Review: The Girl With The Cat Tattoo by Theresa Weir

My intention was to love The Girl With The Cat Tattoo.  Other people (people I like and generally agree with) loved it. The cover is absolutely adorable. It's all chick lit and friendly and hipster cool. With a few changes I would have absolutely adored Weir and signed on for her back catalogue. As published, I don't think Weir is for me. I was moved to tweet a few times while reading, here's the first one.

Meoskop ‏@meoskop30 Apr

Reading Girl w/ Cat Tattoo. Heroine thinks about taking cat to work. Few pages later, hero suggests it. Concept new. She should flip back.

I have a two per book WTF limit and Weir handily exceeded it. She alternates between grounding her characters firmly in reality and taking them so far into Romancelandia that the reader can't follow. The most egregious examples are a television show segment that would have worked well as a dream sequence but blew the book apart for me instead. It set me up to question everything about the last chapter. (Why would he go? Why would he then do that? How would that work, exactly? Why would the host know? How would the host pull that off? Does that even fit who the host is?) There is, of course, a Bad Dude. When the heroine realizes who he is she is placed in a life threatening situation. At the end of it, the Bad Dude just leaves. He knows the hero and heroine are aware of his transgressions. He thinks he has the evidence they were holding. So he... goes home and I go WTF? Then the hero and heroine decide to have a quickie. And I quickly say OMGWTF? After sex, they traipse off to outfox and shut down Bad Dude. I just couldn't. I get that by Romanceland standards this is hardly unprecedented WTFery. I'm not trying for hypocrisy here. When it was good The Girl With The Cat Tattoo was very very good and when it was bad it was sorta awful.

On the positive side, while this wasn't the first romance I've read that used the animal point of view, it was one of the freshest. The heroine has a cupcake affinity and a cosplay bent. She is very of the moment in her thoughts and interests. The hero was pretty standard issue yet honest enough not to love cupcakes just because the heroine is baking. He's not her only hookup, (although he is the only one after they meet). There is no slut shaming or dude shaming of the prior people in her life. She's young, she's single, and she sometimes gets drunk and takes someone home. Sometimes she falls in love too fast, sometimes she prefers the company of her cat to humans. Melody was well conceived and well executed. I felt like she was a girl I might know instead of a Heroine. I can certainly see why Weir is getting accolades. With less WTF moments I'd be raving about The Girl With The Cat Tattoo, but as it stands I doubt I'll check out Book Two. (Why do all books come in threes now? What happened to the single title? Discuss.)

Review: Thief of Shadows by Elizabeth Hoyt

This was my first foray into the Maiden Lane series and I might have one more in me before I call it quits on Hoyt for good. What makes Hoyt catnip to my fellow reviewers makes me sneeze. I think we're far enough from the release date for me to freely make use of spoilers.

Thief of Shadows is one of those books where all the characters are very strongly something until suddenly they are not. Winter Makepeace is a dedicated teacher with a serious Batman complex. He runs around in an ornate, colorful costume and leaps on rooftops to ferret out enslaved children. His rationale for the elaborate disguise (striking fear into men's hearts) was a bit of a yawn. Leaving his attire aside, the rest of Winter Makepeace had promise. Through his dedication to the children a true conflict existed for him and Isabel. Unfortunately it takes just one nonconsensual blowjob for Winter Makepeace to forget everything he holds dear. Isabel sucks the character right out of him. Suddenly he's gone from swearing his life has been promised to a higher purpose to abandoning everything he once stood for. No longer is the need of the many (the orphans) greater than the need of the one (himself and a favored orphan). No longer are his nightly raids on criminals the calling he cannot set aside. Winter packs his bags and arrives at Isabel's house with boots made for knocking.

Isabel is no better. She's a flighty hedonist who refuses to bond with the child sharing her home. She orders him away and complains to the servants when she sees signs of him in her home. She works on the charity board for the orphanage but never spends time there. Her goals are a life in society filled with distractions. After sexually assaulting Winter she suddenly craves children and stability. By the end of the book Isabel has packed down her mansion and set up house in the orphanage by Winter's side. She's busy making it a home. No mention is made of the probable social cost because now Isabel has a makeshift family and therefore has satisfied all her life's desires. If I were Makepeace, I'd be worried about a sexual predator in a house of young men but then if I were Makepeace I'd have shoved her off a balcony instead of chasing her down and professing my love.

Along the way there is a tedious Pygmalion subplot even the characters fail to take seriously. There are a few Bad Guys and Even Worse Guys and a bit of Conspiracy keeping time for us so Isabel and Winter can pretend anything matters but getting naked. The plot points are so disposable that one involving a young jewish orphan is completely cast side once Winter buys his knocking boots. Presumably the concerns he had about taking her into a Christian Home are swept away by the clarity of passion. Or something. There's also this dude that wants the orphanage for REASONS and is thwarted by an old lady with a pile of slingshots. I don't know why he wouldn't just beat the crap out of our orphans, but he throws his hands up like a modern couple whose live in nanny has walked off in a huff. How can he manage these dirty, dirty children?

Hoyt keeps being recommended to me by people whose opinion I generally agree with. This is my second or third attempt at her. I do appreciate her ability to create distinct characters but I think she lacks follow through. I have another Maiden Lane book cued up on the old TBR but I'll stop there. It hurts my eyes when I roll them.

Review: Back to the Good Fortune Diner by Vicki Essex

Occasionally a book comes along that catches every reviewer's eye at once. Maybe it's the marketing, maybe it's the theme, sometimes it's random chance. In the case of Back to The Good Fortune Diner it's the promise of a non-caucasian lead in a traditionally caucasian line. Vicki Essex is an author in the right place at the right time. Essex is also a talented writer. Ultimately, I think she's better than her book. I'm going to give Diner it's small town beats dirty big city vibe because that's a fetish. It's not my fetish, but the topic of message coding in this theme is more than I care to get into with this review.

I'm also going to give Diner it's simultaneous embrace and rejection of education - no I'm not. It was very problematic for me. The racism in the book was another stumbling block. For much of the story we have an interesting tale of two culturally different people learning to communicate with each other as adults but then it takes a sharp turn. The book couldn't sustain the weight of the material. Ultimately, it feels very After School Special in it's quick presentation and smooth resolution. A secondary romance felt it should have been the focus of (or a sequel to) the book. Finally, the brother and sister duo at the heart of both relationships felt completely wrong for their age. Whew. Let's unpack some of that.

Age before anything - Daniel and Tiffany are highly educated professionals in their mid to late thirties. both are so deeply enmeshed in their parent's possible view of them that they cannot see themselves. I felt their age was driven by the author's need to reunite her high school couple (Chris and Tiffany) through his teenage son. Drop everyone's age seven years, make the son a nephew, and all my issues with this part of the story evaporate. The emotional conflicts were realistic and interesting. Their timing was not. Tiffany and Daniel are both trying to figure out who they are. Both have degrees they don't want to use. While I completely disagreed with Daniel's choice of work I want to focus on Tiffany. About Daniel (certainly the more compelling sibling) I'd say that most 35ish year old men working the back of a kitchen (who are not chefs) have beaten their bodies to the point that they would welcome any alternate opportunity. That Daniel is in possession of funds, education, contacts and support but chooses to take a fairly low level position on impulse mystified me. He is banking on the financial support of a girlfriend he is estranged from while rejecting all paths that lead to his own financial stability. At 25, this is a mistake. At 35 it's running into poverty instead of away from it. Daniel will struggle for the rest of his life where a slight change of course could have given him the work he loves and the ability to enjoy his life while doing it. (I have to stop talking about Daniel. His dominance of a book not about him is turning into his dominance of the review.)

Tiffany has been chasing publishing jobs she doesn't find rewarding. I wanted Tiffany to grow into an appreciation of her own worth but she never does. Tiffany is the over achieving student, she's the impassive faced minority who magically brings the hateful white bigot into line, she's the understanding and self demonizing girlfriend and the overly devoted employee. Even as a rebellious daughter she's just a little too good. When the women of the town want to socialize with her Tiffany wonders why they would want to. Tiffany never wonders why she should want to talk to them. When Chris calls her out on her lack of interest she examines it as a personal flaw. Tiffany spends the entire book wondering what she offers others and ends it the same way. It is always Tiffany that is inadequate and Tiffany that must change. I wanted Tiffany to demand more for herself and standing up to a sick old racist was insufficient. Tiffany suddenly decides her jobs are unsatisfying. Her inability to make friends is her personal flaw and not a facet of her being uncomfortable in her own skin (this was hinted at but not developed). Breadcrumbs of an alternate career path are laid in the story. They are not used. Tiffany appears to give up her professional dreams so she can have the boy, because the boy trumps everything else in her life. She doesn't find a different dream, unearth a deferred dream, or reveal a dream she was afraid to follow. She settles. She's going to be with the boy and figure the rest out later. Again, understandable at 25 but troubling in your 30's.

I think Back to The Good Fortune Diner would be a stronger read without the racism. Or a stronger read with more racism in it. Of course the only Chinese family in a town is going to face bigotry. I've repeatedly lost friends to other states because they wanted their children to grow up as something other than "the Asian kid" in town. Having Tiffany face racism from one man was dealing with it in a token manner. Tiffany stands up to him, he folds. He's a softie underneath anyway. It's true enough in that it could happen, but it feels far too pat. Leave it out. Adding in Daniel's concern that his parents are bigots without really resolving if they are makes the post-racial ending even less satisfying. Daniel's story was too big for this book. Including all of it not only short changed Chris and Tiffany but it ended any chance to resolve the core of their arrested development. Why do their parents constantly fight? How did they both feel about the sudden move from the big city to the small town when they made it? Why did they press their children to get educations if they don't want either of them to use them? How does this dynamic stop influencing their children and start informing them? Chris and his father get their emotional issues resolved, leaving Tiffany as a Magical Asian when I wanted her to be the star. Removing most of Daniel's romance would have given Tiffany more room to earn a happy ending instead of concede her way to one.

All praise to Essex for making me care enough about her world and her prose to devote so much thought to it. I'm absolutely going to read her next book but I have to give a mixed recommendation to this one. Essex suffers from a lack of space over a lack of ideas. She might be better served by a longer word count. Back to the Good Fortune Diner is more enjoyable than my review suggests. It's actually very good, it just isn't amazing. There's a joke in there about the no-win life of the American (or Canadian) born Chinese, but I'm not going to explore it.

*I also wanted to explore Daniel's unconventional choice not to be the dominant financial power in his relationship and his willingness to subvert that gender norm. Really, the wrong couple led the book.

* If you haven't read the discussion at My Extensive Reading I highly suggest it. Among many excellent comments Sunita brings up a point I'd failed to consider. 

Review: The Work Of The Devil by Katherine Amt Hanna

All credit to the cover designer. This is an arresting image with fantastic use of tone. I like almost everything about it. (The borders are too tight on the author's name, but I'll go with it.) This should be on a NYT bestseller, but it's not. It's on a novella from fledgling author Katherine Amt Hanna. When I read Hanna's work it feels like there is a major talent inside who can't quite get where she needs to be. The fact that I found The Work of the Devil to be flawed and still have tons of comments to make illustrates that. I'd rather be frustrated by Hanna than entertained by many. It's my hope she keeps writing.

The Work of the Devil is a fairly classic SF set up. It's evocative of golden age books while keeping a modern pace. It it was a short filler story in an ongoing series I'd probably be calling it brilliant. Unfortunately, there are no full length novels holding it up. Hanna has built more world than she can comfortably deal with in 70 odd pages. This leaves gaps the reader can't leap. She also relies on a few twists the experienced SF reader will easily see coming. As well, in a book largely free of racial cues, she ends with a bit of whiteness. It's so tiny it's not even a sin but until Hanna introduced pointedly Hispanic characters I hadn't assigned race to most of her leads. The larger problem keeping The Work of the Devil from realizing it's potential is authorial choice. Hanna appears to be supporting an American obsession - the purity of the ignorant faithful. Her dominant character holds to his simplicity and triumphs against a powerful force beyond his understanding.  He hails from a community which is faith based and machine averse. We slowly come to understand there is a an second community more like our own (or an early 1900's version) with limited mobility and no aircraft. This second community is not explored and exists only to solve problems for the main characters.

Why the main community has limited contact with the second for hundreds of years is explained as an article of faith. They are sworn to shun, so they largely do. These are weighty issues for a novella to carry. The division has to be accepted for the reader to continue. Through the second community the main community is made aware that their lifespans are shorter and their illnesses greater. A third community (or artifact) is potentially the source of this difference. The second community cannot approach the artifact because reasons. Those reasons are explained as a compulsion they involuntarily experience. Our main community feels these compulsions in differing but muted amounts. The second community theorizes it's a function of proximity but the logic for this is shaky. It's made shakier when our main community approaches the artifact and only the least worldly of the characters is able to maintain free will. The compulsion extending from the artifact affects each in different ways without an explanation for those differences made. The purpose or origin of the artifact is left unsaid as well. Toward the end our main characters are told there may be a dozen of these artifacts left in place for hundreds of years. Why? To what end? Is there a repercussion for the destruction of one?

Why destroy the artifact at all?  Is Hanna in favor of the destruction, or does she oppose it? The most sympathetic character is set up to make a sacrifice and achieve a victory. He is the least knowledgable. He is a man of faith and rules, not deep thought or insight. A man he trusts says there is an object they do not understand and that object must be destroyed. Destroying it may (or may not) change the health of their community. (I'd argue their rejection of the medical knowledge the second community has could be a factor in the differing life spans.) They approach the artifact. It has machines therefore it is evil, because their faith labels all machines as evil. It has the ability to alter their behavior and it takes an animal for food (as do they, but that's beyond their insight levels). It exists, it is not them, and therefore it must be destroyed. The author's position in this is invisible. I don't believe it's invisible by design. The Work of the Devil reads like a text written without an eye to what the author knows versus what the reader knows. The ending is frustrating because the reader is not certain of the previous events' meaning. The Work of the Devil is a great pitch piece but it isn't a great novella. You should still read it.

Holiday Boxes: Cravebox vs Love With Food

What do you get someone really hard to shop for?

This year I decided to jump on the sample box craze and give gift subscriptions to a few sample services. I've given two Love With Food subscriptions so far with one of my recipients already ordering five more gift subscriptions for people on her list.  The concept behind Love With Food is that each month you purchase a box a meal is donated to a hungry child. (Charitable chowing?) I'm about three months into my own subscription and I'm a huge fan. Generally I like everything in the box save one item. Since I'm fairly picky food-wise that's a great track record. Unfortunately since it's food, we always eat it before I remember to take any photos. Wisconsin Mom takes great pictures but likes the Love With Food program far less than I do. She's looking at it as a dollar value box instead of a curated culinary experiment box. If I was adding it up the same way I might agree with her, but I'm just wanting a small monthly treat for my recipients.

If you're looking for a larger payout, Cravebox is probably for you. While Cravebox doesn't offer gift subscriptions, I was curious enough to try them out for myself. Most of the Cravebox reminded me of the boxes we'd get at the food bank when I was a kid. Dollar for dollar, it's a better value but the contents were pretty common. MsMommyHH6 loved hers. The printed cards gift certificate to Walgreens was worth twice the cost of the box, so I can't call it a wasted trial. I'm not sure I'd give anyone a gift subscription if Cravebox did offer them. Canned green beans and gravy powder don't really say culinary excitement to me. (I do wish Love With Food was occasionally more ingredient focused. Ready to eat seems to be their concept, which is smart branding but hard to keep fresh and exciting.)

Review: Persepolis 2 The Story of a Return by Marjane Satrapi

 Having talked about Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood I suppose I should address the sequel. Most people are going to read these two books in one volume. I almost wish they were not packaged together. While the story Marjane tells in this second section of her life is no less compelling it is less universal. 

In the first, Satrapi is a young child at the mercy of the forces around her. In the second she is a young adult making the sorts of bad choices many young adults make. Because she is in some control it is easier for the reader to judge her. In judging her the tale loses some of it's universal power. Where young Satrapi is grounded in her family, teenage Satrapi is lost. Her focus moves from the external to the internal. Having become an expatriate she is without family or culture to sustain her during some very formative years. She falls into self destructive habits that ultimately force her back to Iran. As much as Satrapi has changed (her parents don't recognize her) so too has her country. Now we are in an Iran Westerners feel comfortable with. Her struggles feel less immediate, there is a distance that one doesn't feel in The Story of a Childhood. I think the author is a remarkable woman and a remarkable talent. I am certain that some of the events she depicts so honestly in The Story of a Return haunt her to this day. It is to her immense credit that she neither excuses nor defends herself from reader censure. Satrapi reports her life and then stands beside it. 

In The Story of a Return Satrapi covers the drug years, the misguided love years, the years of finding herself in small rebellions that wouldn't have been open to a woman of a different class. She acknowledges her privileges and her limitations. Ultimately, like many displaced by war, the author realizes that she cannot live in her home country again. It is something often forgotten when we discuss immigrants. They are caught between worlds, having children that will always be slightly alien to them, trying to assimilate into a culture they didn't truly choose. When Germany unified all East Germans woke up in another country. The streets were the same, the neighbors were the same, but their home was forever gone. No matter how much they longed for freedom, that is a massive adjustment one can only imperfectly make. I hope there is, or will be, a third volume of Persepolis (The Story of Exile?) covering these years for Satrapi. She has had great success in her adopted country but I wonder what the cost was. 

Review: Persepolis, The Story of A Childhood by Marjane Satrapi

Last night I was discussing Habibi and it's affection for rape. Passages of Habibi put me in mind of contrasting passages from Persepolis. There is a scene with Satrapi's mother early in the revolution. she is accosted by a group of young men who threaten her with rape. Late in the book a young refugee is raped and executed. Both of these events happen offscreen. The effect of the events on Satrapi's family is the focus, not the events themselves. There is no loving close up of violence against women. Any close up is on the revulsion and fear that violence created. Two panels of violence's aftermath is more realistic than anything in Habibi. Women live in the constant shadow of sexual violence in a way men, although often victims themselves, do not. While Habibi used this violence frequently, in Persepolis it is barely mentioned but far more devastating.

Persepolis is one of the gold standards in graphic memoir for a reason. It might seem unfair to treat it as a fictionalized book but the power of it's real life events further illuminate the failure of imagination present in sexualized fiction. Satrapi comes completely alive in her book. We know who she is, we know the people around her, we care about their fates. A young child when the Shah is overthrown, Satrapi travels through her country's journey from a modern state to a repressed region. (Given that we will likely be at war with Iran before the end of the year, Persepolis becomes even more important.)

As a young girl, Satrapi has a personal relationship with Allah. She is educated in French schools and lives a life of comfortable affluence with her own servant (slave) and material comfort. As her country falls into disquiet and revolution, so does she. Marx slowly replaces God in her dreams, her goal of being The Prophet is replaced by dreams of revolution. Her parents march in the streets until the Shah is deposed and victory seems at hand. Satrapi struggles to make sense of the conflicting revolutions. War with Iraq arrives as long lost uncles and parents stream out of the prisons. The religious right scoops it's own political prisoners up for torture or execution and the veil is imposed. Western schools are closed and segregated. The cultural revolution isn't going the way her family intended. Classmates disappear through emigration or death. Even in her protected bubble of wealth and connections Satrapi is forced to confront the millions killed for the protection of political powers. Her own small rebellions, her refusal to relinquish everything about her former life lead her to a crossroads. Satrapi can either embrace radicalism or she can embrace exile.

When Neda Soltan was killed in 2009 many Westerners thought surely that would bring down the regime. Our Persian friends had a clearer view. They knew, as young Satrapi would have, that she was just one of the many. Yet another girl killed in the name of power, in the name of a narrow view of faith that must be upheld above all reason. In the early days of the revolution Satrapi's uncle thought that religious radicalism could not last. He believed that the men of faith would return to their temples and leave the daily running of the land to a new idealistic democracy. (Obviously, he misjudged that one. A cautionary tale for women in the current American political climate.) With so many books like Habibi, Aaron & Ahmed and Holy Terror on the market it is a gift to read Persepolis again. When we demonize  the people of Iraq or Iran instead of the institutions holding them captive, we demonize young Satrapi. Read Persepolis; The Story of a Childhood and think about who the enemies really are.

Review: Habibi by Craig Thompson

Habibi has been getting some great reviews. It's not surprising. Thompson is a beautiful artist with a real gift for page layout and imagery. To page through Habibi is to expect great things. In a way, Thompson's work is like Darger's. On the surface it is a mix of new and familiar pictures assembled into a grand narrative. At the heart it is a disturbing fetishization of the victimization of girls. There's also a slice of White Liberal and a dollop of Latent Homophobia running through it like a river  (Look, I come not to bury Habibi but to review it so let's get that underway.)

Thompson offers his tale of a world being slowly destroyed by profiteering and elitism, a tale of racial tensions and minority exploitation, a tale of pseudo-incest, pedophiles, abuse of power, human trafficking ... I lost track of it all actually. Over the bubbling stew of his big ideas is his smaller one, a comparison of Islam and Christianity. (I think Rumi's texts should be a controlled substance, like medical marijuana or Mad Dog.) Habibi starts with our young heroine Dodola being sold at age nine to her husband. Improbably (although certainly not impossibly) her husband has no family and so we open with child rape. (Kind of a sign the author has opinions on Arab culture.) It's okay because he teaches her to read and she comes to understand her rapist is like a child himself, captive to his desires. (I know. Pass the Excedrin.)

Dodola's husband is murdered and she is enslaved. There she claims a small black child she names Zam. Although she is still a child herself, her husband has made her literate and her abuse has made her feral so soon Dodola escapes the slavers and flees with Zam. At this point, and for much of the novel, Dodola and Zam appear to live in a long distant past. By the end of the novel they are freely moving in contemporary days asking us to accept that past events happened there as well. It doesn't work. Why is there an open 18th century slave market, complete with branding? Why don't they just shoot Dodola when she runs? Why is Zam's mother convinced they will be sold apart? (Human trafficking is still with us but the details do shift with the times.) Dodola and Zam escape to the desert where they find a marooned 1950's style yacht in the sand. They live there undisturbed for years. Dodola trades sex for food from the occasional camel caravan while Zam grows and gathers water. As the water dries up, he is forced to forage farther afield. As the only human he knows, Zam becomes drawn to Dodola sexually. (I started to call them Chris & Cathy in my head at this point.) But wait! After years of being raped in the desert (I mean bartering sex) Dodola is stolen away and taken to the Sultan's harem (really). She is obsessed with recovering her son Zam, to the extent that she doesn't bond with her actual son until he is the age Zam may have been when she met him. (Zam's age at their meeting could seriously use some continuity editing.) Her son reminds her of her most recent rapist and is therefore tainted. She wanted him to be black, like Zam, and when he is not she is disgusted. (This is getting way too long. I'm leaving half of it out and we haven't even got to Zam falling in with the transgendered and cutting his penis off in disgust over his lust for Dodola. Let's just cut to the chase.) Dodola becomes an opium addict. Zam rescues her from the harem, considers killing himself when he realizes he couldn't impregnate her anymore,  gets and quits a job as a middle manager at the water plant and they have a happily ever after nuclear family resolution when they adopt another slave. Whew.

Along the way we find there is no such thing as a decent Arab man. From Dodola's father explicitly selling her for sex to her multiple rapists to the seemingly friendly but actually unhinged fisherman working the diseased river, every Arab is corrupt. They don't keep their word, they rape and murder. Our black characters are just as one dimensional. There is the Mammy in the harem and the Magical Enuch, the Slave Mother and Zam. Women don't fare much better. Dodola is the most fully realized of them but she reads more as male fantasy than actual female. She is a motherly figure of intense dedication to her child / lover while a shrewd seller of self as well. Even as an opium addict or starving in a jail cell I couldn't connect with her. The transgendered are predatory, most obsessed with sex in some fashion. When Dodola and Zam attempt to return to Eden they find the ship overrun with refuse, a trash pile covered in trash pickers and their children. The rivers run with sewage, fish bones and filth. Only the water of the city is pure - carefully hoarded for wealth over health and filled with the toys of the modern world. Where Dodola and Zam have seemed to exist (even in the Sultan's home) in an English liberal fantasy circa 1780, now they dwell in 2010. This has to be a deliberate choice on Thompson's part but it falls flat. Our fairy tale is already drowning in detail and moral. Adding the sudden appearance of modern life makes it fall apart. So much of Habibi wants to be an aha moment. The author begs you to connect the lines of corruption, to see the way we have wandered from both faiths, the way the sins of the past and the sins of now are the same sins. Instead I connected finishing the book with wanting a long hot shower with a lot of soap. (Men love to draw women being raped. It's so meaningful!)

Habibi is lovely. It's trying to tell an ugly story and it succeeds but the tale it tells is uglier than the one it intended. People are going to embrace this, people are going to endow it with superlatives. I think most of them will be white and culturally Christian. Habibi hits all the White Liberal buttons hard on it's way down. Good intentions and all that.

Review: The Lemonade War by Jacqueline Davies

We have a guest blogger today. She is a seven year old who was assigned The Lemonade War in class. I think our young reviewer shows some promise.


Each character gets to tell his or her side for each chapter. The characters ran into the trouble of a Lemonade War which is a bet. Evan and Jessie discovered each others feelings and learned they didn't achually know each others feelings.

Evan was really mad at Jessie, but then he was like hey, maybe Jessie is sad not mad, instead of being all like hey, I'm gonna so beat her so badly she's gonna cry so hard. They made up because Evan gave her his money after her money got stolen.

They demonstrated teamwork by working on their Lemonade War with friends not alone. They overcame the issue of the Lemonade War that they started against each other. The war ended after Evan gave Jessie his money because he stole her money and Scott stole it from him so he didn't have it anymore.

My favorite part of the story was when the war ended, but my least favorite part was when the war began and they got all violent. I would change Megans last name because it's too hard to pronounce while your reading. I would give this book 4 out of 5 stars because not all of it was in my taste of books.

Review: The Summer Of You by Kate Noble

I've been in a bit of a book slump lately so I thought I'd take the suggestions of others and try Kate Noble. I bought The Summer of You when it first came out as a trade paperback and it has been languishing on my TBR pile ever since. I can completely appreciate The Summer of You even as I discard it. (Perhaps I should call this Grant Syndrome in honor of A Lady Awakened?)

The Summer of You does have strong characters and a fresher setting. While a Duke is present, we're not playing Duke, Duke, Groom as the only Duke present is the heroine's ailing father. The characterization was good, the relationship between our heroine and her drunken immature brother was one of the more realistic sibling pairings I've read and yet... There was something far too modern about this read. I'm all for updating the standard hero and heroine to a more realistic level. Times change, people don't. Yet people are still a product of their times. Did I buy these people in these times reacting in these ways? I'm not sure I did. The townspeople were stronger than the leads, never a good sign for me. There was another pet problem of mine, one I don't have a snappy name for. Participant Peril? Heroine Harm? I don't know. We've got a war hero with a bad leg saving a drowning child with a concussion so I thought we'd gotten our brush with death out of the way, but it was not to be.

The subplot of our disgruntled heroine stranded in the suburbs with her forgetful father and drunken brother meets mysterious and reclusive neighbor story is that the town has decided he's a highwayman. Apparently a series of non violent crimes have coincided with his arrival and he is just unfriendly enough to convince all he must be the villain. This (oh, it is probably way too late for a spoiler tag isn't it? It's not a new release, you'll just have to forgive me.) of course leads to a few near arrests, an actual arrest and a grand proclaiming that the heroine was twisting the sheets with the hero on a night in question. Really, who does that? Who alibis someone in the middle of a house party? I suppose she does. Because she has to in order to flee into the night where she might as well end up feverish in a chicken coop for all the pointless disaster that befalls her.

While escaping from the scandal of her own making, and at the command of the brother she has (up to now) largely ignored, she is set upon by the true highwayman. Luckily, many people figured out that dude's identity about five seconds before so help is one the way. Our highwayman has decided to move from profit to violence which makes almost no sense. He apparently knows she has cleared the hero, but he assumes she will be readily believed. By attacking her he cements the alibi and further complicates his own situation. Raping the heroine is much more awesome to him than living a comfortable life under the nose of those from whom his gain is ill-gotten so off he goes to pillage. She gets knocked silly, she gets rescued, he reveals he planned to frame our hero all along, but is thwarted by a surprise stowaway in the carriage.

What is the surprise stowaway even doing there? Earlier in the chapter we are asked to believe that a comfortably situated member of the minor gentry has decided to get away from it all by leaving her parents a note and slipping away with the disgraced ducal daughter. What? I mean, full stop, what? Why does she think said disgraced daughter either will or can fund her escapade? How would she return to live in the village after running off with the recently revealed tramp? It doesn't make any sense. Does she expect she can hitch a ride to her sister's home? Does she expect she can make a new life with what she's wearing and the goodwill of a neighbor she barely knows? Is there a thought in her head besides "Someone is going to have to reveal the villain in a few pages when he gets all villainy?" In a contemporary, yes. In a WW2 novel, yes. Heck, possibly even in a late Victorian. Maybe. But how is this girl planning to survive if everyone turns her out? She has not previously exhibited a lack of all brainpower. I couldn't go there. I can see why so many have suggested Kate Noble so strongly to me, but I don't think I'm in for another go. I'd like to read another book by her but not another historical.