juggling her work in accounts with completing her degree in business and finance. But their love of books draws them closer together and soon they embark on a secret but passionate affair.

They soon discover that the course of love does not run smooth and a host of obstacles - from Tony’s disapproving family to jealous colleagues - litter their path. Their passion for each other is truly tested as they fight to persuade themselves and the world that love, in the end, trumps social status.

I heard about Ankara Press through CD, who often comments here. It's a new romance imprint based in Nigeria, publishing contemporary stories set in Africa and with African protagonists. This is something that I've long wanted to read... not Africa in particular, but romances set in places outside the US and Western Europe, with protagonists who are both locals (all those HPs with American/English girls falling in love with Greeks/Italians/South Americans in exotic locations which have only a distant relation to reality are an extremely poor substitutes).

Anyway, Ankara Press only have a handful of titles available so far, but several of them appealed to me. I also really liked some of what I read in their About us page: Their stories feature women "who work, play and, of course, fall madly in love in vibrant African cities from Lagos to Cape Town" and men who "are not afraid of independent and sexually assertive women". They want to publish books that "reflect the realities of African women's lives in ways that challenge boundaries and go beyond conventional expectations". Sounds pretty damn good to me!

Of course, the proof is in the pudding, so I bought one of their books to try. Love's Persuasion is set in Lagos. Ada Okafor is a young woman working as a receptionist in a large family-owned business. She's determined to build a successful career, so she's studying to be an accountant and getting some experience by helping out in the accounts section.

When the big boss's son is brought in to take on the role of assistant managing director (clearly a first step in him taking over from his dad), Ada doesn't expect anything to change, other than, she hopes, the firm becoming more professionally run. Tony Okoli is one good-looking man and she really liked what she saw of him when they briefly chatted at the reception announcing his appointment, but she's not going to endanger her job by messing about with the boss. But Tony was really taken with Ada, and, although he knows he shouldn't, he keeps making friendly overtures.

The book started out very well. I liked Ada a lot, with her determination to stand on her own and make a success of her own life, rather than simply marrying a rich guy, as people in her life keep pressuring to do. She takes no shit from Tony, and is quite happy to tell him that she’s not going to be one of those wives who will just put her diploma up as a trophy while they keep house for a man. No, if she marries a man it will be someone who will share the housework and make it possible for her to have a career, just as much as he does. There’s a scene when Tony invites her to his place for a meal and suggests having Chinese. She’s surprised when, instead of ordering in, he starts taking shrimps and fresh veggies out of the fridge. She wonders, outraged, if this guy is imagining she’ll be cooking him a meal. Nope, Tony cooks HER a meal, which is a good way of signaling that he might be exactly the sort of man she’s looking for.

But Tony is a character who feels a lot less developed than Ada. We know he has no real interest in taking over from his father. Tony wants to write and when in London, he actually left a job in the City (he’s an accountant) to write. But then his father became ill and pressured Tony to come back and take over the business, even though his sister, Samantha, also has a business degree and is willing and able to take over instead. But that’s as deep as his character goes, really. Tony feels pretty passive about all this. And some of his actions were hard to understand. He’s formally engaged to a family friend's daughter, mainly because their parents have pressured them into a relationship, but he doesn’t love her. And he pursues Ada anyway (all the while telling himself he shouldn’t), without really giving much thought as to whether he will go forward with the engagement. He seems to be the kind of person who thinks that if they ignore a problem, it doesn't exist. The engagement issue does gets sorted out, but not through anything HE does. I got to the point where I doubted he would have done anything at all.

Mainly because of Tony’s lack of depth, the romance is not great. I kind of liked the first half, mainly because they bond over a shared love of books and Tony’s support of Ada’s ambitions, and the action centres on Ada and her life and her work. But things started going downhill at about the halfway point, when Tony suddenly declares he loves Ada (I was like… Whaaa???? When did that happen??) and they start dating in earnest. That’s kind of the signal for the crazy soap opera stuff to start happening. Female characters, particularly, go all catty and horrible and slut-shamey and start attacking Ada. Even the previously quite professional, good people round Ava in her job go weird.

It does come good in the end, in an unexpected way, but that was in the last, quasi-epilogue chapter. Tony has become a very appealing character and clearly has grown some decisiveness, but unfortunately, we haven’t seen the transition.

I must say, though, the setting partly compensated for the so-so romance. I couldn’t help but compare this to Snow Angels, which I've recently reviewed and which I read just before. That was written by a foreigner living in Finland, mainly for a foreign audience. Snow Angels carefully explained the context of all the particularly Finnish things and functioned almost like a cultural travelogue. I actually enjoyed this element of the book, but I also liked the completely different experience of Love’s Persuasion. This one was written for a local audience. There’s no allowance made for foreign readers. Things like: people will use Pidgin English when they would normally do so, and the reader is assumed to know the connotations of the characters living in or going to different Lagos neighbourhoods, that sort of thing. I was sometimes a bit lost (mainly with the Pidgin English - I could get the gist of what was being said, but often not the details), but I did not mind at all. The details of the lives of the Okoli side of the book seemed familiar, as they did in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Americanah (the quirks of the elites do seem remarkably similar in Nigeria and Uruguay). But what was most fascinating were the details of Ada’s life… how a young Lagos professional who’s only just starting out would live. Things like her sharing a room with a friend in a large house, or the struggles of working in a local company, run in the local way, influenced by the local culture. All this made this a book worth reading for me.

Finally, I really should mention the writing and editing. They weren't great. The writing is plain, sometimes a bit clumsy (e.g. when the author goes on about exactly what music the characters are listening to), but it was readable. I didn’t mind that a lot, but I did mind that there were quite a lot of mistakes. Not enough to drive me crazy, but definitely enough to notice. A lot of those were just things a basic copy-edit should have sorted out, too. A shame.

MY GRADE: A C+.

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Snow Angels, by James Thompson

TITLE: Snow Angels
AUTHOR: James Thompson

COPYRIGHT: 20019
PAGES: 304
PUBLISHER: Berkley

SETTING: Contemporary Finland
TYPE: Mystery
SERIES: Starts a series

The first thriller in a new series featuring Inspector Kari Vaara: the haunted, hardened detective who must delve into Finland's dark and violent underbelly.

Kaamos: Just before Christmas, the bleakest time of the year in Lapland. The unrelenting darkness and extreme cold above the Arctic Circle drive everyone just a little insane . . . perhaps enough to kill.

A beautiful Somali immigrant is found dead in a snowfield, her body gruesomely mutilated, a racial slur carved into her chest. Heading the murder investigation is Inspector Kari Vaara, the lead detective of the small-town police force. The vicious killing may have been a hate crime, a sex crime-or one and the same. Vaara knows he must keep this potentially ex­plosive case out of the national headlines or else it will send shock waves across Finland, an insular nation afraid to face its own xenophobia.

The demands of the investigation begin to take their toll on Vaara and his marriage. His young American wife, Kate, newly pregnant with their first child, is struggling to adapt to both the unforgiving Arctic climate and the Finnish culture of silence and isolation. Meanwhile Vaara himself, haunted by his rough childhood and failed first marriage, discovers that the past keeps biting at his heels: He suspects that the rich man for whom his ex-wife left him years ago may be the killer.

Endless night can drive anyone to murder.

I was really close to moving to Helsinki last year, so I’ve since felt a sort of personal interest in Finland and picked up several books set there. The fashion for Scandi noir being what it is, they are all mysteries (and yes, I know Finland is not a Scandinavian country, but it kind of fits in the trend!).

Snow Angel features Inspector Kari Vaara. Kari spent some time as a detective in Helsinki as a young man, but has returned to his hometown, a really small town close to the Arctic circle. As the book starts, he's been living there for a few years and he is as happy as he's ever been. He has recently got married to Kate, an American woman who moved to the area to run a ski resort, and they are expecting their first child.

And then Kari gets called to a crime scene. It's very ugly. The victim is a young Somali woman, an actress who's been making a name for herself in a series of B movies. She's been horribly mutilated, including racial slurs being carved onto her chest. And the investigation quickly turns up suspects with connections, both to power and to Kari's personal life, making an already delicate case particularly difficult.

The setting was probably the best thing about this book. It's not an urban setting, which might be a bit more international (as Kari mentions, there is a large expatriate community in Helsinki), but an isolated, rural setting beyond the Arctic circle. The writer is from the US and lives in Finland and is clearly writing for an international audience, so some of the things that would be just presented unquestioned by a Finnish author writing for a Finnish audience are given a lot more context and explanation. One one hand, this makes the narrator not feel particularly natural, but it WAS interesting stuff and I enjoyed it. It’s a completey different view from the shallow conventional wisdom about Finland, a lot more negative and dark, which was interesting. I’d be interested to know what a Finn would say about some of Thompson's views of the country, though!

Unfortunately, the setting was not just the best thing about the book, it was pretty much the only good thing. The mystery was terribly done. First, the initial crime feels quite exploitative unnecessarily graphic, and the horror doesn't stop there. The body count keeps climbing, with the plot getting more and more preposterous.

And then there was Kari's investigation, which was just plain jaw-droppingly bad and unbelievable. For all that Kari tells us that Finnish police are amongst the world's best and that he has lots of experience in real investigations from the time he worked in Helsinki, he shows a remarkable lack of judgment. Just to give one single example (and there are many): the first viable suspect he identifies is the man his ex-wife left him for. That part was fine, the evidence really was pointing his way. But does Kari recuse himself from the investigation? Nope, even though he's offered the opportunity. He picks the man up himself and heads the interrogation. The fact that he doesn't see just how stupid an idea this is is bad enough, but the fact that the chief of police, supposedly a man with a great awareness of public relations, doesn't insist was incredible. And this is just the start of a string of actions that range from obliviousness to naiveté (my favourite was how he kept telling everyone everything in great detail).

I liked the relationship between Kari and his wife a bit better. Kate is starting to struggle. She knows very few people apart from Kari and none of them well, so she is understandingly feeling isolated. It was an interesting conflict, but the problem was that she sometimes reacted in ways that didn’t feel emotionally believable, like getting really shrill and unreasonably demanding when Kari is just doing his job (that's not a problem necessarily; what bothered me most was that the narrative seemed to imply some of these demands were reasonable).

So, not a success, this one. I don't think I'll be reading more in this series.

MY GRADE: A C-.

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Hard Time, by Cara McKenna

TITLE: Hard Time
AUTHOR: Cara McKenna

COPYRIGHT: 2014
PAGES: 310
PUBLISHER: Intermix

SETTING: Contemporary US
TYPE: Romance
SERIES: None

Annie Goodhouse doesn’t need to be warned about bad boys; good sense and an abusive ex have given her plenty of reasons to play it safe. But when she steps into her new role as outreach librarian for Cousins Correctional Facility, no amount of good sense can keep her mind—or eyes—off inmate Eric Collier.

Eric doesn’t claim to be innocent of the crime that landed him in prison. In fact, he’d do it again if that’s what it took to keep his family safe. Loyalty and force are what he knows. But meeting Annie makes him want to know more.

When Eric begins courting Annie through letters, they embark on a reckless, secret romance—a forbidden fantasy that neither imagines could ever be real…until early parole for Eric changes everything, and forces them both to face a past they can’t forget, and a desire they can’t deny.

Annie Goodhouse is a relatively new librarian, only just settling into a new job in a new town, far away from home. The book is set, as far as I can tell, in the same decaying Michigan town as my favourite McKenna, After Hours, while Annie is originally from the South (one of the Carolinas, IIRC). Everything's different, and her new role as an outreach librarian doesn't make it any easier to settle in. That's because on Fridays the population she will be reaching out to is that living in the Cousins Correctional Facility.

Annie is initially very nervous about dealing with the inmates, but as she starts to know them and work with them, she starts feeling a bit less tense. The exception is one of them, Eric Collier. Annie has felt drawn to him right from the beginning, and familiarity doesn't really diminish the electricity of that connection. Because right from the start, Annie and Eric have began a very secret, very intimate and very forbidden correspondence.

And then Eric is given early parole, and he and Annie must figure out whether what they built through letters means something more than just words.

When I read the description of this book, that it was about an outreach librarian who started falling in love with a convict through letters, I kind of assumed automatically that it would be a correspondence that would only gradually become more personal and then more intimate. I pictured he would start writing about, say, his life and his views (maybe as a class assignment, or something), and after a while, this would turn into love letters.

This wasn’t the case. On Annie’s very first visit, Eric ‘writes’ her a letter under the guise of asking her for help writing to someone else. “Darling”, it starts, and there’s some mild sexual content. And the very next time she comes to the prison, he hands her a letter where the sexual content is quite high. He gives her the option to signal him to stop or continue, and, after some soul-searching, Annie goes for telling him to continue.

And that just felt wrong to me. I didn’t quite buy that Annie would have been ok with that, no matter how sexy she’d found him. Her acceptance of this showed a lack of judgment on her part, which she admits, but more extreme than I was willing to accept as a reader. Furthermore, I felt it was stupidly naive of her to take Eric's letter personally. What I mean is: this is a guy who hasn’t had any intimacy with a woman in 5 years and who’s latching on to the first pretty woman he has access to. It felt stupid of Annie to read anything more into it, at least at the beginning (even though it turns out she was right to do so!).

Those early letters...she and Eric don’t know each other at all when they start writing this really intimate stuff, so how is this intimacy meaningful? At the beginning, it feels more like two people writing out their fantasies. I really think this would have worked much, much better if things had been more gradual, if there had been a degree of mutual knowledge before things got intimate. Oh, the letters themselves are quite touching and sexy, it's just that they would have worked better in that different situation. And yes, this is basically me dinging McKenna for not writing the book as I would have liked it to be written. It's just that this initial setup just required stretching my suspension of disbelief way more than it could go, and it would have been so easy to write this same premise in a way that made it more believable!

The second half worked A LOT better for me. It's a really interesting conflict when Eric unexpectedly comes out. He and Annie have built something in their letters, but they can’t just pick up where they left off when Eric is out, not when for Annie, part of the appeal of her correspondence with Eric was the safety of knowing nothing could come of it. They must explore how this relationship can translate into… not a ‘real’ one (as Eric says, that was his reality when they were writing), but one with both of them outside and unrestricted.

And it's not just adapting to physical contact being a possibility. Annie has a big issue with Eric’s view of what he did that got him sent to prison. He still feels he did what he had to do, punishing the man who hurt his sister (and neither we nor Annie know the details there, as Eric’s sister doesn’t want to share them). Annie doesn’t have a problem with that so much, but with the fact that Eric feels he would have to do the same again in similar circumstances, even if it’d have disastrous consequences to himself (and by extension, to the woman who’s contemplating being his long-term partner). The interesting thing is that this showcases a very different world-view between Eric and Annie, one that, as I was reading, I thought might well be a valid reason why the relationship shouldn’t go anywhere. In romance, 99.9% of the times I think of any internal conflict “of course you can get over this!!”. I wasn’t so sure here, which was interesting.

McKenna resolves this in a way that was satisfactory to me, but didn't stretch either too far from their original world-view. It's a good ending, and I liked seeing Annie begin to build a relationship with Eric's family, even though they come from very different backgrounds. However, I really would have liked to see how Annie’s family dealt with Eric, too. Annie's father is in law enforcement, so it's going to be much more of a stretch for him to accept an ex-con as a brother-in-law than it was for Eric's family to accept a comparatively posh woman as a partner for him.

This wasn't my favourite book by this author, mainly because my difficulty buying the circumstances of the start of the relationship. Apart from that, though, I enjoyed it. I particularly like how McKenna has regular working-class people as characters and how they live in regular working-class places. Those places are shown, warts and all, but without being used as plot points to, say, create danger for the protagonists. In a genre where aspirational fantasy seems to get more and more dominant (Billionaires! Pro athletes! Billionaire pro athletes!), I really appreciate McKenna's style.

MY GRADE: A B.

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Breasts, by Florence Williams

TITLE: Breasts: A Natural and Unnatural History
AUTHOR: Florence Williams

COPYRIGHT: 2012
PAGES: 352
PUBLISHER: WW Norton and company

SETTING: N/A
TYPE: Non Fiction
SERIES: None

An engaging narrative about an incredible, life-giving organ and its imperiled modern fate.

Did you know that breast milk contains substances similar to cannabis? Or that it’s sold on the Internet for 262 times the price of oil? Feted and fetishized, the breast is an evolutionary masterpiece. But in the modern world, the breast is changing. Breasts are getting bigger, arriving earlier, and attracting newfangled chemicals. Increasingly, the odds are stacked against us in the struggle with breast cancer, even among men. What makes breasts so mercurial—and so vulnerable?

In this informative and highly entertaining account, intrepid science reporter Florence Williams sets out to uncover the latest scientific findings from the fields of anthropology, biology, and medicine. Her investigation follows the life cycle of the breast from puberty to pregnancy to menopause, taking her from a plastic surgeon’s office where she learns about the importance of cup size in Texas to the laboratory where she discovers the presence of environmental toxins in her own breast milk. The result is a fascinating exploration of where breasts came from, where they have ended up, and what we can do to save them.

I didn't really do much research before borrowing this one. A "natural and unnatural history" of breasts sounded interesting. Turns out I was hoping for something a bit different from what I got.

I thought this would be a mix of science and social history, but it was all science. That’s not necessarily a bad thing; I like science. And the first few chapters were great. They covered things like: how and why the breast evolved and how there is a history of male scientists automatically assuming that it evolved to please men visually, when the evidence is quite different; how the “plumbing” works; and how breast implants started.

But then the rest of the book was basically about chemical exposures and how these affect things like the contents of breast milk and the incidence of breast cancer. And these chapters, I’m afraid, were quite stultifying. Just to make it clear, I don’t find the subject itself boring. I’ve actually worked on chemicals regulation. I’ve written and supervised work on assessing impacts of occupational exposures. And some of the completely dry scientific documents I’ve had to read for that have been much more interesting to read than these chapters. They felt repetitive and the writing style didn’t work for me at all. The latter reminded me a bit of Mary Roach's (I like her books, but am iffy on her writing style, which often makes her come across as a bit lame).

Also -and I don’t blame Williams for this- it all felt very hopeless. As she herself admits, there’s very little we can do as individuals. Even if we know all the complex science and are determined to avoid contact with substances that are problematic, there’s often no way to know what’s out there and to avoid being exposed. We can do something at a societal level (and we really should), but that’s more for the sake of our descendants. We, personally, are screwed already. That’s the message (yeah, perfect holiday reading!).

I was left feeling dissatisfied, in addition to hopeless. There was such a lot that I felt was left out that I would have liked to know about! A lot of it is more on the social science end, but even with this being a hard science book, there were lots of other areas to cover, many potentially more interesting than the ones we got. For instance, Williams talks quite a few times about the effect of different kinds of underwear, but leaves it at that. That could have been a fascinating chapter.

MY GRADE: A C-. The first few chapters were good, but I didn't think much of the rest.

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Festive in Death, by JD Robb

TITLE: Festive in Death
AUTHOR: JD Robb

COPYRIGHT: 2014
PAGES: 400
PUBLISHER: Putnam

SETTING: 2060s New York
TYPE: Police procedural & romance
SERIES: By my count, 41st full-length title in the In Death series

Eve Dallas deals with a homicide—and the holiday season—in the latest from the #1 New York Times bestselling author.

Personal trainer Trey Ziegler was in peak physical condition. If you didn't count the kitchen knife in his well-toned chest.

Lieutenant Eve Dallas soon discovers a lineup of women who'd been loved and left by the narcissistic gym rat. While Dallas sorts through the list of Ziegler's enemies, she's also dealing with her Christmas shopping list—plus the guest list for her and her billionaire husband's upcoming holiday bash.

Feeling less than festive, Dallas tries to put aside her distaste for the victim and solve the mystery of his death. There are just a few investigating days left before Christmas, and as New Year's 2061 approaches, this homicide cop is resolved to stop a cold-blooded killer.

Eve's latest case is the death of a womanising personal trainer. Someone's taken exception to his assholic approach to romance and stuck a knife in his chest. Meanwhile, it's coming up to the holidays and the now traditional Christmas party Roarke insists they host at their house.

Festive In Death is an unremarkable entry in the In Death series. I enjoyed reading it, but it's one of the more forgettable ones. There's just nothing here that stands out.

The case Eve is investigating is good, but not great. It's an interesting setup, and the investigation is well-done, as usual. The solution was a little bit surprising to me, which is good, but on the other hand, I don’t know just how much I believed it (especially the final flourish, if you can call it that). This element of the book is... competent, but has nothing to raise it above that. There is no particular urgency to get justice, Eve is not particularly affected by it on a personal level and it's not a particularly clever, intriguing premise. Just ok. It really needed some tension and suspense.

And I guess I could say similarly about the personal stuff. I liked visiting with these old friends, but they keep telling the same stories, so some of the set pieces felt a little bit tired this time. They were just a bit too predictable… “oh, here comes the scene where Trina slathers some gloop on Eve”. Hard to get excited about that.

I still do like Robb's characters, though, both the ones we know very well and the ones who have tiny bit parts in each book and we only meet for a little while. The first scene speaks of how well these characters have been created: the body is found by the victim’s ex and her friend, and the friend, who is unnamed in that initial scene, is clearly someone we know. And I could tell immediately who it was, just through how she spoke and reacted.

I also liked Eve’s continued minute progression. She continues to unbend a bit about loving the people who have become part of her life and showing it, and that's good to see. She's not as she was early in the series, but she's changed in a way that feels believable, especially if one has been with her every step of the way. Good stuff but, again, not surprising and by now not novel in any way.

Finally, I feel I should probably mention yet again (as I've done in my previous In Death reviews) that the OTT nature of Roarke as a character continues to not really fit in what the series has become. At least his role in Eve’s investigation was not particularly prominent here. When he did get involved, though, it felt strange and wrong. He goes on all sorts of random interviews as civilian consultant. Seriously, the police show up to question you and this world-famous billionaire businessman just happens to be along for the ride? I question that defence lawyers don’t have a ball with that.

MY GRADE: A B-.

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Back!

Hi, everyone, I'm finally back! I had a wonderful, long holiday, mostly spent playing with my baby newphew (who's now almost 2 and incredibly funny and sweet) and sitting by the swimming pool reading up a storm (see the book covers below).

My little nephew drinking mate

I also did some travelling. Physical travelling (a weekend in Buenos Aires, which was fab), but also travelling through books. I spent time in space (Mars and further afield), and in lots of places on Earth. Various locations in the US and Britain, of course, and also places like Italy, Malaysia, Nigeria, Finland, not to mention the imaginary ones (think dragons, barbarians and all sort of cool things). I did have a fair few DNF and meh reads, but I did read several books that I'd been hoarding for my holidays, so a nice proportion of what I read was really good. I'll be posting reviews over the next weeks.

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