Final Girls, by Riley Sager

TITLE: Final Girls
AUTHOR: Riley Sager

COPYRIGHT: 2017
PAGES: 342
PUBLISHER: Dutton

SETTING: Contemporary US
TYPE: Thriller
SERIES: None

Ten years ago, college student Quincy Carpenter went on vacation with five friends and came back alone, the only survivor of a horror movie–scale massacre. In an instant, she became a member of a club no one wants to belong to—a group of similar survivors known in the press as the Final Girls. Lisa, who lost nine sorority sisters to a college dropout's knife; Sam, who went up against the Sack Man during her shift at the Nightlight Inn; and now Quincy, who ran bleeding through the woods to escape Pine Cottage and the man she refers to only as Him. The three girls are all attempting to put their nightmares behind them, and, with that, one another. Despite the media's attempts, they never meet.

Now, Quincy is doing well—maybe even great, thanks to her Xanax prescription. She has a caring almost-fiancé, Jeff; a popular baking blog; a beautiful apartment; and a therapeutic presence in Coop, the police officer who saved her life all those years ago. Her memory won’t even allow her to recall the events of that night; the past is in the past.

That is, until Lisa, the first Final Girl, is found dead in her bathtub, wrists slit, and Sam, the second, appears on Quincy's doorstep. Blowing through Quincy's life like a whirlwind, Sam seems intent on making Quincy relive the past, with increasingly dire consequences, all of which makes Quincy question why Sam is really seeking her out. And when new details about Lisa's death come to light, Quincy's life becomes a race against time as she tries to unravel Sam's truths from her lies, evade the police and hungry reporters, and, most crucially, remember what really happened at Pine Cottage, before what was started ten years ago is finished.

I sort of fell for the hype with this one. But then, I really liked the premise. The thought has crossed my mind more than once after watching a horror movie: what would it be like to have to live having gone through that? This is what Final Girls is about. The title refers to the horror movie trope of the single survivor of some sort of horrendous massacre, usually a young woman.

Our protagonist, Quincy Carpenter, was one such final girl, after all her friends were killed while at a drunken party weekend in a remote cottage in the forest. In the eyes of the press, she joined two others: Sam, who survived a massacre in a motel, and Lisa, who lived through a killing spree in a sorority house (to continue with our horror movie tropes!). The press would like nothing better than to have all 3 women get together, but although Quincy and Lisa have spoken on the phone, that has never happened.

Some years later, Quincy feels like she's doing well. She runs a popular baking blog and leads a quiet life with her boyfriend, a public defender. Yes, she still can't remember most of what happened in Pine Cottage, and she needs antidepressants to get through the day, not to mention her intermittent fits of kleptomania, but considering what she went through, that's understandable.

And then Quincy receives news that Lisa has killed herself, not long after sending Quincy an email saying she needs to speak to her. And that is quickly followed by Sam showing up at Quincy's apartment, where she proceeds to immediately upend Quincy's life.

This didn't work at all. The plot, which was the main draw for me, ended up being nothing more than an intriguing setup. The way it was developed felt clunky and unbelievable. The author sprinkled red herrings all over, which I guess were effective, in that I did fall for them, but they felt manipulative and artificial, rather than organic. It all ends up being too convoluted to be remotely believable, and I just couldn't buy the ending.

The characters were even weaker. Quincy is incredibly meh, a sort of vacuum where a personality should be, and her relationship with Sam just annoyed me, because it felt so forced and fake. Sam is incredibly clichéd, the bad girl who shows up and immediately starts getting the good girl to misbehave and do really stupid stuff and take pointless risks. I didn't believe any of it for a minute.

So yeah, my main problem with this one was that I was just not able to suspend my disbelief, so I spent the entire book going "Oh, seriously!" and "No, no, no!". Not great.

MY GRADE: A C-. And I'm probably being a bit generous.

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The Queen of Blood, by Sarah Beth Durst

TITLE: The Queen of Blood
AUTHOR: Sarah Beth Durst

COPYRIGHT: 2016
PAGES: 368
PUBLISHER: Harper Voyager

SETTING: Kingdom of Aratay
TYPE: Fantasy
SERIES: First in the Queens of Renthia series

Everything has a spirit: the willow tree with leaves that kiss the pond, the stream that feeds the river, the wind that exhales fresh snow...

But the spirits that reside within this land want to rid it of all humans. One woman stands between these malevolent spirits and the end of humankind: the queen. She alone has the magical power to prevent the spirits from destroying every man, woman, and child. But queens are still only human, and no matter how strong or good they are, the threat of danger always looms.

Because the queen’s position is so precarious, young women are specially chosen to train as her heirs. Daleina, a seemingly quiet academy student, simply wants to right the wrongs that have befallen the land. Meanwhile, the disgraced champion Ven has spent his exile secretly fighting against the growing number of spirit attacks. When Daleina and Ven join forces, they embark on a treacherous quest to find the source of the spirits’ restlessness—a journey that will force them to stand against both enemies and friends to save their land... before it’s bathed in blood.

This is the sort of book that, if you only read the back cover, might seem like pretty generic YA fantasy. It's anything but! A huge thank you to Carrie S at Smart Bitches Trashy Books for the excellent review, otherwise I never would have picked it up.

The Queen of Blood is set in a world where humans live in a sort of armed truce with the spirits that reside in every bit of nature. There are spirits in the wood, in the ice, in the fire, in the earth, in the air and in the water, and every single one of them wishes to push the humans out of what they feel is their world. The only thing holding them back from killing humans and driving them out is the human Queen, who is able to control them, to a certain extent, and mostly keep them from attacking.

In such a world, it's crucial to have someone ready to take over as soon as the Queen dies, someone with enough power to be able to control the spirits. The way it works is that the Queen's Champions select Candidates (usually from Academies devoted to training any girls with power -and it's only girls, not boys, who have power) and train them to be able to pass the tests that allow them to become Heirs.

That is the future that Deleina is determined should be hers. When she was a child, spirits attacked her village. Deleina was able to protect her family with her powers, and they were the only survivors. This has made her determined to develop her abilities enough to, if not become Queen, be able to better protect those around her. She's probably one of the students with least raw power in her Academy, but she's hard-working and conscientious and very, very determined.

And I'll leave the plot description at that, just the basic setup, because one of the things I loved most about this book was that I had no idea where it was going to go next. There were plenty of times when my jaw just dropped. I only realise how much a lot of what I read is a bit predictable and how much I crave being surprised when I read books like this.

One of the surprises was how feminist and subversive of bad fantasy tropes this book is. Part of me was expecting demonising (or at least negative portrayal) of other women: Daleina's fellow students at the Academy, the Queen, all clear rivals to our protagonists... and what does it say about our world that enough books have done this that I was expecting it (even if kind of dreading it)? Durst surprised me, and I loved what she did here. The students forge a strong sisterhood. They are rivals and they understand this, but they are invested in making it a fair, healthy competition, and that doesn't preclude friendship. My favourite was what Durst did with Merecot (sp? I listened to the audiobook), who's the strongest student in terms of control over the spirits, and who is extremely ambitious and ruthless about it. She's prickly and can be mean, but even she is not portrayed as bad. She and Daleina forge a real friendship, even if one with a fair bit of conflict. And the Queen! We know almost from the start that something is wrong there, and that the destruction of villages such as Daleina's is down to the Queen's actions (or inactions). Surely she is a villain? Nope. Again, she's a very flawed person, but even she is not portrayed as a villain. I loved it.

Another surprise: the relationship between Daleina and Ven, the Champion who takes her on as his candidate and trains her to become an Heir. I sort of assumed there was going to be some sort of romance there between them, but there wasn't! Which was great, because the book worked so much better because of that. There is romance, and each of them has their own relationships, but their relationship was one that felt so much fresher and new because of the lack of the romance.

Daleina herself is surprising as well. She seems a bit tentative at first, and she is probably the least ambitious of the candidates, but she is absolutely not tentative when it comes to doing what is best for her country. Durst goes places with this that I wasn't expecting, and I loved it.

I also loved that the world is really original. There's a real darkness here (things can get really bloody!), and Durst doesn't guarantee that even nice characters survive. There's also an interesting environmental message here: what happens when humanity seeks to impose its will over nature rather than work with it? It's made clear that the reason spirits can be controlled by humans is that they need humans as much as humans need the spirits. Each are essential to keeping the world in balance, so the power to influence and control the spirits has evolved to ensure that. Most women with power use it to control, but Daleina is not powerful enough for that. She coaxes the spirits, uses her limited power to distract them from destructiveness and push them towards an expression of their own power and impulses that helps humans (to grow, to build, rather than to kill and destroy). This is one of the elements I hope to see explored in future books.

MY GRADE: An A-. Highly recommended

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Come Sundown, by Nora Roberts

TITLE: Come Sundown
AUTHOR: Nora Roberts

COPYRIGHT: 2017
PAGES: 480
PUBLISHER: St. Martin's

SETTING: Contemporary US
TYPE: Romantic Suspense
SERIES: None

The Bodine ranch and resort in western Montana is a family business, an idyllic spot for vacationers. A little over thirty thousand acres and home to four generations, it’s kept running by Bodine Longbow with the help of a large staff, including new hire Callen Skinner. There was another member of the family once: Bodine’s aunt, Alice, who ran off before Bodine was born. She never returned, and the Longbows don’t talk about her much. The younger ones, who never met her, quietly presume she’s dead. But she isn’t. She is not far away, part of a new family, one she never chose?and her mind has been shattered...

When a bartender leaves the resort late one night, and Bo and Cal discover her battered body in the snow, it’s the first sign that danger lurks in the mountains that surround them. The police suspect Cal, but Bo finds herself trusting him-and turning to him as another woman is murdered and the Longbows are stunned by Alice’s sudden reappearance. The twisted story she has to tell about the past?and the threat that follows in her wake?will test the bonds of this strong family, and thrust Bodine into a darkness she could never have imagined.

In Come Sundown, we travel to Montana, where the Bodine-Longbow family run a successful ranch/resort. Bodine Longbow, the daughter of the family, is our heroine. She's confident and competent, the sort of woman who doesn't suffer fools gladly. As the book starts, Callen Skinner has just returned to the area and has taken a job at the ranch. Callen grew up there with a father who was a gambling addict and who lost pretty much all of the family's lands. He was best friends with Chase, Bodine's older brother, and she had a bit of a crush on him, but one that never turned into anything. Now that Cal is back after a successful career in Hollywood as a horse wrangler working in films, both are grown, single, and attracted to each other.

As they court, things around them start getting very worrying. A young woman working as a bartender in the resort is found murdered, and soon the same thing happens with a young college student returning home. Someone is killing young women, and one of the deputies is convinced it's Cal.

Interspersed with the present-day story, we get the story of Alice, Bodine's mother's sister. Alice is the family black sheep, as she left in a dramatic huff almost 25 years earlier (on the day of her sister's wedding, no less), and after sending a few postcards for a couple of years, disappeared off the face of the Earth. Her mother still grieves for her absence, but her sister and grandmother are still pretty angry at her.

We soon find out that Alice did not disappear of her own volition. After a couple of years she decided to come home, only she ran into the wrong guy as she hitchhiked closer to home. The man who took her was one of those American survivalist / fundamentalist types, and he decided to take her for his 'wife'. For almost 25 years, Alice has been basically his slave, trapped, beaten, constantly raped and forced to bear her captor's children. And then she escapes.

I have very mixed feelings about this one. I mostly enjoyed it as I was reading it, but now that I've finished and think back about it, I don't think it was very good at all. I like the setting and the family and the writing, and I particularly liked seeing Alice come back to life. However, there were too many elements that could have been a lot better.

The romance was very meh, and that's a problem when the book is supposed to be a romance novel. I never warmed up to Bodine or to Callen. They felt a bit shallow, possibly because neither of them experienced any sort of growth during the book, beyond Callen sort of coming to terms with his mother's love for his gambling-addict father (not that this seems to affect him much at all now). Both Bo and Cal are perfectly fine from the start, two happy people who simply become happier by getting together. That's a great thing to aspire to, but I'm afraid it didn't make for a particularly interesting romance, as there was absolutely no conflict between them. There's no reason why they wouldn't be together, and mostly (other than a couple of scenes where they sort of fight after one or the other flies off the handle for no reason at all, other than plot) they just start dating and it works perfectly fine. There was nothing objectionable there, but nothing that drew me in, either.

I also had some issues with the Alice storyline. I did love it once she came home, but in the first sections there are a lot of scenes showing her in captivity. Those scenes really were harrowing, particularly the ones early on, when Alice's mind is still not beaten down by the abuse. To be honest, they felt unnecessarily graphic to me, and they didn't really go well with the rest of the book.

And then there was the suspense subplot. Exactly the same thing happened to me in the previous romantic suspense release by this author, in that as soon as I met a particular character, long before they'd done anything remotely suspicious, I knew pretty much everything. I'm not sure if it's that it was really telegraphed, or that I'm a bit too familiar with Nora Robert's oeuvre, but there was zero suspense for me. I was picking up every clue, and therefore the moment when the person's identity was revealed, which was clearly written to be a shock to the reader, was flat as a pancake.

I really don't know what's going on with Roberts. Lately her trilogies have gone terrible, her standalone romantic suspense books are hit or miss, but the In Death books are still fantastic. Weird.

MY GRADE: I'd give it a B-, and I'm being pretty generous here.

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My reading in two graphs

I just installed a new version of Office and have been playing with pivot tables to familiarise myself with how they work here. I've been tracking my reading for many, many years, so that was the obvious file to play with. Probably of interest only to me, but here are a couple of graphs that tell such a clear story of how my reading has changed over the years:

I'm going off romance (click here to enlarge)

My reading used to be 80% romance, but it's been gradually going down, and is now hovering around a third. Probably a combination of reasons: a) I have changed; b) the genre has changed; and c) I've got better at finding out about non-romance books that appeal to me.

Ebook and audiobooks have taken over (click here to enlarge)

To save you a click, grey is print, orange is ebooks, blue is audiobooks. I did start reading some ebooks back in 2004, but I didn't track format back then. Still, it was very few (not that many were available, anyway, at least not to me in Uruguay), so the number would have been tiny.

These days, I only read print if I absolutely cannot get the book in e or audio. I listen to lots of audio, but the reason audiobooks have gone slightly down since the peak in 2013 is that I keep finding more and more wonderful podcasts, so that takes up a fair bit of my listening time.

None of this was a surprise, but it was fun to be able to see the trends so clearly.

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The End of the Perfect 10, by Dvora Meyers

TITLE: The End of the Perfect 10: The Making and Breaking of Gymnastics' Top Score - from Nadia to Now
AUTHOR: Dvora Meyers

COPYRIGHT: 2016
PAGES: 336
PUBLISHER: Touchstone

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

Just in time for the 2016 Olympic Games and the fortieth anniversary of Nadia Comaneci’s “Perfect 10,” an exciting and insightful account of the controversial world of gymnastics, the recent changes of the scoring system, and why those changes will drive American gymnasts to the top of the sport in the twenty-first century.

It was the team finals of women’s gymnastics in the 2012 London Olympics and McKayla Maroney was on top of her game. The sixteen-year-old US gymnast was performing arguably the best vault of all time, launching herself unimaginably high into the air and sticking a flawless landing. But when her score came, many were baffled: 16.233. Three tenths of a point in deductions stood between her and a perfect score. But if that vault wasn’t perfection, what was?

For years, gymnastics was scored on a 10.0 scale. During this era, more than 100 “perfect” scores were awarded in major international competitions. But when the 10.0 scoring system caused major judging controversies at the 2004 Olympics, international elite gymnastics made the switch to the open-ended scoring system it uses today, making perfect scores a thing of the past—and forever altering the sport in the process.

Gymnastics insider Dvora Meyers examines the evolution of elite women’s gymnastics over the last few decades. With insight, flair, and a boundless love for the sport, Meyers answers questions that gymnastics fans have been asking since the last perfect score was handed out over twenty years ago. She reveals why successful female gymnasts are older and more athletic than they have ever been before, how the United States became a gymnastics powerhouse, and what the future of gymnastics will hold.

Bolstered by dozens of exclusive interviews with professionals representing every aspect of the sport, The End of the Perfect 10 explores a crucial change in one of the most popular Olympic sports, and is a captivating account of elite gymnastics’ entry into the uncharted world of imperfection.

I'm a bit of a fair weather gymnastics fan, in that I only watch it when it's on the telly. That basically means that, since I don't pay for any dedicated sports TV channels (I know myself -I wouldn't leave the house on weekends if I had football on TV), I only watch it every 4 years, during the Olympics.

So how would a book that dives into the nitty-gritty of the gymnastics world and organisation work for someone like me? Well, some of it worked really well, some of it not so much.

The first half, which is basically what is described in the subtitle, worked beautifully. Meyers uses the starting point of the marking system to explore the sport and how it's changed over the years. It looks at the issues around having that top end, that perfect 10, it looks at the politics around it and at the drivers for change, it looks at how it did change,and finally it explores what that has meant.

Meyers is very much an insider and seems to be able to talk to absolutely everyone, so her exploration relies heavily on her interviews. That element could have been integrated a little bit better to the text (what we get are extensive quotes, which feels a bit clunky), but it paints a really good picture.

I loved this bit because it allowed me to really understand a lot of things which were vague feelings and impressions until I read this. I started the book thinking that of course the change in systems must have been a good thing, as it promotes increased difficulty and envelope pushing. That has to be a good thing, right? But after watching lots and lots of YouTube videos to actually see the performances Meyers describes (and you really need to read this where you are able to access online videos) I realised that my personal preference actually leans more towards the perfect execution, even if it's of less difficult skills, over something super hard but that doesn't look as perfect. Who knew?

The second half of the book was a lot less interesting to me. Meyers looks at how the US women's gymastics team became what it is today, after the disappointment of the 2000 Olympics. I confess I read the first chapter of that bit, got really bored, and skimmed the rest. I got the gist of it, and that was more than enough for me. There is also a long section about college gymnastics in the US, which I also found less than fascinating. The only chapter I really liked in the second half was one that looked at why some countries have declined so much, as the US have been in the ascendant (the bit about Romania, particularly, was heartbreaking).

Still, this one is worth reading if only for the first half. I'm glad I did, and I wish I'd found it before the Olympics last year.

MY GRADE: A B-.

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The Little Shop of Happy-Ever-After, by Jenny Colgan

TITLE: The Little Shop of Happy-Ever-After (aka The Bookshop on the Corner in the US)
AUTHOR: Jenny Colgan

COPYRIGHT: 2016
PAGES: 368
PUBLISHER: William Morrow

SETTING: Contemporary England and Scotland
TYPE: Romance
SERIES: None

Nina Redmond is a librarian with a gift for finding the perfect book for her readers. But can she write her own happy-ever-after? In this valentine to readers, librarians, and book-lovers the world over, the New York Times-bestselling author of Little Beach Street Bakery returns with a funny, moving new novel for fans of Meg Donohue, Sophie Kinsella, and Nina George’s The Little Paris Bookshop.

“Losing myself in Jenny Colgan’s beautiful pages is the most delicious, comforting, satisfying treat I have had in ages.”—Jane Green, New York Times bestselling author of Summer Secrets

Nina Redmond is a literary matchmaker. Pairing a reader with that perfect book is her passion… and also her job. Or at least it was. Until yesterday, she was a librarian in the hectic city. But now the job she loved is no more.

Determined to make a new life for herself, Nina moves to a sleepy village many miles away. There she buys a van and transforms it into a bookmobile—a mobile bookshop that she drives from neighborhood to neighborhood, changing one life after another with the power of storytelling.

From helping her grumpy landlord deliver a lamb, to sharing picnics with a charming train conductor who serenades her with poetry, Nina discovers there’s plenty of adventure, magic, and soul in a place that’s beginning to feel like home… a place where she just might be able to write her own happy ending.

I was hoping to love this. It's very much a wish fulfillment plot, but while I steer far clear of such plots involving "celebrity/rock star/billionaire businessman/other high status man falls for regular girl", as it's not a fantasy of mine, this one hit the target.

Nina is a librarian struggling with what austerity is doing to her work (basically: libraries closing and the authorities focusing on novelty management crap over providing users a good experience). She ends up chucking it all in, buying a large van to turn into a mobile bookshop, and setting up shop in a gorgeous little village in Scotland. After a few small initial difficulties, she lands on her feet. The villagers (both in hers and neighbouring villages) love her and her bookshop van, and she happens to find a wonderful place to live, with a grumpy-but-very-attractive farmer landlord/neighbour.

I did start out loving it all. It was twee (in both content and writing style), and twee is not my thing, but I was reading this during a week work was kicking my arse, so it was just right. Nina was a fun character, the setting was charming, and I loved the different characters in the village. Everything was lovely, everything was charming.

And I suspect if the book had been (a lot) shorter, I would have closed it happy. After a while, either the tweeness escalated beyond what I could tolerate or my patience with it ran out. My happy sighs started turning into "oh, please" and "give me a break". What I had been finding charming started to feel preposterous and silly. There were some very nice moments, but pretty much every time, I felt Colgan just took the cuteness too far.

I was also majorly annoyed by the conclusion to the story of a particular character. So, when she moves to Scotland, Nina meets a young Latvian man called Marek, who's one of the drivers of the train that goes from her area to London. They become friends and meet up regularly. There's quite a bit of attraction which seems reciprocal. In the end, though, he gets deported (!). He's is sent home to Latvia in a plane full of deportees (!!). Yes, when the lawyer Nina asks for help calls the Home Office they say he's going voluntarily (would they even give that sort of detail to a random lawyer?), but the implication is that he would have been deported otherwise. This is not because he's some sort of criminal, or anything like that. It's simply because he's lost his job, as far as I can tell. Eh, Ms Colgan, Latvia is an EU member. Marek (and a full planeload of people!) wouldn't get deported for not having a job. This is set in 2016, not 2020. We EU citizens aren't being deported en masse just yet! This is objectively a minor detail, in the grand scheme of things, but given what's been going on in this country, it made me really angry. The attitude with Marek is very much that he's other, even though he's portrayed as a nice character. Of course he has a wife and kids back in Latvia. That's the way it is with foreigners, they come here to make money, but they don't actually integrate.

Bah, humbug.

MY GRADE: A C+.

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The Games: A Global History of the Olympics, by David Goldblatt

TITLE: The Games: A Global History of the Olympics
AUTHOR: David Goldblatt

COPYRIGHT: 2016
PAGES: 528
PUBLISHER: WW Norton

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

The Olympic Games have become the single greatest festival of a universal and cosmopolitan humanity. Seventeen days of sporting competition watched and followed on every continent and in every country on the planet. Simply, the greatest show on earth. Yet when the modern games were inaugurated in Athens in 1896, the founders thought them a "display of manly virtue", an athletic celebration of the kind of amateur gentleman that would rule the world. How was such a ritual invented? Why did it prosper and how has it been so utterly transformed?

In The Games, David Goldblatt - winner of the 2015 William Hill Sports Book of the Year Award - takes on a breathtakingly ambitious search for the answers and brilliantly unravels the complex strands of this history. Beginning with the olympics as a sporting side show at the great Worlds Fairs of the Belle Epoque and transformation into a global media spectacular care of Hollywood and the Nazi party, The Games shows how sport and the olympics been a battlefield in the global Cold War, a defining moment for of epoch social and economic change in host cities and countries, and a theatre of resistance for women and athletes colour once excluded from the show.

Illuminated with dazzling vignettes from over a century of olympic completion - this stunningly researched history captures the excitement of sporting brilliance and the kaleidoscopic experience of the Games. It shows us how this sporting spectacle has come to reflect the world we hope to inhabit and the one we actually live in.

I bought this one while in the flush of excitement about the Olympics last year, but surprisingly, I actually read it, even once my enthusiasm had dissipated a fair bit. It wasn't quite what I expected, but in hindsight, it probably worked all the better for it. I was expecting a sort of "greatest hits" structure. Instead, Goldblatt concentrates more on the stuff behind what we see on our tellies.

Yes, Goldblatt does cover the great moments (as the book description puts it: "such seminal moments as Jesse Owens and Hitler at Berlin in 1936, the Black Power salute at Mexico City in 1968, the massacre of Israeli athletes at Munich in 1972, and the Miracle on Ice at Lake Placid in 1980"), but the real insight is in how he explores different themes, looking at the issues that really made the Olympics what they are. These themes are things such as the organisers' attitudes towards amateurism vs. professionalism and how and why that evolved (oh, the class prejudices!), or the participation of women in the different sports.

The structure is interesting. Goldblatt goes chronologically, through each and every Olympics, but the thematic analysis carries through. He also groups sets of 3 or 4 consecutive Olympic Games and identifies what the themes were that linked them. We have, for instance, "Not the Only Game in Town: The Olympics and Its Challengers in the 1920s" and "Things Fall Apart: Bankruptcy, Boycotts and the End of Amateurism". So it's sort of overarching themes that carry all the way through, and then these mini-themes that characterise different eras. It works beautifully.

I confess I did struggle a bit to get into the book, as the initial sections on the ancient history and the very initial actions that led to the Olympics felt a bit diffuse and not that interesting. But once we got into the Games themselves, things really started moving, and I was gripped.

Also, Goldblatt can definitely write, which to me is just as essential in non-fiction as it is in fiction.

MY GRADE: A B+.

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A Great Deliverance, by Elizabeth George

TITLE: A Great Deliverance
AUTHOR: Elizabeth George

COPYRIGHT: 1988
PAGES: 416
PUBLISHER: Bantam

SETTING: 1980s England
TYPE: Mystery
SERIES: 1st in the Inspector Lynley and DS Havers series

To this day, the low, thin wail of an infant can be heard in Keldale's lush green valleys. Three hundred years ago, as legend goes, the frightened Yorkshire villagers smothered a crying babe in Keldale Abbey, where they'd hidden to escape the ravages of Cromwell's raiders.

Now into Keldale's pastoral web of old houses and older secrets comes Scotland Yard Inspector Thomas Lynley, the eighth earl of Asherton. Along with the redoubtable Detective Sergeant Barbara Havers, Lynley has been sent to solve a savage murder that has stunned the peaceful countryside. For fat, unlovely Roberta Teys has been found in her best dress, an axe in her lap, seated in the old stone barn beside her father's headless corpse. Her first and last words were "I did it. And I'm not sorry."

Yet as Lynley and Havers wind their way through Keldale's dark labyrinth of secret scandals and appalling crimes, they uncover a shattering series of revelations that will reverberate through this tranquil English valley—and in their own lives as well.

This was a bit of a trip down memory lane. Elizabeth George was one of the authors I used to read as a teenager in Uruguay. This was some 20 years ago, before I discovered how to buy books online, when I'd constantly haunt the 2 bookstores in Montevideo which carried English-language books (it got to the point where the managers would let me know when a new box of books arrived, and just let me into the back of the shop to open the boxes myself). I would discover an author I liked, more often than not reading a book that was halfway through a series (in the case of Elizabeth George, I'm pretty sure it was For the Sake of Elena), and then just pick up any other book I came across. Probably why I'm a bit obsessive about reading things in order now!

Anyway, I remember really liking George's books, even though I was getting the developments in the personal lives of the detectives (particularly the soap opera that is Inspector Thomas Lynley's love life) in random bits and pieces. I know there are developments in the later books that many readers have not liked (I know several people in the romance blogosphere have even stopped reading the series because of those developments), but I really fancied going back to the early ones, at least, to see whether they still appealed to me.

Backtracking a bit: it's the mid- to late-1980s, and in a small Yorkshire village, pillar of the community William Teys has been found dead in his barn. It's a gruesome sight: his head has been chopped clean off, and he's lying on top of the family dog, whose throat has been slit. His daughter, 19-year-old Roberta, is sitting right next to the headless body, cradling the axe and wearing her Sunday best. All she will say is "I did it. And I'm not sorry."

The whodunnit doesn't seem like much of a mystery, and the regional police don't seem inclined to look any further than Roberta, whom they cart off to a mental hospital to await trial. But two of the senior police officers in the area have quite the history of disagreement, and yet another clash over this case leads to the decision to send someone from Scotland Yard to have another look.

The person chosen is Inspector Thomas Lynley. Lynley is a bit of a golden boy in the Yard, and he also happens to be one of those aristocratic detectives no British author would dare write in a contemporary setting. He's properly aristocratic, being the eighth Earl of Asherton, with such grand trappings as a massive estate in Cornwall and a full-time valet.

For this case, Lynley is paired with DS Barbara Havers. Havers is an officer who has been demoted back to being a beat cop after not being able to get along with (male) partner after (male) partner. The superintendent is still convinced there is something in her, though, so he takes the chance to see if she can work with the man who's her polar oppposite in background (she's proudly working class), personality (she's bitter and truculent; he's got effortless charm) and looks (she's plain and dumpy; he's gorgeous and stylish).

So the book is just as much a mystery as it is about Lynley and Havers slowly starting to get along and becoming real partners. They're far from there by the end of the book, and there are times when they seem like the worst of enemies, but it's clear that there is a germ of real compatibility there and that once they've ironed out the misconceptions, they'll work well together. I really liked this element, particularly because Havers is far from the dutiful working class assistant to the masterful aristocratic sleuth.

The book is also about Lynley and Havers as individuals, and I liked this just as much. We don't get a lot about Havers in this book, beyond her complicated relationship with her parents, which is very different from what it seems at first glance. However, I do remember there's quite a bit more coming. With Lynley, I've mentioned the soap opera love life, and that's definitely there. We first meet him when Havers has to go find him at the wedding of his (former?) best friend, Simon Allcourt-St James, one of the best forensics scientists in the country. So, the drama: Simon was badly injured some years earlier in a car accident where Lynley was driving (drunk, apparently, although I'm not 100% sure if that's true, or just the rumour Havers picked up). His bride? Lynley's former fiancée, Deborah, whom Lynley's still madly in love with. The other character in this quartet, which we will return to in further books, is Lady Helen. She and Lynley are very close friends, and she seems to be in love with him. So yeah, Havers may assume Lynley leads a charmed life, but he's not a happy man. I seem to remember feeling a bit frustrated with this element, after reading several of the books, so it will be interesting to see if reading them in order makes a difference. For now, I'm really intrigued.

I meant to write a short, snappy review, but I'm going on and on and I haven't even got to the mystery yet! Possibly because I'm slightly conflicted about it. On one hand, the investigation is very well done, and I loved getting to know the villagers and finding out their myriad secrets. George excels at creating some quite vivid characters, and I found them all very believable.

On the other hand, if a mystery has to be mysterious, this doesn't quite work. When they came, the revelations about what had happened were not surprising in the least. In fact, I knew exactly what had happened from the start. Every single little clue and puzzle piece, I zeroed in and put it in exactly the right place. Now, it might be that I remembered the plot from when I first read the book, 20 years ago, but I don't think so. I think what's happened is that what would have been unthinkable and shocking back then is sadly all too obvious in these less innocent times (trying not to include spoilers, but seriously, if you have a case where a pillar of the community type seems to have been clearly murdered by his daughter, what possible explanation does your 2017 mind immediately go to?).

That, however, is not necessarily a problem. I felt the characters, setting, and procedural elements were strong enough to support a non-mystery. And as long as you read the book as a historical mystery (yes, I feel old as well thinking of the 80s as 'historical'), and don't expect the detectives to have the same knowledge (particularly about the psychological aspects of a certain issue) as modern-day detectives would have, then the investigation is perfectly satisfying to read.

And if you need some convincing that the 80s were another time, I leave you with this little snippet, which made me smile. This is Havers imagining a typical posh neighbour of Lynley's in Belgravia:

"We're in Belgravia now. Did we mention it? Oh, do stop by for tea! It's nothing much. Just £300,000, but we like to think of it as such an investment. Five rooms. With the sweetest little cobblestone street that you've ever seen."

I wish I could find such investment!

MY GRADE: A B+.

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Italian food and the the Persephone myth

TITLE: A Portrait of Emily Price
AUTHOR: Katherine Reay

Emily is an art restorer who works for an insurance company. On assignment in another city, she meets the Vassallo brothers when her company hires her some workspace in the studio belonging to one of them. But it is other brother, Benito, who captures his attention. Ben is visiting his brother from his hometown in Italy, and Emily finds him as fascinating as he seems to find her. And as they spend time together helping redo his aunt and uncle's restaurant, they fall for each other. But Ben is supposed to return home to Italy in only a couple of weeks...

Unfortunately, this book never really gelled. There's some good stuff, don't get me wrong. I was interested in Emily and her relationship with her family. I was interested in Ben and the hint of family secrets. I was interested in the setup of Emily following Ben to a small town in Italy. What I wasn't really interested in was the romance.

The problem was that Ben didn't work for me as a character at all. I read over half the book, and Reay never succeeded in making him real. It didn't seem to me that she even tried. Ben was this idealised image of a sexy Italian... lots of calling Emily "bella", lots of exuberance, lots of waving arms around when he spoke (with no contractions, of course, which is supposedly adorable). Actually, he seemed a bit like an excitable toddler. There was nothing that made him an individual. When he and Emily started exchanging 'I love you's and decided to marry, my reaction, which I'm guessing was supposed to be 'awww, how romantic!', was more along the lines of 'WTF??'.

Not for me.

MY GRADE: A DNF.




TITLE: A Tangled Web
AUTHOR: Mercedes Lackey

This novella, originally published in the Harvest Moon anthology, is part of Lackey's Five Hundred Kingdoms series, which I love. No books in that series have come out since 2011, so I've been hoarding this one. Unfortunately, it was a disappointment.

What I love about this series is the subversive, twisty take on fairy tales, and the very fun way in which Lackey uses the concept of the Tradition, an amorphous force that guides people's actions into paths that fit within the traditional tales of their culture. Lackey has these characters called the Godmothers, who understand the Tradition really well and know just how to manipulate it for the good of the kingdoms they protect.

The problem was, not much of what I like about the series was really present here. Greek mythology instead of fairy tales, fine, no problem with that. But Lackey told the story pretty straight. Apart from bringing in two characters from the previous book, visiting from Norse mythology, the Persephone story proceeded right as is traditional, with very minor changes. There was nothing particularly clever, nothing particularly surprising. The Greek mythology characters felt, well, mythological, in that they were paper thin and had no human personalities, unlike the fairytale characters in previous books. There was also very minor manipulating of the Tradition, all in a way that felt much too easy (and no Godmothers!).

Also, the story felt like it was cut down from a novel-length version. We're moving along fine, at a normal pace, seeing all the scenes we'd expect to see, and then we reach a point where we jump a few months and Lackey has a character go "this has happened, and this, and that, and the other, and we need to deal with it", and off we go again. It didn't fit.

MY GRADE: A C+. This was a bit of a waste of time.

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Turbulence, by Jordan Castillo Price

TITLE: Turbulence
AUTHOR: Jordan Castillo Price

COPYRIGHT: 2013
PAGES: 261
PUBLISHER: Self-published

SETTING: Contemporary
TYPE: Romance
SERIES: None

The foundation of superstition is ignorance. First Officer Paul Cronin has no use for magical thinking—he’s a logical guy, a skeptic who only believes what he can see. When a new assignment on Flight 511 takes him directly through the legendary Bermuda Triangle, he’s not concerned about losing his aircraft to supernatural forces. He’s busy trying to hook up with handsome flight attendant Dallas.

Dallas seems eager to oblige at the airport, but his ardor cools quickly when he finds out he and Paul are now on the same crew. Then the turbulence hits, and Paul soon discovers there’s more to the Bermuda Triangle than made-for-TV movies.

While trying to decipher his cryptic predecessor’s notes and guide Flight 511 around the Triangle phenomenon, Paul attempts to piece together a relationship with Dallas. It seems that forces—both paranormal and mundane—are stacked against them. Can Paul navigate a successful course through the turbulence while he finds a way into Dallas’ heart?

Turbulence had a really fun setup. Paul Cronin is a pilot who has just been given a new assignment. It's a regularly scheduled flight out of Miami that goes right through the Bermuda triangle. Paul doesn't even bat an eyelid at the idea. Everyone knows the whole Bermuda Triangle thing is just silly superstition.

But it turns out there really is something supernatural going on, involving alternate realities. Paul is determined to get to the bottom of it and understand how the phenomenon works, and with the help of handsome flight attendant Dallas Turner, he begins to investigate. Might his predecessor, a pilot who died mysteriously not very long before, have hit on something?

Turbulence was originally published as an 8-part serial, and that's how I read it. It started out really strongly. The setting is cool, and the supernatural mystery is really good fun. What's going on is quite unique, much more interesting than the simple "Planes disappear in the Bermuda Triangle" thing. It's all very Twilight Zone, and I loved the idea of it. I couldn't wait to see how Castillo Price would resolve it and what the explanation would be.

I also really liked the romance. It's not hugely developed, but Paul and Dallas clearly share a connection and it's not just chemistry (which is definitely there, by the way). Before too long believed that these two were just right for each other. I also liked how the author dealt with the realities of an interracial relationship. It's subtly done, but it's clear that it's not all plain sailing. It's also just as clear that these two can and will work past any problems.

So far, all good. The problem is that Castillo Price chose to explain the supernatural in her story through half-baked metaphysical crap. And the more we got into the story, the more this metaphysical crap piled up. Worse, we were clearly supposed to take it seriously. I just couldn't. I found it all kind of laughable. So by the time we got to the end, I basically had no idea what the hell was going on. I read the final episode twice, and I still can't figure it out. I'm not an idiot, and I was paying attention, I promise!

MY GRADE: I enjoyed a lot of it, but in the end it was somewhat of a disappointment. C-.

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One Sinful Night in São Paulo, by Amber Belldene

TITLE: One Sinful Night in São Paulo
AUTHOR: Amber Belldene

COPYRIGHT: 2015
PAGES: 108
PUBLISHER: Entangled

SETTING: Contemporary São Paulo
TYPE: Romance
SERIES: None

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Cassie Wilson has traveled to Brazil for her brother's wedding; yet she's the one with cold feet. She's all set to begin seminary, but she's sick and tired of being treated like a saint, especially by the best man. What she really needs is one sexy night with him to ease her jitters and give her a taste of normal life.
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I was on my way to buy another of Belldene's books based on a review, but as soon as I saw that she had a novella set in São Paulo, I got that one instead. Urban Latin American settings are remarkably lacking from pretty much all sorts of fiction in English (in fact, the only other two I can think of are a Kathy Reichs mystery and Ann Patchett's Bel Canto). There are plenty of books with jungle or Mexican desert settings, some rural towns, but almost no big cities. This was irresistible.

The book is about Cassie Wilson, who is about to enter the seminary to become a priest. Her brother is getting married to a Brazilian woman, and the wedding will take place in São Paulo, where her family live. Cassie is delighted to be there for the wedding, except for the prospect of having to spend time with the best man, her brother's best friend Adam. She has long been attracted to Adam and it seems the attraction is reciprocated. However, her vocation seems to have made him put her on a pedestal as someone who is halfway to being a saint, someone he clearly shouldn't touch.

I found myself extremely annoyed right at the beginning of this novella. What annoyed me was the butchering of the Portuguese in the dialogue. I am getting more and more intolerant about this. It's always bothered me, but I used to just be able to let it roll off me. Now, not so much. It's just that really, if you're taking a culture not your own and using it as a setting in one of your books, the very least you can do is do some basic checking to make sure you're getting the language right. I'm fine with a few mistakes -typos do creep in! But here it was way too much. Within the first couple of pages we have: a Portuguese woman saying "Obrigado" instead of "Obrigada" and receiving the heroine by saying "Cassandra, bienvenudo", "fejoida" for "feijoada", "Pao de quejo" for "Pão de queijo", and many more. The most annoying thing is that I got the impression that Belldene must actually have spent some time in São Paulo, because this felt otherwise pretty real.

The language issues were just an irritant, which I could have got over if I'd otherwise liked the book. However, the romance did not work for me at all. It's possible that being annoyed by the Portuguese right at the start might have affected how I read the rest of book, but I don't think that was it, or at least not the whole of the story. The most frustrating thing is that I was interested in the basic conflict as it was theoretically set up. A woman who has a vocation to be a priest, and struggles with men not treating her as a real woman, but as some sort of pure, untouchable saint because of it... that's interesting. The thing is, it didn't really feel like that was Adam's problem. It felt more like the stupid, old-fashioned perception that women are the possession of their male family members, so he can't have anything to do with Cassie because it would be an offense against his best friend, her brother. He even goes and asks the brother for permission, for pity's sake.

There's also zero chemistry between Adam and Cassie. We're told there is, and we immediately have this scene where Cassie basically pounces on Adam and grabs his cock. Whoa there, maybe you could just ease me into the romance? I didn't feel I knew the characters, therefore I didn't care about them, therefore the sex was boring.

Yeah, this one didn't work for me at all.

MY GRADE: A D.

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The Blackhouse, by Peter May

TITLE: The Blackhouse
AUTHOR: Peter May

COPYRIGHT: 2009
PAGES: 386
PUBLISHER: Quercus

SETTING: Isle of Lewis, Scotland
TYPE: Mystery
SERIES: First in the Lewis Trilogy

A brutal killing takes place on the Isle of Lewis, Scotland: a land of harsh beauty and inhabitants of deep-rooted faith.

A MURDER

Detective Inspector Fin Macleod is sent from Edinburgh to investigate. For Lewis-born Macleod, the case represents a journey both home and into his past.

A SECRET

Something lurks within the close-knit island community. Something sinister.

A TRAP

As Fin investigates, old skeletons begin to surface, and soon he, the hunter, becomes the hunted.

Fin MacLeod grew up on the Isle of Lewis, in the Outer Hebrides. It was a small, oppressive community for a boy who wanted much more from life, so he left as soon as he turned 18. A futher 18 years later, he's a police detective in Edinburgh and recovering from a tragedy in his personal life.

When a murder takes place in Lewis that has quite similar characteristics to one that took place in Edinburgh not long before, Fin is sent to investigate by his superiors. He is not keen. There are memories and people in Lewis that he does not want to face, but his investigation requires him to do just that.

The Blackhouse is as much about Fin's life growing up in Lewis as it is about his investigation of the murder. May alternates chapters in the first person narrating Fin's life, first as a child and then a teenager, right up till the a traumatic event we know is coming and his leaving the island, and chapters in the third person covering the present-day investigation. It works beautifully, mainly because the sections in the past are not just about getting us to understand Fin as a character, but are also completely relevant to the present-day sections. It was also one of those rare books structured this way where I always wanted more of each section before switching, rather than being annoyed because I preferred one to the other.

That said, much as the sections dealing with the crime investigation were really good, the sections set in the past were just fascinating. May creates an incredibly vivid sense of place, and you get an excellent view of what it must have been like to grow up there at the time. The challenging landscape and climate, the importance of tradition, the pressure to conform... it all coalesces around a tradition that has a key place in the story. Every year a small group of specially selected men from the island travel to a nearby rock to spend a couple of weeks harvesting the small number of gannets (or guga, as they call them) that they're allowed to hunt, since it's a protected species. It's an incredibly grim and difficult task, not just because of the wildness of the environment, but because of what the bloody task entails. It's also clearly the way the young men of the island prove their manhood, and even though in theory men have to volunteer to go, in reality the pressure to do so is immense. This tradition resonates all through the book, in both the timelines.

If this had been all, the book would have been coming onto an A grade for me. However, there was an aspect I found extremely problematic. I've had a look at several reviews on goodreads and it's not something people even note, but it really bothered me. So get ready for a bit of a rant!

Basically, the treatment of women in this book is terrible. They're not developed and are nothing but objects who only matter for the effect they have on the male characters. For instance, there's this character who was Fin's first love and who's now married to the man who used to be Fin's best friend growing up. We know she left for the mainland with Fin, but something happened, and she ended up back on Lewis, living what is clearly a crappy life. She was interesting, or rather, she should have been. The book doesn't really care about her as a character, beyond how she affects Fin. That's the case for pretty much every woman in the book.

I also had massive issues with how mysogynistic the book sometimes felt. There were certain sections in the flashbacks where the young Fin engages in actions I found reprehensible. It starts when he and his friend decide to have a joke on some girls who are sunbathing topless on a beach (lying face down) and drop some crabs on them from a cliff, hoping to have them scatter and see their breasts. It's portrayed as something that's just a bit of fun, who cares how the girls feel about it, and well, boys will be boys. It annoyed me, but ok. But then there was yet another scene of non-consensual voyeurism, and that one was particularly offensive. This happens when Fin and his friends are 17-18. One of them has a crush on a girl who seems to be flirting with him to make someone else jealous. And of course, the boys consider her a prick-tease. That's the word they use. When the town's bully shares that the girl has a bath every Sunday at 10, and that there's a bit of roof outside where he and his mates have been going to watch her, Fin's friend decides he will be going to watch. Because of course, he's entitled to her attention and she deserves to be punished for not giving him what he wants. Fin has misgivings, but he accompanies his friend. But his misgivings are absolutely not about whether it's right to do this to a woman who's really done nothing wrong; that's fine and dandy by Fin! All he's worried about is that the bully must be planning something, and that his friend doesn't know what he's getting into.

Turns out he's right. It's not the beautiful girl who's having the bath. It's an older woman, and she sees the boys standing on the roof outside her window. She's about 60, and she's fat and wearing a shower cap. Oh, the horror! Euww! The way this woman, this completely innocent, blameless woman, who's just trying to have a bath, is described is horrible and painful to read. There's a lot about her "folds of pink flesh" and the narration makes her sound almost obscene. And the cherry on this utter pile of shit: when confronted with strangers spying on her she screams for help. "Rape!" she screams. And Fin thinks that's "wishful thinking". The whole incident is completely repulsive and vile.

Now, I know very well that the fact that a character does something reprehensible doesn't mean that the author condones it. But I'm sorry, you can tell perfectly well when the narrative is trying to say that something is A-OK, and that's the case here. The narrative (which in this sections is basically the older Fin thinking back, not a hormone-addled teenager -not that that's an excuse!) at no point considers the impact of these pranks on the women they're aimed at. It's all about the boys. At no point is it acknowledged that spying on a naked woman is a violation of her. Who cares about that! And that is what I found so offensive.

So much as I enjoyed the plot and the setting, I'm not sure I want to read further in this series, or in May's backlist. Things like pacing and characterisation and plotting are problems that can be fixed with experience, but not this sort of attitude towards women that can just permeate a book. We'll see. I might yet feel in the mood for Lewis again and choose to grit my teeth through the problematic bits.

MY GRADE: A C+, one that's very much balancing the aspects I loved and those I hated.

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Tell the Truth, Shame the Devil, by Melina Marchetta

TITLE: Tell the Truth, Shame the Devil
AUTHOR: Melina Marchetta

COPYRIGHT: 2016
PAGES: 416
PUBLISHER: Mulholland Books

SETTING: Contemporary UK and France
TYPE: Suspense / thriller
SERIES: None

Bashir “Bish” Ortley is a London desk cop. Almost over it. Still not dealing with the death of his son years ago, as well as the break-up of his marriage.

Across the channel, a summer bus tour, carrying a group of English teenagers is subject to a deadly bomb attack, killing four of the passengers and injuring a handful of others. Bish’s daughter is one of those on board.

The suspect is 17 year old Violette LeBrac whose grandfather was responsible for a bombing that claimed the lives of dozens of people fourteen years ago; and whose mother, Noor, has been serving a life sentence for the part she was supposed to have played in the attack.

As Bish is dragged into the search for the missing Violette, he finds himself reluctantly working with Noor LeBrac and her younger brother, Jimmy Sarraf.

And the more he delves into the lives of the family he helped put away, the more Bish realizes that they may have got it wrong all those years ago, and that truth wears many colours. Especially when it comes to the teenagers on board the recent bus bombing. Including his daughter.

Tell the truth. Shame the devil. Bish can’t get Violette LeBrac’s words out of his head. But what he may get is some sort of peace with his own past as the worlds of those involved in two bombings, years apart, collide into the journey of his life.

Argh!! This had what was potentially a really interesting plot. A bus bombing in a campsite in France. The bus is full of British teenagers. Or mostly British -one has joined them from Australia, and she's from a family where several members were convicted of planning and executing a terrorist attack in London several years earlier. Violette's mother is in jail for aiding and abetting her own father, who set up a bomb in a London supermarket that killed several people. No one believes Violette's presence on the bus was a coincidence, and according to the press and pretty much anyone else speaking in public, she's as much of a terrorist as the rest of her family.

Our protagonist, Bashir "Bish" Ortley is a cop whose daughter was on the bus as well. He was involved in the supermarket bombing as an investigator, and he was the one who arrested Violette's's mother. Bish's daughter is fine and wasn't injured in the bus bombing, but his role as a father allows him access to the case, and shadowy figures in some sort of secret intelligence organisation pressure him to make use of that access. When Violette and one of her friends disappear, Bish seems to be the only one with a way to find them and discover what happened.

I really, REALLY wanted to know what the hell was going on here. I wanted to know what was up with Violette and what she had been doing on that bus, not to mention who'd set the bomb and why. I wanted to know what had actually happened in the supermarket bombing, and what secrets Violette's mother was keeping. So if anyone would like to spoil me, please do, because I'm afraid I just couldn't continue reading. Much as I wanted to know, the characters were so terribly written, so 'off', that I just couldn't. The offness starts on the very first page, with a little vignette showing one of the victims of the supermarket bombing just before it happend. It's this scouse guy living in London, who thinks about how he's becoming a fan of this young guy who's just been signed by Man Utd, even though his people back home would disapprove. Yeah, right. That set the tone. I didn't believe in any of the characters or their reactions, and the writing was overdramatic.

It wasn't just the main characters that I didn't believe in; the whole context in which these things were happening felt wrong. Everything, from the reactions of bystanders to the headlines in the press. I could see what issues Marchetta was trying to explore, issues of racial profiling and sterotypes and discrimination, but it was as all so heavy-handed and unsubtle that it wasn't effective in the least.

Such a shame.

MY GRADE: A DNF.

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The Best Of All Possible Worlds, by Karen Lord

TITLE: The Best Of All Possible Worlds
AUTHOR: Karen Lord

COPYRIGHT: 2013
PAGES: 352
PUBLISHER: Del Rey

SETTING: Cygnus Beta planet
TYPE: Science fiction / fantasy
SERIES: There's a companion book set in the same world, The Galaxy Game

The Best of All Possible Worlds is a stunning science fiction epic that is also a beautifully wrought, deeply moving love story.

A proud and reserved alien society finds its homeland destroyed in an unprovoked act of aggression, and the survivors have no choice but to reach out to the indigenous humanoids of their adopted world, to whom they are distantly related. They wish to preserve their cherished way of life but come to discover that in order to preserve their culture, they may have to change it forever.

Now a man and a woman from these two clashing societies must work together to save this vanishing race—and end up uncovering ancient mysteries with far-reaching ramifications. As their mission hangs in the balance, this unlikely team—one cool and cerebral, the other fiery and impulsive—just may find in each other their own destinies... and a force that transcends all.

When the home planet of the Sadiri was completely destroyed, only the very few who were out of the planet on various missions survived. Most of them were men. With nowhere to return to, these people have had to accept the invitation to settle in Cygnus Beta, a planet that is happy to receive these refugees.

The people of Cygnus Beta are keen to make the resettlement as smooth as possible, so Grace Delarua, a bio-technician, is asked to liaise with them and work with their councillor, Dllenahkh, to get them settled where and how they'll be most comfortable.

Given that The Best Of All Possible Worlds' setup involves a whole world being destroyed, one might expect a plotty adventure story, with revenge and excitement. That's not what this is. All the big explosions happen off the page, and before the action here starts. What we get is an exploration of deracination and the different ways of dealing with it. Should the Sadiri try to keep themselves isolated and preserve their culture unchanged (technically, they could, since they are long-lived enough for the men to start again with young brides), or do they accept that to survive, their culture should adapt to its new surroundings?

It's a leisurely book. The small group led by Delarua and Dllenahkh travel around and meet the different peoples present in Cygnus Beta. So what we get is two kinds of simultaneous explorations. They are exploring the variety of cultures in the planet, but those who are part of the team are also exploring each other’s cultures in a much deeper, personal way.

It’s not that nothing happens; in fact, quite big things happen, but Lord purposely writes this in a very low-key way. It's somewhat episodic, but that works perfectly for the story. The only overarching thread is the decision about what path to take with regards to integration. Lord does not create some sort of of external danger to drive the plot. And through the small episodes and encounters with different people, the relationships are developed.

I loved it all, and particularly discovering the different cultures they visit. They are clearly built out of bits and pieces of different cultures on Earth, and I enjoyed how Lord played with them. The visits were brief, so much so that they always left me wanting more, but that felt just right.

There’s a bit of romance, too, but again, very leisurely, very low key. In writing it that way, though, Lord made me fully believe that Delarua and Dllenahkh really were perfect for each other.

A very enjoyable book.

MY GRADE: A B+.

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Cowboys, authors, a firefighter and a librarian

Two short reviews, one of a promising old book which I turned out not to like, and a novella by a favourite author that turned out to work really, really well.

TITLE: Rest and Be Thankful
AUTHOR: Helen MacInnes

I had Helen MacInnes pegged in my head as writer of spy novels, but this is one that is anything but. It's about two American friends, writers Sarah and Margaret, who are somewhat at loose ends after spending most of their adult lives in Europe, culminating in some very adventurous years during WW2. They've returned to the US, and since they are both well set up in terms of money, they have resorted to filling their time with long drives across the country.

It is while driving in Wyoming that a fortuitous automotive mishap leads them to finding the perfect ranch. It's love at first sight, and they end up purchasing the ranch house, which the owner of the land is quite happy to get rid of, as it's a bit of a white elephant to him. Margaret and Sarah's first project is to use the ranch as a literary retreat, and before too long a motley crew of mostly-unknown-to-them writers start to arrive.

It's a fun setup, but I just didn't like it. I found it extremely frustrating. The writing felt old fashioned and kind of arch and elliptical. But I could have got over that. Mainly, I got frustrated with the two main characters and how they allowed themselves to be treated by people who were guests into their own home. These guests are all nasty, self-absorbed arseholes, and I found it astounding that women who just a few years earlier were involved in the Resistance, so were clearly no pushovers, would allow themselves to be bullied in such a way. I was also frustrated by the preaching about politics. The book is very of its time in that area (it was published in 1949), and I got a really annoyed at the politics that were inserted when they had little to do with the plot. This wasn't so much that the characters had views, but that the book had views, and those views were pretty much McCarthyism. There's also a fair bit of how people from rural areas are so morally superior to people from the city (particularly New York!). Sorry, but I'm not here for that.

I was bored, as well as annoyed, so I gave up after about 100 pages.

MY GRADE: A DNF.

TITLE: Fanning the Flames
AUTHOR: Victoria Dahl

Fanning the Flames is a novella that works as a prequel to Dahl's Girls' Night Out series.

Lauren Foster is a librarian. She's been divorced for a while, and recently she's been noticing fireman Jake Davis quite a bit. He's a friend of her ex's, so they've known each other for a while. Both try hard to resist the temptation, but then they give in.

There is not a lot of conflict here. What there is comes mainly from Lauren’s head. She was, as she saw it, bad at being married. She did not just meekly accept that she needed to do “wifely” things, like making a dish for her husband’s work potluck, or taking care of all the school things for their kid. She resented her husband not pulling his weight. She got angry. So she doesn’t see herself as a “nice” woman, not like Jake’s perfect, sweet, pre-school teacher late wife (as she puts it, the maximum amount of time she can spend with a group of 6-year-olds is 55 minutes. She’s timed it when they come in to the library in which she works. After that she needs to lock herself in an office and fantasise about whiskey). But Jake is baffled as to why people think he needs or wants a "nice" woman. He likes Lauren. He likes that Lauren is not shy at all about what she wants sexually, and the person she is fits him perfectly.

I think in a longer book, the story might have suffered because of the lightness of the conflict, but in novella length, it was perfect. This was hot and sweet and absolutely hilarious (that scene when they are surprised in Jake’s house... I'm still giggling). Just right.

MY GRADE: A B+.

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Cream of the Crop, by Alice Clayton

TITLE: Cream of the Crop
AUTHOR: Alice Clayton

COPYRIGHT: 2016
PAGES: 320
PUBLISHER: Gallery books

SETTING: Contemporary New York
TYPE: Romance
SERIES: 2nd in the Hudson Valley series

Manhattan’s It Girl, Natalie Grayson, has it all: she’s a hot exec at a leading advertising firm, known industry-wide for her challenging and edgy campaigns. She’s got a large circle of friends, a family that loves her dearly, and her dance card is always full with handsome eligible bachelors. What else could a modern gal-about-town wish for? The answer, of course, is...cheese.

Natalie’s favorite part of each week is spending Saturday morning at the Union Square Farmer’s Market, where she indulges her love of all things triple cream. Her favorite booth also indulges her love of all things handsome. Oscar Mendoza, owner of the Bailey Falls Creamery and purveyor of the finest artisanal cheeses the Hudson Valley has to offer, is tall, dark, mysterious, and a bit oblivious. Or so she thinks. But that doesn’t stop Natalie from fantasizing about the size of his, ahem, milk can.

Romance is churning, passion is burning, and something incredible is rising to the top. Could it be... love?

Natalie Grayson has a life she enjoys very much. After growing up constantly self-conscious and hiding her body, going to culinary school was a revelation. Not because she learnt to cook (she's still terrible at it), but because meeting people as obsessed with good food as she is, and who clearly found her curves attractive, changed her view of herself. Since she's moved back to Manhattan she's embraced the way she looks and never lacks for a date. She also started a career in advertising, a career she's really, really great at. Life is good.

The only times Natalie is not supremely confident is when she goes to the farmer's market on Saturday and stops at the Bailey Falls Creamery stall. The creamery is owned by beautiful Oscar Mendoza, and Natalie thinks he's even more delicious than his Brie (and she really loves his Brie). Problem is, she just can't talk to him. She goes stupid every time she sees him, and can't get out more than two words ("oh, yes", to his question of "Brie?").

And then the mayor of the town of Bailey Falls approaches Natalie's ad agency, wanting a campaign to increase tourism there. Natalie goes all out to get the account. Her best friend Roxie (heroine of the first book) lives there. And the fact that she'll obviously meet Oscar when she goes there on her research trip does help...

I did love the idea of this. I do love cheese, and I loved having a plus-sized heroine (size 18, I think is said at one point, which I believe is about size 16 UK) who is confident in her attractiveness, and with very good reason. However, the execution of what really should have been a very fun story annoyed me.

Natalie basically drove me crazy. Much as I loved the concept of her being big and fabulous, Natalie crossed the line into obnoxiousness. She just kept bragging about how irresistible she was, and how she could make men eat from the palm of her hand (literally, in one case). A little of that might have been fine, but it's was much too heavy-handed. Seriously, Natalie, get over yourself, I wanted to say.

I also got annoyed by her very similar attitude to her career. She goes on and on about how she has achieved all her success in business through her own hard work, and how she made sure she took nothing from her wealthy developer father (apart from living rent-free in a brownstone he owns right in the middle of Manhattan. Hmmm...). No self-awareness, no realisation of the advantage and privilege it is to grow up rich, with parents who love you and give you the best education and build your confidence.

And then she takes her trip to Bailey Falls. First there was the dialogue between Natalie and Roxie. They talked about sex in a way that felt like they were trying to be shocking. It felt seriously immature.

And then we get to Natalie meeting Oscar, one-to-one, without the buffer of his stall in front of him. It was painful. Natalie randomly starts going on and on about how she lusts after him, even though this is a man who hasn't really shown much interest in her, beyond holding her cheese for a little longer than usual the last time he handed it to her. It felt inappropriate. And he comes back with how he likes to see her walk away from his stall because of her "great big ass". He clarifies that he means that he thinks her big as is great, not that her ass is huge, but still, what a boor! That was it for me.

MY GRADE: A DNF.

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East West Street: On the Origins of "Genocide" and "Crimes Against Humanity", by Philippe Sands

TITLE: East West Street: On the Origins of "Genocide" and "Crimes Against Humanity"
AUTHOR: Philippe Sands

COPYRIGHT: 2016
PAGES: 448
PUBLISHER: Knopf

SETTING: Contemporary and mostly 1st half of the 20th century
TYPE: Non fiction
SERIES: None

When human rights lawyer Philippe Sands received an invitation to deliver a lecture in the western Ukrainian city of Lviv, he began to uncover a series of extraordinary historical coincidences. It set him on a quest that would take him halfway around the world in an exploration of the origins of international law and the pursuit of his own secret family history, beginning and ending with the last day of the Nuremberg trial.

Part historical detective story, part family history, part legal thriller, Philippe Sands guides us between past and present as several interconnected stories unfold in parallel. The first is the hidden story of two Nuremberg prosecutors who discover, only at the end of the trial, that the man they are prosecuting may be responsible for the murder of their entire families in Nazi-occupied Poland, in and around Lviv. The two prosecutors, Hersch Lauterpacht and Rafael Lemkin, were remarkable men, whose efforts led to the inclusion of the terms 'crimes against humanity' and 'genocide' in the judgement at Nuremberg. The defendant, Hans Frank, Hitler's personal lawyer and Governor-General of Nazi-occupied Poland, turns out to be an equally compelling character.

The lives of these three men lead Sands to a more personal story, as he traces the events that overwhelmed his mother's family in Lviv and Vienna during the Second World War. At the heart of this book is an equally personal quest to understand the roots of international law and the concepts that have dominated Sands' work as a lawyer. Eventually, he finds unexpected answers to his questions about his family, in this powerful meditation on the way memory, crime and guilt leave scars across generations, and the haunting gaps left by the secrets of others.

My non-fiction reading tends to be in two categories. The first is books I picked up because their subject matter was interesting to me. With those, the writing can make or break them. Even books about a fascinating subject, if the writing is not good, will end up in a DNF. The second category works very differently. It's the minority of books I bought because I like or have heard good things about the author's writing. With those, even if the subject is not something that would have normally interested me, the writing will carry me till the end and make me interested.

East West Street is solidly in that second category. It won the 2016 Baillie Gifford prize for non-fiction (formerly known as the Samuel Johnson prize), and when the author was interviewed in Front Row, the interviewer raved about the writing. I immediately ordered it from the library, even though the subject matter was one which, while it didn't not interest me, didn't particularly interest me, either, if you know what I mean.

So what is this about? The subtitle is pretty explicit: this is about the origin of the concepts of 'Genocide' and 'Crimes Against Humanity'. They both arose as a result of the actions of Nazi Germany, and Sands explores how and why. His point of departure is a coincidence. During a visit to the city of Lviv, in Western Ukraine, Sands becomes aware of the fact that the two men who came up with and championed each of the concepts either came from Lviv and/or its surrounding areas. And there is a very personal connection as well: so did Sands' grandfather.

What results is a number of interspersed stories. We get the personal and family story of Sands' grandfather, but also of Rafael Lemkin, who created the concept of 'genocide', and of Hersch Lauterpacht, who championed the idea of 'crimes against humanity'. We follow Sands in what is almost a detective story as he researches these people and their families. But they're not the only characters, as their stories are set in the context of what was going on at the time. This brings others into the picture, such as Hans Frank, one of Hitler's henchmen, who governed Nazi-occupied Poland, which came to include Lviv. We also get a fascinating account of the Nuremberg trials, which was something that was completely new to me.

Someone who just reads the subtitle could be forgiven for thinking this will be pretty dry and factual. It's not. While it definitely delivers in terms of being a history of these two legal concepts and does so in a very rigorous ways, it's the personal touches that make this book so amazing. It's not just that they make the book feel human and touching and heartrending; they feel integral to the story of the concepts. They allow us to understand the context in which the concepts arose, and make it clear why they matter.

I always find that with the Holocaust, the horror of it becomes kind of blunted in my mind. It's fair enough, I suppose, because you probably couldn't function if you were feeling it in your gut all the time. Reading this, there were these little details where suddenly I could absolutely FEEL it, where what it must have been like for the people involved in it became clear in my mind and I got the gut-clenching, horrified feeling. This was both valuable on its own, but it also worked for the book, by bringing the point home of what was at stake. Lemkin and Lauterpacht's efforts were not a dry argument about legal terminology, they were about preventing the horror from happening again.

MY GRADE: An A. This was a fantastic book.

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The Shelf: From LEQ to LES, by Phyllis Rose

TITLE: The Shelf: From LEQ to LES: Adventures in Extreme Reading
AUTHOR: Phyllis Rose

COPYRIGHT: 2014
PAGES: 271
PUBLISHER: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

SETTING: Contemporary
TYPE: Non Fiction
SERIES: None

Phyllis Rose embarks on a grand literary experiment—to read her way through a random shelf of library books, LEQ–LES

Can you have an Extreme Adventure in a library? Phyllis Rose casts herself into the wilds of an Upper East Side lending library in an effort to do just that. Hoping to explore the "real ground of literature," she reads her way through a somewhat randomly chosen shelf of fiction, from LEQ to LES.

The shelf has everything Rose could wish for—a classic she has not read, a remarkable variety of authors, and a range of literary styles. The early nineteenth-century Russian classic A Hero of Our Time by Mikhail Lermontov is spine by spine with The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux. Stories of French Canadian farmers sit beside those about aristocratic Austrians. California detective novels abut a picaresque novel from the seventeenth century. There are several novels by a wonderful, funny, contemporary novelist who has turned to raising dogs because of the tepid response to her work.

In The Shelf, Rose investigates the books on her shelf with exuberance, candor, and wit while pondering the many questions her experiment raises and measuring her discoveries against her own inner shelf—those texts that accompany us through life. "Fairly sure that no one in the history of the world has read exactly this series of novels," she sustains a sense of excitement as she creates a refreshingly original and generous portrait of the literary enterprise.

The premise of this book is a project that really appealed to me. In fact, I've half convinced myself I should do something like it myself (if maybe not write a book about it). Rose decides she will take a quasi-random shelf in her local library and just read through it.

It's only quasi-random because she immediately realises she needs a couple of rules, otherwise, popular and prolific authors being what they are, she'll end up reading a shelf that's just, I don't know, Danielle Steel. Her shelf must have at least one classic she hasn't read but is interested in, it must have enough different authors (including a respectable number of female authors), and if there's an author there with several titles, she is required to read only 3. All sounds eminently sensible to me!

And that's what the book (mostly) is: Rose talking about her experience in reading those books. She starts out with the classic, a Russian book called A Hero of Our Time, and it was clear she was taking this seriously when she tries several different translations to see if any of them help her 'get it' (I'd never heard of the book, but strangely, just last week I saw a ballet based on it advertised!). She tries an almost forgotten South African author. She reads The Phantom of the Opera. She reads a picaresque Spanish novel which she finds unexpectedly appealing. She discovers a contemporary author she really enjoys, to the point that she even contacts her and meets her.

Strangely enough, even though I wasn't particularly tempted to read any of them (and a couple of them evoked a 'hell, no!'), I still really enjoyed her discussions of them. She approaches her books with a very open, generous mind, willing to look for something valuable, even in books that do not appeal to her. And she does find it! I guess I'd describe her as "game". She gives these books an open-minded shot.

I said the book is only 'mostly' Rose's experiences reading those books. She also has a couple of chapters that don't quite fit into that theme and are basically essays on a particular subject that interests her. I had a mixed reaction to these. The one about how libraries weed out books was fascinating, while the one where she moans about negative reviews, not so much. Good or not, I had a bit of an issue with them being there at all. That was not what I signed up for when I chose to read the book, and it felt a bit like these chapters were only there to fill up space.

Still, on the whole I liked the book and found the idea quite inspiring. I might visit the lovely Liverpool Central Library soon and look up a likely shelf!

MY GRADE: A B-.

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