Christmas with Anne

The title: Christmas with Anne and Other Holiday Stories
The author: L.M. Montgomery
Publication: McClelland and Stewart, 1995
Got it from: Mom and dad, Christmas 1996

I reviewed this one before, back when I first started this blog, and reread it again this holiday season.  As I mentioned in my original post, the stories definitely lean on the predictable side, especially if you've read other LM works.  However, if you're looking for gentle, feel-good stories, this is your book.  There's lots of tales of quarreling family members being reunited at Christmas, people learning to be generous to those less fortunate, and mistaken identities inadvertently saving Christmas. 

There are two standout stories in this collection (not mentioning Anne's puffed sleeve dress chapter, which Anne fans will all be familiar with.)  The first is Katherine Brooke Comes to Green Gables, taken from Anne of Windy Poplars.  I love the original story of Katherine Brooke, even more than the version portrayed in the Megan Follows adaptation Anne of Green Gables the Sequel.  There's something very Blue Castle-y about Katherine's transformation from bitter spinster to mellow, happy woman, even if it's through Anne's help rather than for herself.  It's a nice reminder to enjoy the pleasures of life, and not let unhappiness define us. 

The second is a sad story, but its poignancy makes it memorable.  In The Unforgotten One, a young maid is grieving the loss of a family member she served, and thinks no one remembers her as the family reunites at Christmas.  She slips outside to visit the grave, only to overhear each family member, one by one, visit the dead woman and explain how much they miss her.  Montgomery, and Victorian in general, were always close to death, and this story speaks to universal emotion of the bittersweetness of loss.

The Bookshop on the Corner

The title: The Bookshop on the Corner
The author: Jenny Colgan
Publication: William Morrow Paperbacks, 2016
Got it from: Chapters

I haven't read anything else by Jenny Colgan, but I liked the premise of this one so I got it from the library, and then ended up buying a copy for a relative.  Nina Redmond is a 29-year-old librarian in Birmingham whose library is being converted into an "information hub."  Being an old-fashioned book lover, Nina is neither willing nor able to work in this sort of environment.  As a librarian who despairs of the creeping business model of libraries and all the attendant "business speak," this book made me nod my head in agreement.

At first, Nina is lost and unsure of what to do with herself.  All she knows is matching people to books, so that's what she decides on.  Without much of a plan, she heads to an isolated town in Scotland to buy a van to transport all the books the library is throwing out.  Naturally, she ends up staying as she gets to know the locals, including a romantic train driver who goes through the town every night and her grumpy-yet-surprisingly-sexy landlord.  Before she knows what's happening, she's got everyone in town hooked on reading and finds herself falling in love with the village.

This book is feel-good, through and through.  It put a smile on my face.  Even though it was predictable, it was cute without being cutesy and I really liked the descriptions of the Scottish countryside and all the sheep. 

No Relation

The title: No Relation
The author: Terry Fallis
Publication: Douglas Gibson Books, 2014
Got it from: Terry Fallis podcast

Terry Fallis writes the kinds of books you like to read when you need something to ground you: something light, funny and uncomplicated, where everything will be tied up in a happy ending.  Although it didn't have the feminist humour of Pole to Pole or the biting satire of The Best Laid Plans, I enjoyed listening to Terry Fallis reading No Relation on his podcast. 

The basic joke of the book is that the protagonist is named Earnest Hemmingway.  Spelled differently from the famous author and "no relation," as he would have you know.  There are a lot of classic Fallis tropes on display here.  The protagonist starts out with a rotten string of bad luck, losing his job and his girlfriend on the same day.  But in typical Fallis fashion, he turns it around to his advantage.  After a video of him getting to a fight with a DMV clerk about his name goes viral on YouTube, Earnest starts a meetup group for people with famous names called Name Fame. Befriending Diana Ross (who really can sing), Mahatma Gandhi (who has anger management issues), Mario Andretti (who can't drive) and others, Earnest must exercise the ghost of the real Earnest Hemmingway to find his inner writer.  As his travels take him to Paris, Pamplona and Key West, he also has to deal with his dad's expectation that he'll take over the family underwear manufacturing business.

It wasn't my favourite Fallis, but it was enjoyable in a comforting, lighthearted way.

City of Jasmine

The title: City of Jasmine
The author: Deanna Raybourn
Publication: Harlequin MIRA, 2014
Got it from: Hoopla Audiobooks

Anyone looking for a rip-roaring 1920s adventure in the style of Indiana Jones, Miss Fisher, or my beloved Amelia Peabody, would enjoy this one.  I listened to it on audiobook and quite liked the episodic derring-do of the main characters.

Evangeline Starke (no relation to Iron Man, I presume) is a famous aviatrix in 1920s London.  She's sort of widowed - her husband, Gabriel, left her five years earlier in Shanghai and then went down with the Lusitania.  Or is he dead?  Dun dun dun.  Evangeline has a newspaper photo that might prove otherwise.  So she's off with her eccentric Aunt Dove, a former Victorian adventuress, and their sidekick bird Arthur Wellesley, to Damascus where the picture was taken.  There's lots of exotic details about the city, the desert and the archeological site where Evie ends up. Of course, it wouldn't be a true Indiana Jones-type adventure without a sacred relic, secret identities, double-crosses, lots of guns being shot, evil villains and a plane chase.  And romance, naturally. 

The Readers of Broken Wheel Recommend

The title: The Readers of Broken Wheel Recommend
The author: Katarina Bivald
Publication: Sourcebooks, 2016
Got it from: The library

If you like books about small towns and reading, this one will definitely appeal to you.  Mix one part 88 Charing Cross Road,  one part Chocolat and one part The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, throw in some cornfields, and you have The Readers of Broken Wheel Recommend.

Sara is from Sweden and she's never traveled outside her hometown.  Her only contact with the outside world is through books (she's a voracious reader) and her letters to Amy, an elderly woman from Broken Wheel, Iowa, who orders books from the store where Sara works.  When the story begins, Sara is out of work and arrives in Broken Wheel for a three-month visit to see Amy, only to find herself stumbling into the middle of Amy's funeral.  The townspeople insist she stay at Amy's house, and at first Sara is at loose ends, stuck in a houseful of books.  She wants to repay the kindness the townspeople have shown her, but no one will let her.  At last she strikes upon an idea: she will open a bookshop and give away Amy's books to the non-readers of Broken Wheel.

I was fully expecting this book to go all "the books transformed the people forevermore" route, but it didn't quite play out like that.  This book was cozy, and some lessons were learned, but it didn't go in all the directions I expected it to.  (Except: Amy's hunky nephew Tom.  Yeah, that went pretty much how I expected.  You can't have a good book without romance.)  There was definitely some "crazy small town shenanigans" tropes present (the author, like her character, seems to have learned everything about small-town America from the works of Fannie Flagg.)  But this book is as much a love story to other books as it is to small towns, and bibliophiles will delight in the all the references, which remain pleasingly snob-free.  Bridget Jones gets as much love here as Annie Proulx.  Although the ending petered out somewhat, most of the book was a delightful charmer.

At the Altar: Matrimonial Tales

The title: At the Altar: Matrimonial Tales
The author: L.M. Montgomery
Publication: McClelland & Stewart, 1994
Got it from: NB, 1995

On days when I just want a feel-good, happy ending story, I re-read one of L.M. Montgomery's books and everything feels right again. They are my comfort stories, and I have loved rediscovering them after first reading them about twenty years ago.  Of course there's nothing I love more than a good romance and these 18 stories have them aplenty.  What I especially love about them is that most of the characters aren't the "romantic" sorts that the characters themselves dream of.  Often they are middle aged and practical, but Montgomery somehow manages to bring out their romantic sides.

Stories I particularly love in this anthology: "Jessamine": a woman languishing in the city is visited by a farmer who restores her soul by taking her out to see his farm.  He rescues her from having to move west by his proposal.  "Miss Cordelia's Accomodation": an old maid takes a group of factory children to the country for a holiday, and meets a rather accommodating farmer.  "A Dinner of Herbs": a 33-year-old woman who faces having to share a room with a stupid teenaged relative makes a desperate proposal to a reclusive neighbour to avoid having to marry an unpalatable widower.  "The Dissipation of Miss Ponsonby" (my favourite): a 35-year-old woman who was separated from the man she loved 15 years earlier by her father is aided in making a daring escape to a dance when he returns from the west, helped by two younger neighbours who give her a makeover. 

Of course some of these stories were better than others, but every single one was enjoyable.  What can I say about Montgomery's works that I haven't already?  I'll let the editor describe it herself from the afterward: "I read them year in and year out, again and again.  I never tired of their apparent simplicity, finding them more complex than they seemed, their emotions true and believable.  They were part of my innermost being.  But there weren't enough of them."

Devoted

The title: Devoted
The author: Jennifer Mathieu
Publication: Roaring Brook Press, 2015
Got it from: The library

I was sitting here this weekend, trying to figure out why this book was making me feel so many things and why it felt so incredible that I couldn't put it down.  Then it hit me that this book is kind of like the YA version of The Blue Castle, my favourite book of all time.  And I guess it just shows how much I love stories about women who leave their crazy, oppressive families and find supportive people who guide them into doing whatever the hell they want. 

This book has exploded across my consciousness like a bomb.  It feels like such a beautiful, important, amazing expression of what it feels like to be a young woman who realizes that she's better than what her religion tells her and that there's a whole world out there for her.  It's feminist in a way that reminded me of what feminism really means.  It's a wake-up call to remember that there are so many women all over the world who can't dress the way they want, speak their minds, get an education or even show their emotions.  I take it for granted, but this book made me appreciate just what a rare, precious gift it is for me to be a woman who can go anywhere, say anything, and most importantly, spend my free time however I want. 

Rachel Walker grows up in a family where none of those freedoms are available to her.  She lives in a strictly religious community where her family follows the Quiverfull movement, and her life is similar to the one portrayed by the Duggars on 19 Kids and Counting (and I couldn't help thinking of her family as the Duggars when I read the book).  She's homeschooled by religious textbooks, attends church several times a week, is exhausted by raising her many younger siblings, and lives in poverty.  Her family quotes scripture all day, she must always show "cheerful countenance" and her father is the ultimate authority. When the story opens, Rachel is 17 and knows that she must soon follow in the footsteps of her ultra-pious older sister Faith and get married and start having babies. 

But it's clear from the beginning that Rachel isn't like the rest of her family.  She's smart, and she's sensitive.  She sneaks books and reads them secretly, which as we all know is about the most dangerous and powerful thing a young woman can do.  She starts to feel things and question her family, her religion, her whole way of life.  This book does such a lovely job of explaining just what it's like when you start questioning your faith.  I know because I've been there.  I know how it feels when the truth starts making cracks in a lifetime of beliefs, until you can't stop them as they multiply and suddenly the daylight bursts forth.  It's the most wonderful and exhilarating and terrifying feeling. 

Tears are running down my face, and I try to stop them but I can't.  I can't make sense of the words-not all of them-but something about them makes me catch my breath.  Makes me read them again and again.  Especially the final two lines.

Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?

The fact that this question now exists in my brain makes me feel like a million bubbles are exploding on my skin all at once.  

How long has this question existed? How many other people have asked themselves these very words?  

What is it that I plan to do with my one wild and precious life?  

My wild life?

My precious life?

To be a godly wife to my future husband and raise my children in the service of the Lord.  

It's been my answer all my life. It's always come so easily.

Maybe because I've never asked the question first.

This is important stuff.  This is powerful stuff.  This is the kind of thing that girls should be asked growing up but they don't.  There's an assumption, even if you don't grow up in a cult, that as woman you're going to get married and have babies.  No one ever talks about how there's a whole world out there, a whole lifetime of other satisfying things you could be doing.  And confining yourself to be a slave to your family is like death to an intelligent woman.   I completely understand when Rachel's so exhausted with taking care of her family and trying to be good that she goes into her closet and screams into her dress.  And I completely, absolutely, 100% get it when Rachel thinks about her soon-to-be life:

Please, Father God, don't give me so many babies I can't find a moment's peace to read or think, or watch the sunset.  

...I think about sitting at my parents' dining room table in a few years, responsible for a baby in my belly and a baby in my arms.

I can't breathe.

I stare at my hands, like they belong to someone else. Someone I don't know but who lately seems intent on making herself known to me...

Watching Rachel's growth as she comes to see the truth about her family and her cult is a truly moving experience.  As she slowly connects with someone from the outside world who has managed to escape from the same religion, you just want to cheer her on in her mental and physical escape.  I particularly love Rachel's growing awareness that women can have lustful feelings, and that she has them too.  There's a certain scene when Rachel thinks about a boy she likes that really encapsulates the incredible feeling of romantic attraction:

I think about [him] looking at me like that. And about what it would feel like to know his eyes were on me, unable to look away.

Suddenly, there's a fuzzy tingle running through every fine hair on my arms, down my skin, like a million fuzzy tingles at once. And there's a gentle thud between my legs that makes me catch my breath.

If you want to read a book about what it feels like to realize that you are human for the first time, and experience what true freedom feels like for the first time, I couldn't recommend a better book than Devoted.  Now excuse me while I go revel in my quiet, peaceful, undemanding household where I can research and read and think whatever I want.

Mother-Daughter Book Camp

The title: Mother-Daughter Book Camp
The author:  Heather Vogel Frederick
Publication: Simon & Schuster, 2016
Got it from: The library

We were told back in 2012 that Wish You Were Eyre would be the last in the Mother-Daughter Book Camp series, but here it is four years later and we get an installment that Heather Vogel Frederick swears is positively, definitely the last one. For the final outing, Emma, Jess, Megan, Cassidy and Becca are counselors at Camp Lovejoy in New Hampshire.  Sharp readers may remember the name Lovejoy from the author's previous title Absolutely Truly: A Pumpkin Falls Mystery. Yep: the two worlds cross each other, with a few characters from the Pumpkin Falls story appearing in this one, including the town of Pumpkin Falls and Lovejoy's Books.  You don't have to have read Absolutely Truly to enjoy this, but it helps.

Let me start by saying that I am not a fan of camps, either attending them or reading about them.  However, I was willing to follow the girls there.  This book has a definite summer holiday feel that I would have loved reading about when I was young and on summer break.  In a way it showcases how the girls, now about to enter college, have come full circle and become mentors themselves.  In fact, the "mothers" of the Mother-Daughter Book Club are almost entirely absent.  Instead the girls themselves take over that role by teaching the camp children and organizing a camp book club where they read Understood Betsy by Dorothy Canfield Fisher (which I listened to on audiobook before I read this book).

I don't think this was a particularly necessary installment in the series, but I was happy to spend more time with the gang and see how their lives were going.  Fans will enjoy it. I'm just looking forward to more Pumpkin Falls mysteries.

Once and Always

The title: Once and Always
The author:  Julia Harper (aka Elizabeth Hoyt)
Publication: Hachette, 2015
Got it from: The library

Wait a minute?  This book, which is the third in Julia Harper/Elizabeth Hoyt's contemporary series, was just written in 2015?  The other two (1, 2) were written back in 2008!  My mind is blown!  So she's writing contemporaries again, maybe?  Not that I would complain if she just kept coming out with new Maiden Lane books (although, holy crap, I cannot keep up.  There are already 12!)  Well, that at least explains the recent re-release of the other two in the series.  

Although this is exciting news, I'm going to be honest and admit that Once and Always didn't blow me away.  I needed something to read while I was away on holiday, and I knew EH wouldn't let me down.  Most times I they're page-turners for me, but this one wasn't.  The first chapter is clever: Maisa Burnsey is driving through a snowstorm in Coot Lake, Minnesota.  She's pulled over by cop Sam West.  But uh-oh!  He's not just any cop, he's the man she had a hot one-night stand with the summer before.  And it's not the first time he's pulled her over.  In fact, he's done it a lot.  Maisa brushes him off, but the storm traps her in Coot Lake.  So far, so good.

Elizabeth Hoyt is great at writing cah-razy secondary characters and funny dialogue from said character's POV.  But oh my goodness, there were a LOT of secondary characters crammed into this book.  I had difficulty keeping track of who was who, as we were introduced to pretty much the whole damn town.  It was like an extra zany episode of Northern Exposure, with a "Russian mafiya chasing after some stolen diamonds B plot" thrown in.  The problem with spending so much time jumping from character to character is that I never ended up connecting with anyone.  Not even, unfortunately, the hero or heroine.  The whole book just felt okay, but never really clicked for me.  I'm hoping that the next contemporary she writes will be imbued with a little more EP magic and feel less formulaic.

Double review: Necessary Risk and The Luckiest Lady in London

The title: Necessary Risk
The author: Tara Wyatt
Publication: Hachette, 2016
Got it from: The library

The title: Necessary Risk
The author: Sherry Thomas
Publication: Berkley, 2013
Got it from: Hoopla Audiobooks

Since I just finished two books (one in paperback, one in audiobook), I thought I'd do a double review.  These two romances couldn't be more different.  Necessary Risk is a contemporary romance set in L.A. featuring Sierra Blake, a former child star who is an advocate for a women's reproductive health center called Choices (think Planned Parenthood.)  When she's targeted by hateful anti-choice activists, she hires hunky private security bodyguard Sean Owens to protect her.  If you love bodyguard romance (and I know I do), this one is for you.  With a refreshingly feminist political agenda, intelligent protagonists, lots of excitement, action, and scorching hot sex, this was a real page-turner.  If only I didn't feel so inadequate that this was written by a fellow librarian who works near me (although I don't know her personally.)  Highly recommended, and I can't wait to see what she does with the other books in the series (this being the first.)

The Luckiest Lady in London was a bit of a mixed bag for me.  There was no external conflict facing the protagonists, which was something of a disappointment, since I love that "hero and heroine against the world" aspect of romance.  All the obstacles faced by the main couple came from their own emotional conflict.  Louisa Cantwell is smart but poor, and faces ruin if she doesn't marry soon.  Felix, the Duke of Wrenworth, is a bored and jaded aristocrat who is intrigued by Louisa's intelligence and obvious lust for him.  He's closed off, though, because of his mother's emotional distance despite his love for her.  Felix and Louisa play a cat-and-mouse dance until Felix realizes he must propose to her in order to "win" the game.  The rest of the book is them learning to trust each other as husband and wife, despite some rather cruel emotional manipulation on Felix's part to spare his own feelings.  Despite great dialogue and an interesting foray into Victorian astronomy, I can't say this book hit quite the right note for me.  It was a little bit too angsty for my liking, but I can see how people who prefer the emotional roller coaster aspect of a romance would like it.

Once Upon a Kiss

The title: Once Upon a Kiss
The author: Robin Palmer
Publication: Speak, 2016
Got it from: The library

I seem to be on a YA kick lately, after a decade-long absence.  Maybe because they're finally publishing something other than paranormal/dystopian Twilight and Hunger Games knockoffs.   Not anything to do with this review, just making an observation.

So, disclaimer:  

I love the 80s.  Love love love love love.  It's the decade I was born in, the first decade I remember and will always be my favourite decade.  I love it all: the artery-clogging fast food and sugary cereal, the music (SO MUCH), the TV and movies, business ladies, the fashion (don't be a hater, it was amazing), and on and on. 

I will read/watch almost anything to do with/from the eighties.  So when I found out about Robin Palmer's Once Upon a Kiss, about a 1986 teen transported to 2016, I was all yaaasssss.  Just like 13 Going on 30, but she stays a teenager in 2016.  I didn't realize until partway in that this was written by the same author as Little Miss Red, a book that I had serious problems with.  Still, like a junkie looking for her fix, I devoured this book because EIGHTIES.

Here's what I liked: The eighties references, obviously.  There are a ton of them, especially the music.  I'd be hard-pressed to find a more 80s moment than the main character time-travelling because she chokes on a Fun Dip stick while trying on a Lycra mini dress at the mall.  

No, really.  I just checked, and there is no way that scene could get more Eighties.

This is also one of those "best friends discover they are soulmates," book, which I doubt is a spoiler because 1) it's glaringly obvious from page one and 2) it's a standard teen book and movie trope.  It's also one that I like, especially in YA.  

But oh boy, did I have problems with this book.

Okay, first of all: the logistics.  Now, I don't expect anything but silliness from time travel.  Whether it's a time-travelling DeLorean, magic fairy dust, a futuristic phone booth - heck, even a hot tub, I expect there to be some means for the protagonist to time travel.  But there's none of that here.  Just choking on a Fun Dip stick and mouth-to-mouth from the most popular jock in school doesn't count.  I want some explanation, damnit!

And while we're at it, can I ask why the heroine, Zoe, actually time-travelled?  Even as I was enjoying the eighties references and the silly fun of her discovering 2016 technology, I just couldn't figure it out.  See, Zoe and her best friend/love interest Jonah are outcasts, made fun of by the popular crowd at school.  But they're cool with that.  They think the popular kids are shallow and they're happy with their outcast status.  All well and good.  So what exactly is the lesson Zoe learns by waking up in 2016 as the most popular girl in school?  It only confirms to her that being popular often makes you shallow, empty and isolated.  But she already knew that.  It also doesn't make her appreciate Jonah any more, although she does miss him in her Queen Bee persona.  She already appreciated him.  So, the question is why?

And why, for that matter, is there a time-travel element anyway?  Was the whole plot just an excuse to imagine an eighties teen discovering iPhones and Facebook?  There's zero attempt at explanation for why Zoe, her family and school are all exactly the same thirty years later, having not aged at all.  Couldn't she just have woken up popular without the time jumping, if that was the point?  And she "got" 2016 technology and pop culture so quickly (read: impossibly quickly) to make the fish-out-of-water element fun for more than half the book.

Also, can I talk about Jonah?  As I said before, I enjoy best friend romances.  It makes a lot of sense for teenagers to find romance this way.  But this kid is so derpy.  It's pretty hard to feel swoony over a guy who is described as having food gunk stuck in his braces and farting when he eats beans.  And his 2016 persona wears a fedora and has a goatee....ugggghhh.  On second thought, let's forget about teen romances ever being actually romantic.  Teen boys are too gross.

Look, I like my YA light and fun, and it was.  I like my protagonists to reject shallowness, and they did.  But actual motivation and character growth would have been nice.

Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell

The title: Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell
The author: Susanna Clarke
Publication: Bloomsbury, 2004
Got it from: NB, 2007

I had originally read JS&MN almost ten years ago, back in 2007.  But last year the TV mini-series came out, my husband wanted to read it, and I thought it was time to dust off my paperback and re-read.

My impressions are going to be mostly about my experience reading it for a second time, and inevitably it will be compared to the first time.  In order to understand why I loved this book back then, you have to also understand that I was deep into my Regency-loving phase, as well as my magic realism phase.  I also read it swiftly and deeply.  This time the demands of work and other responsibilities meant I read this in a five-month stretch, divided in chunks.

Unfortunately the book didn't hold up as well the second time around.  Maybe I was just feeling impatient, but the whole thing just felt too darn long.  The first time I think I was projecting emotions on the characters that weren't there.  With a few minor exceptions, I didn't connect emotionally with any of the characters.  At all.   Having read the Mrs. Quent series in the last five years, which was probably 2/3 longer than JS&MN's hefty 1000 pages (although divided over three volumes), I feel the former series did it so much better.  Fantasy world building and 19th century manners are fine, but if I can't relate to the characters, forget it.  The Mrs. Quent series had me turning the pages because I cared about the people and felt involved in their lives.  Clarke's writing feels remote and standoffish in comparison.  It's a deliberate choice on the author's part to make it feel more like writing from the era, but it doesn't sit well with my modern sensibilities.  Mrs. Quent had a formal Victorian feel, but the characters felt modern enough to make me feel I was experiencing everything with them.

The other thing that the Mrs. Quent books had was an actual female heroine.  JS&MN didn't, and it bothered me so much more this time around.  It shouldn't be surprising - I mean, the book has two dudes in the title, but I wish the women had been more than just passive, helpless victims.  I know The Ladies of Grace Adieu helps make up for this, but it's a separate book and by the end of JS&MN I was totally sick of reading about dude magicians, dude ministers, dude dandies, dude servants, dude soldiers and dude fairies. 

There's no doubt that Clarke did an enormous amount of research in terms of historical detail - events, people and places are all accurate, with the addition of magic.  The book is actually at its best when it diverts from the main plot for witty, amusing footnotes of magical history grounded in England's real past.  (And an anecdote about Napoleon being outwitted by a charlatan and his honking goose is comedy gold.)  But something about it just felt off, like a stuffy piece of furniture that no longer appeals to me.  I realize the book hasn't changed.  I have.  Maybe in another ten years it will be the right time in my life to appreciate it again.  Or maybe it belongs in my past forever.

Kissing in America

The title: Kissing in America
The author: Margo Rabb
Publication: Harper, 2015
Got it from: The library

It's no big secret that I am drawn to stories about women like me, but rare is the YA book that captures - I mean truly captures - what it felt like to be a teenager.  Particularly a sensitive, romantic one.  And that's just what the heroine of Kissing in America, 16-year-old New Yorker Eva Roth, is.  She's a romantic in a way that no one - not her workaholic mother, or her genius best friend Annie, or any other of her friends and teachers - gets.  Her father, a fellow poetry lover, did get it, but he died in a plane crash two years earlier, leaving Eva detached and isolated under the weight of her grief.  To cope with the pain, Eva turns to romance novels and their promise of happy endings.  Then she meets Will, and in him Eva finds someone who finally understands her feelings.  Will reawakens Eva's love of writing and poetry, and she naturally falls head over heels in love with him.  When he moves to L.A., Eva convinces her friend Annie to compete on the show Smartest Girl in America so she can take a road trip and see him.

I was expecting to read a book about a girl who reads romance novels.  I was not expecting to read a book about the nature and heartache of grief, or that the novel would have no easy answers.  It's easy to see why Eva turns to romance novels to feed that side of herself she's desperately missing, and it's easy to see why Will, who shares so many of her feelings, is so attractive to her.  This novel also gets the incredibly complex and overwhelming experience  of what it's like to be a teenage girl in love for the first time, and why those feelings help you cope with the scariness of growing up.

Even though the story had heavy moments, there were some lighter and funny touches, like Eva's paranoid and germophobe aunt who joins them on their trip.  My only disappointment was that the author seems to have an outdated view of romance novels.  The ones Eva reads seem to be of the cheesy old school type, not the newer, better ones a real teenager nowadays would read.  The book falls just short of making the connection between romance as comfort and romance as mental training ground for real relationships.  Instead it goes for the cheap, easy stereotypes of barbaric alpha heroes and unrealistic stories.

In terms of character, I don't think I've ever read a YA heroine I've loved more than Eva.  She's smart and funny and vulnerable and strong all at once.  It's a refreshing change from so many of the current selfish, whiny YA heroines.  I wanted to reach through the pages of the book and give her a big hug and tell her everything was going to be okay.  And even though there was no big, happy ending, there was a hopeful one.  You knew that in the end, the girl was going to be alright.

Something About You

The title: Something About You
The author: Julie James
Publication: Berkley Sensation, 2010
Got it from: Hoopla Audiobooks, 2016

Readers of this blog know I love a romance heroine who has a job with authority, and her protective hero.  Something About You has both those elements.  Well-paced, well-plotted, funny, and super hot: I loved this book.  The first in the author's FBI/US attorney series opens with the heroine, Cameron Lynde, taking time out from her stressful job as an assistant US Attorney by staying at a fancy hotel.  Unfortunately she can't sleep because of the couple gettin' it on next door.  When she calls hotel security, they discover not sexy times, but a dead body.  Bad: Cameron spied the killer through the door's peep hole.  Worse: the FBI are called because it implicates a prominent US senator.  Even worse: the agent who shows up to interrogate Cameron is Jack Pallas, the same agent who worked with Cameron three years earlier on a case that went south.  Because of a big misunderstanding, the case ended up getting thrown out and Jack blames Cameron for the three years he got transferred to Nebraska.

Some of the real highlights of this book are the scenes where Jack and his partner are interrogating Cameron: it's right out of a 1940s screwball comedy.  Cameron's got sass, Jack is straightlaced, and Jack's partner Wilkins is the laid-back good cop.  Naturally Jack and Cameron are totally hot for each other, and it takes a good long time to clear up the big misunderstanding, as they fight their unwanted sexual attraction by trading barbs.  As you might expect, Jack soon becomes extra protective while they try to identify the killer, who the reader knows but the characters don't.  There's some pretty funny moments, often brought about by Jack's partner Wilkins getting involved in his love life (and a certain hilarious mistaken male stripper incident), Cameron's hired cop protectors who also become involved in her love life, and Cameron's gay friend Colin who Jack is jealous of. 

I listened to this on audiobook, read by Karen White, who did a great job bringing the the different characters to life (I particularly enjoyed her Agent Wilkins' happy-go-lucky voice) and made the sex scenes sound really sexy.  The danger wasn't super intense, allowing the relationship to take its rightful place at the forefront.  I do enjoy an edge-of-your seat, on-the-run romance, but this was different and it worked for me. 

Crossfire Christmas

The title: Crossfire Christmas
The author: Julie Miller
Publication: Harlequin, 2014
Got it from: Overdrive

December is one of those periods I just don't have the time or energy to read anything really heavy.  I want something light and fast-paced, preferably a romance with a winter setting.  Crossfire Christmas was a perfectly serviceable book in that regard.  It didn't really stand out for me, but it was a nice distraction.  It's part of the "Kansas City Precinct" series that I haven't read but apparently involves a lot of characters who are cops.  Both the hero and heroine appeared as characters earlier in the series.  The hero, Charlie Nash, is a DEA agent whose cover has been blown inside a big-time drug cartel.  Wounded and on the run, he stumbles across  Teresa Rodriguez, a nurse, who he basically kidnaps to keep himself alive.

I'm not sure why this book was just okay for me.  It had some elements I liked, but neither the hero or heroine really grabbed me.  They weren't annoying, but they didn't sparkle with personality either.  It also had some road trip elements, which I like, but they never really left Kansas City so that sort of fizzled out.  I also really enjoy the hurt/comfort trope, but I never really believed Nash was in any danger of dying.  And maybe that is the source of my lukewarm reaction: there were no edge-of-my seat moments where I felt the main characters were in any serious danger.   It was overall a paint-by-numbers pleasant experience. 

Dietland

The title: Dietland
The author: Sarai Walker
Publication: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2015
Got it from: Hoopla Audiobooks

I actually finished listening to this book on audiobook a few weeks ago, and it has been running through my mind ever since.  It's not the usual sort of book I read, but then again I don't think there's another book like it.  I would never have picked it up except something about it piqued my interest from the reviews.  That something is, "shadowy feminist group takes revenge against scumbag men."

But to say "that's what it's about" is to do a disservice to this book, because it's much more complicated than that.  If I were to sum it up as succinctly as possible, I'd say it's about a self-loathing, obese twentysomething woman who goes on a journey of self-acceptance and opens her eyes to the reality of the world around her.  If you read the reviews on Goodreads and elsewhere, you'll see this book has divided a lot of readers due to its strong feminist perspective.

I can imagine that if you're not already a hardcore feminist (as I am), some of the book's revelations about the way men treat women might seem shocking.  But when you're talking about a scenario where women are kidnapping men who brutally rape a young woman (for example), and then dropping them on a freeway, the idea isn't supposed to be "is this right or wrong?"  It's to take a look at the millions and millions of instances of injustices women have faced, and think, "what would it actually be like if even a tiny fraction of violence men do to us were turned on them?"

Men's rights activists can breath easy: that's not likely to happen any time soon.  Even the novel's heroine, Plum, is shocked and horrified by the actions of the secret feminist action group, known as "Jennifer" (after a name on a piece of paper stuffed in a victim's mouth.)  Well, she is at first - when she's a downtrodden, miserable hermit with a crappy dead-end job.  If people take nothing else from this book, they will remember its depiction of the various ways Plum suffers because of her weight.

And it's brutal. I mean really, really brutal. This book holds nothing back in highlighting the shameful, disgraceful way our society, and particularly men, treat women who are overweight.  Plum's journey is heartbreaking, from her unhappy childhood to her teenage suffering on an awful diet plan to her current life as the faceless agony aunt behind the "Dear Kitty" letters in a teen magazine. Seeing the various ways Plum gets rejected, harassed and even beaten by men who are complete strangers simply for being overweight is painful.  No wonder she's desperate to have gastric bypass surgery and unleash the thinner "Alicia" she thinks is inside her.

The book takes a turn for the better when she gets taken in by a group of outcast activist women, led by Verena Baptist, the daughter of Plum's one-time weight-loss guru.  Fans of mythic tropes will recognize many aspects of the hero's quest in the way Plum must undergo a series of challenges to transform herself (at first for money, later purely for her own benefit).  Eventually, Plum is reborn.  I won't spoil it for you, except to say that her eventual self-acceptance is long, painful and triumphant.

As for Jennifer?  It didn't bother me.  Some of the stunts they pulled were actually pretty funny: my favourite was when they blackmailed a British tabloid to replace the page three girl with naked men. Eventually England is covered in images of buff men and women flock from all over the world  to see it.

I'm not even sure this book is actually condoning the violence, although these particular men largely deserve it.  Instead, it's flipped the violence around in a way we're not used to seeing.  As the main character in the wonderful movie Suffragette says, "We break windows, be burn things, because war is the only thing men listen to."

Sometimes in books, things get ugly.  They show the world as it is, not as we want it to be.  I hope it will be a revelation to any woman reading this novel that we should live our lives to please ourselves first.  As one of my favourite Oscar Wilde sayings goes, "to love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance."

Poles Apart

The title: Poles Apart
The author: Terry Fallis
Publication: McClelland & Stewart, 2015
Got it from: The library

I really enjoyed Terry Fallis's political books, The Best Laid Plans and The High Road, which poked gentle fun at Canadian politics with a healthy dose of liberal idealism thrown in (that's big "L" and little"l" liberal.)  Surely Angus McLintock, the grizzled feminist engineering professor/MP at the heart of these novels, would approve of our new PM.  Wait, did I say feminist engineering professor?  You mean an actual male writer has a feminist character in a mainstream novel?  That's just one of the many delightful touches in Fallis's stories that elevate them to must-reads, at least in this feminist's eyes.

So imagine how excited I was that a male feminist was going to be the main character of Fallis's new book, Poles Apart.  The title is a double entendre, as the hero lives (by accident) above a strip club.  Everett Kane is a freelance writer who's drifting in life.  The only time he ever felt enthusiastic about something was in his university days, when he worked as a crusader for women's equality.  His dad is an old-school misogynist, his mom a high-powered businesswoman (they're divorced).  Everett moves to Florida after his father suffers a stroke.  At the rehab centre he meets Beverley Tanner, a feminist from the heyday of second-wave feminism and an idol of Everett's.  Beverley inspires him to write passionately about feminism, which he does on his new blog, Eve of Equality (which uses both the phrase "on the eve of equality" and Everett's name).

In true Fallis fashion, the blog goes viral and everyone is trying to figure out the author's identity.  Everett is desperate to keep it secret, as he wants the message and not himself to be the focus of attention.  Matters get worse when the owner of a nation-wide strip club he lambastes on his blog ends up moving his strip club below Everett's apartment.

Strip clubs?  Ugggh.  I hate that tired trope, but at least here's it's used ironically (a feminist living above a strip club?  Say what?).  Naturally, Everett befriends the hooker with a heart of gold one of the strippers, but thankfully that doesn't go the way I expected it to.  Along on the friend train is a gentle giant of a bouncer and the strip club owner's young and attractive lawyer.

Naturally everything gets wrapped up in a neat package at the end but I like that don't tell anyone.  I could have done with a lot less of the macho dad, although he does undergo a conversion of sorts.  I would have loved to actually read Eve of Equality's blog posts but the book doesn't even give us so much as a paragraph.  But all that pales in my excitement about a mainstream, funny book about feminism.  Like the hero, I also think that humour and feminism go hand in hand, and that men can and should get involved.  Now if only Fallis would write a book from the actual perspective of the badass older women in his novels, that would be amazing.

Absolutely Truly: A Pumpkin Falls Mystery

The title: Absolutely Truly: A Pumpkin Falls Mystery
The author: Heather Vogel Frederick
Publication: Simon & Schuster, 2014
Got it from: Hoopla Audiobooks


Exciting news for fans of the Mother-Daughter Book Club series: after writing what was supposed to be the final book in the series back in 2012, author Heather Vogel Frederick has announced another installment due next spring.  In the meantime, I've been listening to the audiobook of her new chapter book for younger readers.

Truly Lovejoy is 13 and her family has just moved to Pumpkin Falls, New Hampshire from Texas after her father sustained an injury fighting overseas.  Truly's family is concerned about the change in their father, who has become more stern and withdrawn.  Taking over the family bookstore might be what he needs to get back on his feet.  Meanwhile, Truly has to deal with the awkwardness of moving to a new town and adolescence in general.

At first I was skeptical.  These weren't my beloved Mother-Daughter Book Club characters, and Truly seemed like a bit of a whiny brat.  But as with the MDBC series, I began to warm to the story and the charming small-town characters.  The book doesn't really start getting good until Truly starts solving the mystery.  As with the girls of the MDBC, Truly leads a busy life that involves dancing lessons, swimming, birding and algebra lessons that she has to squeeze the mystery around.  The mystery involves a series of clues found in a first edition of Charlotte's Web.  (I totally figured out who the letters were for early on.)  As an added bonus, a familiar character from the Mother-Daughter Book Club universe makes a hilarious cameo.

Hooray for Pumpkin Falls and what will hopefully be the first of many in a new mystery series.

Step Aside, Pops

The title: Step Aside, Pops
The author: Kate Beaton
Publication: Drawn & Quarterly, 2015
Got it from: Amazon

Happy Thanksgiving!  

I'm late with this review and I'm just realizing I never reviewed Kate Beaton's first comic collection, Hark! a Vagrant back in 2011.  Which is a crime, considering it is one of my go-to books when I am in need of a good laugh.  If you haven't heard of Kate Beaton or Hark! A Vagrant, the website that houses her cartoons, here's what you need to know: she's a Maritimer (like me).  She loves history (like me).  And she draws cartoons that feature the absurdity of a lot of things in history.  They're sometimes Canadian-based, sometimes not, and they often feature badass historical women, but sometimes not.  (The sassy cover model for this collection was taken from a Victorian-era cartoon about the horrors of women cyclists.  In Beaton's interpretation, the woman quips, "You see me rollin up pops you step aside," as she nearly bowls over an outraged gentleman.  He later grumbles, "bloody unbelievable," as another woman cyclist goes strutting by carrying a blaring phonograph.)

There's a goldmine of humour here if you're a general history and literature buff, and the few references I didn't get I ended up researching.  I didn't know a thing, for instance, about Ida B. Wells, but Beaton does a great job at exploring the frustrations of being a black feminist in 19th century America while still being genuinely funny.  She's also at her biting best during her extended "Wuthering Heights" saga and definitely nails all the issues I had with the book back when I was an undergrad.  Even when she's skewering you can tell Beaton genuinely loves the subjects she's writing about.

It's hard to say what my favourite cartoon in this book is.  She's unbelievably funny when she's drawing her own interpretations of classic Nancy Drew and Edward Gorey covers.  (My husband and I are obsessed with one featuring a simple scene of a woman feeding a pigeon bread crumbs.  "Aw yiss," struts Beaton's pigeon excitedly.  "Motha. Fuckin. Bread crumbs."  That's the extent of the joke.)  The prize might go to the multi-arc "Founding Fathers (In a Mall)" and "Founding Fathers (Stuck in an Amusement Park)", which features Washington, Jefferson, Franklin et al inexplicably hitting up modern locations a la Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure.  If you love Revolutionary history as much as I do, prepare to be seriously amused.  "Here is a chain of carriages that will take us home!" Madison says, pointing to a roller coaster.  "Nay," disagrees another of the Fathers.  "It is merely a circle of violence, and then you retch."  I could read a whole book featuring the Founding Fathers in the 21st century.

At the outset, the cartoons seem silly, filled with sometimes crude humour.  But look beyond and you'll see how expressively the characters are drawn, how brilliant the jokes are, how deftly she skewers familiar tropes.  I know I'll return to this collection again and again.

For the Love of Pete

The title: For the Love of Pete
The author:  Julia Harper (aka Elizabeth Hoyt)
Publication: Hachette, 2008
Got it from: Barnes and Noble, Buffalo, September 2015

Elizabeth Hoyt once again proves she can write like magic with this just-what-I-needed sequel to Hot.  Special Agent Dante Torelli, last seen as the hero's partner in the previous book, is on assignment in Chicago.  His job is to protect a witness testifying against a mob kingpin.  Unfortunately something goes terribly wrong.  His partners are killed and a hitman takes off with the witness's baby girl, Petronella, or Pete for short.  Pete's aunt Zoey happens to be outside when the baby is taken - she's living in the same apartment building as her rough-around-the-edges sister and brother-in-law.  She's also one furiously protective aunt and insists on accompanying Dante as they chase after the hitman and her niece.  This being Elizabeth Hoyt, things get a little crazy when two little old Indian ladies being blackmailed by the mob accidentally end up snatching Pete from the hitman.

As in Hot, the author manages to just skirt the edges of a too-crazy plot to make it believable, satisfying and fun.  I love a road-trip romance story and this one has one in winter - even better!  The story really shines in the middle, when Dante and Zoey are arguing and learning about one another and fighting their mutual attraction (as you do in a romance novel road trip).  The action was fast-paced and sometimes too violent, but it really held my attention, which isn't easy for a book to accomplish these days when my life has gotten crazy and stressful.  As much as I love Hoyt's Maiden Lane series, I wish she would write more contemporaries if they're all as good as this.