The Heart of Christmas

The title: The Heart of Christmas
The author: Mary Balogh, Nicola Cornick, Courtney Milan
Publication: Harlequin, 2009
Got it from: JL, Xmas 2010

Happy New Year, everyone! It feels like forever since I last reviewed a book (although my blog is saying it's only been a month and a half).  This book is the answer to clue #3 from my year-end entry, the "Three ladies of Christmas."  I have read all of these authors before - Nicola Cornick less so, although I have a couple of her books on my TBR pile and will hopefully make my way to them this year.  

Overall I found this book to be a little too plagued with jaded rogues and saintly heroines to give it a high rating as a whole.  With some exceptions.

Mary Balogh's story is "A Handful of Gold."  It's a warm-and-fuzzy tale of a woman who becomes a dancer (back then, basically a prostitute) to pay for her sick sister's medical care.  Enter the rakish earl, who wants to pay for her company over Christmas.  In the end she wins him over by being sweet, innocent, and bringing Christmas cheer to all.  And she can deliver babies.  I felt a bit meh about this story. I'd probably give it a C.

Nicola Cornick's story is "The Season for Suitors."  The blurb for this one sounded promising, with a young lady asking for advice from a rake about how to avoid rakes.  However, I don't think the person writing the blurb actually read the story since this wasn't really about this and plus the heroine's last name on the back was incorrect.  I was very disappointed that nothing ever came of that plot, which would have been amusing.  The story seemed disjointed and I couldn't muster up much feeling for either the hero or the heroine. I kept checking to see how many more pages were left as I was reading.  I'd give it a C-.

It's hard to believe that Courtney Milan was basically unknown when her story, "This Wicked Gift," was published.  It's a prequel of sorts to Proof by Seduction (Gareth Carhart makes a cameo appearance!)  It's by far my favourite of the three stories, and I actually rushed to read it first.  My goodnesss can the woman write.  I'm not usually much for descriptions, but one line in particular just transported me: "A wild wind whipped down the street, carrying with it the last few tired leaves from some faraway square and the earthy scent of winter mold."  It gave me shivers.  There is something so real about Milan's characters and settings, something lovely even in the ugliness of 19th century London.  The story itself was intriguing, about a young woman who has to "repay" a man who helps settle her brother's debt.  It sounds like a sordid premise, but the author managed to turn my expectations upside down and inside out.  Even though the heroine was almost too kind and understanding to be believed, I really ended up caring about her.  I'm giving this story a B+.

See you in 2013!

2012 Round-Up

The last six months or so have not been great for reading.  So much of my reading energy has been taken up with trying to run and read for two book clubs.  I've also been letting go of my old reading habit of forcing myself to finish a book I don't like.  This year I probably started about five or six books that I eventually sent to the scrap heap without finishing, for one reason or another.

Although this year has been discouraging in terms of the number and quality of the books I've been reading, I'm optimistic about 2013.  My goal as always is to continue to find quality books that I love and blog about them here.  I hope soon to be back on track and I should have some new posts in the next few weeks.

Meanwhile, here's my 2012 reading in a nutshell:

Even though I started out skeptical of Shannon Hale's Austenland series, I really got into it the further I went along.  I love the idea of a Jane Austen themed park and it makes me wish it were real.  I hope that there will be more books in the series and that the movie will eventually be released.

I can't stop thinking about The Brendan Voyage by Tim Severin.  Maybe because it's so different from the other non-fiction books that I read.  It was such a wonderful adventure story.  I think it's my favourite non-fiction of the year, even more so than Introvert by Susan Cain.

Sweet Talking Man by Bettina Krahn was my favourite romance of the year.  Sherry Thomas is a better writer and I'm looking forward to reading more of her stories, but I just found this one really appealed to me.  It was funny and interesting and I loved the setting of Gilded Age New York. 

My obsession of the year - SHERLOCK!

In the spirit of Sherlock, I will leave you with twelve clues as to what you'll see on this blog in the coming months.  Check back next year to see which books matched the clues!

1. One First Lady
2. Two sets of magicians
3. Three ladies of Christmas
4. An intrepid woman reporter
5. The real lives of Downton Abbey
6. Pirates!
7. The secret history of a major city
8. A classic children's book I've never read
9. A very "viral" book
10. Lost books
11. A dear enemy
12. A prairie tale

Wish You Were Eyre

The title: Wish You Were Eyre
The author: Heather Vogel Frederick
Publication: Simon & Schuster, 2012
Got it from: Kobo Books

I promised myself I wouldn't get sad because this was the last book in the Mother-Daughter Book Club series, but when I finished it I went around all morning with a long face.  It does make me sad that this is the end for the adventures of the moms and daughters in this club.

Here are some of the things that happened in this book: a snooty French girl shows up (Sophie Fairfax) and stays with the Wongs.  Megan dislikes her, but is consoled by a trip with her grandmother to Paris.  Sophie flirts with Emma's boyfriend Stewart, causing a rift in their relationship.  Mrs. Wong decides to run for mayor.  Jess is unfairly accused of cheating.  Cassidy is torn between two guys she likes and finally loves one of the books the club is reading.  Becca gets to visit Minnesota with her grandmother and meets a guy who is just like Mr. Rochester.  The Wyoming pen pals come to Concord for a visit.  Oh yes, and the club reads Jane Eyre.

This last book in the series took some time to get into, as the first third is a lot of re-telling of things that happened in the previous books.  Once the action starts, however, I started to get into the world again.  There isn't as much focus in this book on Emma or Cassidy, and I was left feeling that the end of Cassidy's story was too short.  Megan is really the star of this installment, and her visit to Paris makes up the bulk of the middle of the book.  I really enjoyed Becca's visit to Minnesota and the heart of Betsy-Tacy books (which the girls read in the previous book).  Once again, if you haven't read the rest of the series, your head would be spinning with all the characters, especially when the other book club shows up.  I'm keeping my fingers crossed that this isn't the definite definite end to  the series and that the author will give us a little more at some point.

A Study in Scarlet

 
The title: A Study in Scarlet
The author: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Publication: 1887
Got it from: MC

I am deeply in love with the BBC series of Sherlock, and while I read The Hound of the Baskervilles last year, until now I have not read any of the other Sherlock Holmes stories.  I decided to start at the beginning and work my way through the Sherlock canon.  

I tend to be wary of Victorian literature as it can be quite wordy, so I was surprised at how utterly readable this novella was.  I don't think anybody reading it today would find it difficult or foreign.  Much has been said elsewhere about how modern and ahead-of-his-time Conan Doyle's creation was, so I'll skip that and just say it was a cracking good story.

The first part of the novella deals with Watson and Holmes' meeting and is hilarious in the way it portrayes Watson's bafflement over his new roommate.  (A list Watson makes of Sherlock's knowledge of various subjects is a highlight).  The majority of the middle portion of the book involves the back story of the murder case Holmes and Watson are trying to solve, and involves a nail-biting tale of fanatic Mormons, a love affair, a daring escape and a plot for revenge.  I can see why the Victorians went crazy over this.  Whether or not you actually believe Holmes could possibly know what he knows from the clues he's given, he certainly makes you want to pay more attention to the world around you.

Passion

The title: Passion
The author: Louise Bagshawe
Publication:  Headline Publishing, 2009
Got it from:  The library

After reading so many heavy books for book club, I wanted something light and easy and page-turning.  This book appealed to me because its premise is based on Jane Austen's novel Persuasion.  When Melissa and Will were young, they were in love and wanted to get married.  But Melissa's father, an ambitious Oxford professor, convinced Melissa to break it off.  Heartbroken, Will goes into the army and gets recruited by MI6.  Almost twenty years later, Melissa is an academic with a rather dull life, and Will is a billionaire banker living in Manhatten.  When she becomes the target of a ruthless assassin, Will has to come back into her life to protect her.

I liked this novel quite a bit, and enjoyed it more than the average chick lit fare I've read.  I zipped through the 500 pages of this novel, wanting to see how Melissa and Will were going to escape some pretty harrowing situations.  Although I thought Will's meteoric rise to billionairedom was pretty far-fetched, I could see how the author needed to include it to make their escape from internationally trained killers believable.  I liked that Melissa isn't drop-dead gorgeous and that Will falls in love with her again because of her passion and determination.  The reason for Melissa being targeted (it has to do with her father's research) is kept somewhat vague, but that's obviously not the focus of the story.  This was definitely a fun diversion for a fall evening.

The Tiger's Wife

The title: The Tiger's Wife
The author: Tea Obreht
Publication:  Random House, 2011
Got it from:  The library

Whoa.  I can't believe it's been a month since I last posted a book review.  For some reason, I have been really struggling to finish a book recently.  It may be because I've been running two book clubs and the books we've been reading have been super huge.  I don't normally write about my book club books, but I'll make an exception this time.

Describing the plot of The Tiger's Wife is rather difficult.  It starts out in the present-day Balkans, with a young doctor traveling to rural communities to distribute medical care to children.  Her grandfather has just died, and in flashbacks she tells the story of her life growing up with him and the tales he told her about his childhood in a remote mountain village.  The stories he tells have a tinge of fantasy to them, and the two main ones involve a "deathless man" who the grandfather encounters throughout his life, and the tiger's wife.

What I like about this book is that the fantasy element has been left ambiguous.  Certainly the peasants in her grandfather's village growing up were superstitious and believed in folk tales.  What I took from it was that real events occurred (such as a tiger escaping from a zoo and running into the mountains) which later grew to mythic proportions.  There's a lot of push and pull between the folk beliefs of the villagers and the more rational, modern beliefs of the narrator and her grandfather (who was also a doctor).  One of the grandfather's most prized possessions was his copy of The Jungle Book, which he carried with him everywhere, and allowed him to identify the tiger when it showed up in his village (as opposed to everyone else thinking it was a demon, not having seen one before).  The grandfather's stories seem to say that legends make life more interesting, but ignorance has its consequences, as when people turn to folk rather than modern medicine or make a scapegoat out of an innocent bystander (the tiger's wife).

I'm not much of a description person so I struggled with some of the detail of the book, but overall I liked the dream-like, strange atmosphere of the book.  It's almost like reading a modern-day Grimm's fairy tale where you have to prepare for the unexpected.

Entwined

The title: Entwined
The author: Heather Dixon
Publication:  Greenwillow Books, 2011
Got it from:  The library

This YA story is based on one of my favourite childhood fairy tales, The Twelve Dancing Princesses.  It takes the theme of the story about twelve princesses who disappear into a magic realm under the castle each night to dance, and adds new twists.  

I have been putting off writing a review of this book, I think because I had mixed feelings about it.  Some parts were clever, like the part about the enchanted sugar teeth and the young men who attempt to solve the riddle (thankfully in this version they are not executed by the king if they fail).  But the book took me such a long, long time to get into.  And I'm not sure if they payoff was worth it.  I felt like there was a lot of unnecessary exposition (Princess A did this, Princess B said that, etc.) that the book could have been cut in half and still retained its essence.  I never really got a feel for the characters of the princesses, especially the eldest daughter Azalea, who is the heroine of the story.  Ultimately I finished this book feeling unsatisfied.