Heart of the Steal, Avon Gale and Roan Parrish

This is a really cute book, and I enjoyed it a lot. It's worth noting, I think, that it's NOT a book about an art thief and an FBI agent who fall in love in spite of their professions; it's mostly about an established relationship that struggles because the two protagonists have different moral compasses. Vaughn isn't an art thief, he's rich, and he's a little spoiled, and he doesn't see why Will, who works for the FBI, doesn't want him to use his clout to get Will everything he's ever wanted. I really like stories about vaguely amoral rich people who want to give their partners everything and destroy their enemies. It just wasn't the story I was expecting.

(Also I think the authors were more interested in one protagonist than the other, which bled through a little bit.)

Grade: C
#57 in 2017

White Hot (Hidden Legacy #2), Ilona Andrews

It really, really bugged me at the end of the 1st book in this series, when our heroine, Nevada, told her family that Connor Rogan was a sociopath and a dangerous killer, and they replied "Ohhhh, when are you getting MAAAARRIED?" I know it's a romance novel trope to have a big interfering family, and it can be cute when it's done right. But when it ignores a character's very real concerns, and isn't rooted in anything but "he's hot" (they KNOW he's a murderer and maybe dangerous) it reads to me as disrespectful instead of cute. 

Guess what THIS book is also full of.

The politics and the backstory here take up a LOT of the action, and it's confusing and too much. Nevada is still a great narrator, but the rest of the book mostly feels like set up for the third book instead of a story. Rogan is ALWAYS described as "male" or "masculine" or "terrifying" or "looming" or "huge." Honestly, I was picturing Beast from Beauty and the Beast rather than a human man, and the attempt to humanize his behavior at the end of the book didn't work for me, either. I read it because I was hoping to enjoy it more than the first book,but I found it frustrating, unconvincing, and relatively boring. Oh, well.

Grade: D
#56 in 2017

Hello Forever, Sarina Bowen

This is a sweet piece of fluff from Sarina Bowen's back catalog about two guys who met (and kissed) at church camp as teens, then lost touch, and now have reconnected as adults working in the same college town. One is a basketball marketer, and it very much feels like a warm-up version of Him, one of my favorite romance novels ever.

There isn't a ton to this story -- I liked the conflict, because it was rooted in a real reason why one of the heroes couldn't just come out as gay, and why he was a secret virgin. I had a little trouble buying that their names were Cax and Axel, and by the end the drama, and bad guy, had ramped up to a level that wasn't really believable and didn't really make sense. But it was still a sweet story and a fun trope.

Grade: C
#55 in 2017

The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, Taylor Jenkins Reid

This book promises classic hollywood gossip (fictionalized) and I recognized some of the people and stories that served as the genesis of some of the anecdotes here. I love classic Hollywood stories. I wish I had liked this more. I didn't like the framing device of the young journalist and her life struggles -- I almost never like a framing device -- and it made it pretty obvious what the twist at the end would be. "Within a week I would hate Evelyn Hugo," says the narrator, so I was looking for a reason, and it was awfully obvious. I did like the reveal of who the true love of Evelyn Hugo's life was, but -- spoilers follow -- I was never really sold on why she and Celia loved each other. They were both pretty rotten people, and the book tells us how much they love each other but doesn't show us why this is a deathless romance. The seven husbands also weren't as juicy and gossipy as I wanted. For a similar story, but juicier and more shocking and enthralling to read, AND non-fiction, read Furious Love about Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. Grade: C #54 in 2017

Race of Scorpions, Dorothy Dunnett

Gotta say, I did not love this book, and that's unusual for me and Dunnett. She remains my all-time favorite author, but on the whole I'm finding the House of Niccolo books to be really strange when it comes to sex. Every sex scene, or love interest, is completely transactional, and it's a little bit uncomfortable.

Spoilers follow -- I find it really disappointing that Katelina's entire story arc was about Nicholas, whether she wanted desperately to sleep with him, wanted desperately to kill him, or wanted desperately to sleep with him again. She lived her entire life (in these books) revolving around him, which I'm not sure he deserved. And then there's Primaflora, who of course is a high class prostitute, and who of course turns out to be evil and manipulative. Or there is David (in Trebizond) and Jacob (in Cyprus), both of whom want to sleep with Nicholas, and the books treat both of them like monsters for it. It's just uncomfortable to read, and I'm frankly uncomfortable with how often Nicholas sleeps with ladies who then die, or how much his "quest" is driven by needing revenge or sexual relief after yet another lady he slept with dies. It's very Christopher Nolan, and I don't like him, either. 


The plot of this book should have been right up my alley with the plotting and the betrayal and the sieges. But halfway through the book stops to be about how the sugar business runs again, and it's boring. I don't care about Nicholas's trade dealings, or playing the Genoese against the Venetians against the Portuguese. It's too complicated to be interesting, and it's too pedestrian to be the plot of a sprawling novel like this.

I also think this book is entirely too fond of elliptical conversations that imply vaguely about plotting that's going on, and I'm tired of meaningful exchanges and knowing looks that don't actually tell the reader what's going on. I'm going to take reading break before I try the next book, because Right now, despite the beautiful writing, I am not really enjoying this series.

Grade: C
#53 in 2017

Baked Fresh (Portland Heat #2), Annabeth Albert

I can read each of these books in about an hour, which isn't a complaint, but I'm not sure it's a compliment either. This is a cute book, but Vic and Robin are both so messed up, and the book needed to be about twice as long to deal with them. Vic's cousin and both recently died of heart attacks, so he got gastric bypass surgery and hasn't been with anyone since losing weight. He feels unlovable and awkward in his own body. Robin was out on the streets for a while after his family didn't take him coming out well, and he can't enjoy sex since it brings up bad memories of what he had to do to survive. They meet while both volunteering at a shelter, and when one of the kids overdoses, Robin takes it really personally. The book is a light and fluffy romance that really only hints at them dealing with all of these layers and layers of trauma and sadness.

Oh, and Robin says he doesn't want a boyfriend, which Vic takes as a challenge to try and get him to be his boyfriend, which is kind of weird to me.

Grade: C
#11 in 2017

The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet, Becky Chambers

I was psyched to read this book, and so disappointed by the end. Maybe if I had realized it was a book that didn't have a plot I'd have looked at it differently from the beginning, but the first chapter teases a tense space escape story about a mysterious woman who has changed her identity and fled to the far reaches of space, and then the book is.... just a picaresque series of scenes on various planets, learning about various alien species and cultures. And that's it.

I just... I needed something to happen, or for actions to have some consequences, or for the exposition to stop. It reminded me a lot of reading Rosemary and Rue, where every chapter seemed to introduce a new type of faerie. Every couple of chapters goes deep into some alien civilization, all the way to the end of the book. But unless it's setting up a bigger plot, I find myself skimming and uninterested.

And there was no larger plot or conflict. They land on a planet; they meet people; they leave. Any time there's something that seems like it might be bad or tense, it's immediately resolved. They land on a planet that has periodic swarms of giant bugs; they are all safely inside when it happens. One of their crew is arrested for being a clone; they find a legal loophole to save him. A ship full of land mines docks up with them; they find the mines and diffuse them. And this all happens quickly, just like that.

It's not the book's fault that I also happen to really dislike the archetype of the wacky, adorable female engineer who's so CRAZY and ADORABLE and scatter-brained, but it drives me nuts, and I don't find it charming.

For space adventures that are exciting, feature lots of weird aliens, are creepily atmospheric, and compulsively readable, I HIGHLY recommend the Paradox books by Rachel Bach. Read that, not this.

Grade: C
#10 in 2017

Served Hot (Portland Heat #1)

Books from 1st person POV aren't always my favorite. This book felt very short and very light; Robby is an adorable guy who serves coffee from a cart, and his favorite customer, David, is his big crush. David has a pretty traumatic backstory, where his long-time partner never acknowledged him or wanted to come out, and then died, which is how everyone in his small town found out. So David doesn't really know how to be in a relationship, and Robby is willing to wait, but they never talk about it, which makes them both feel bad, and then they work it out and it's fine. The book needed to be way longer or deal with the issues it raised more, or something.

Grade: C
#9 in 2017

Status Update, Annabeth Albert

I really liked this. Noah is a little awkward and shy and definitely in the closet because his family is religious and so is the university he teaches at. Adrian, on the other hand, is his family's screw up, despite being pretty successful. Adrian gets stranded, Noah has to give him a ride to his sister's wedding, and they both make each other happier and better, and it was lovely. I wish there had been a little bit more of the happy ending at the end, but the book was warm and fuzzy and lovely.

Grade: B
#8 in 2017

Wanted, A Gentleman, KJ Charles

I loved this book! It's one of my favorite by Charles ever (although nothing will ever knock Think of England out of the top spot, I don't think). It's a romance between Theo Swann, who is a fairly shady guy who runs a newspaper in historical London where people put ads to find romance (or at least someone), and Martin St. Vincent, a former slave who's been freed and has made good as a gentleman. Or at least as good as he can. A young woman who is a friend of Martin's runs off with a jerk she met through Theo's newspaper, and Martin makes Theo help him get her back.

Both Martin and Theo are deeply sympathetic and interesting characters, both are struggling in different ways, and both make each other better. If I had a complaint it would be that the third act twist is telegraphed really obviously, and I would have liked it one percent better if I had been surprised. But overall the whole book is a delight and it's going on my "reread on a bad day" list.

Grade: A
#5 in 2017

The Watchmaker of Filigree Street, Natasha Pulley

I liked so much of this book so much. I loved the setting and the writing and Thaniel and Mori, and I loved the vaguely steampunk sci-fi premise (which I won't spoil). Until about 80% in I thought this was going to be one of my favorite books of the year, maybe ever, rivaling my love of Cloud Atlas. (Big portions of this read like a much more accessible Ten Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet.) It's wonderful.

But god I hated that the only major female character a) hates other women for not being as smart and scientific as she is and b) mainly exists to try and ruin the men's lives and be wrong about things. It's an old plot trope, the jealous woman trying to destroy the romance, and it really spoiled the book for me. I can't recommend a book where the only woman is a plot device and a monster.

Grade: C
#4 in 2017

The Summer Palace, C.S. Pacat

This was... not what I was hoping for. The Captive Prince series ends abruptly, with lots of loose ends; I was hoping for a happy, loving coda where they do at least a little bit of explaining how the hell they plan to change the culture of both countries they rule and combine their rule and there is almost none of that. And the dynamic between Damen and Laurent, the very best part of the series (which occasionally makes no sense, but I let it go because Damen! and Laurent!! are in love!!) doesn't feel right. Laurent is too toothless, too sweet and syrupy and tenderly helpless, Damen enjoys Laurent being sweet too much. The whole series is based around the idea that Damen loves Laurent for his sharp angles, his ruthless plotting, his cunning brain. Giving us an epilogue where Laurent is none of those things and Damen thinks it's really sexy is weird for both of them. Gotta be honest -- there's post-series fic I think is much better.

Grade: C
#2 in 2017

The Disaster Artist: My Life Inside The Room, the Greatest Bad Movie Ever Made, Greg Sestero, Tom Bissell

I read 95 books last year! That's not bad. :D

Super interesting -- this sheds a lot of light on The Room and Tommy Wiseau. There's something slightly weird about the narration, since the author posits himself as Tommy's only real friend, maybe in the whole world, and the proceeds to tell us a) all the terrible things Tommy has said or done and b) all the ways he was dependent on Tommy. It doesn't totally feel like both of those things can be true. Plus the whole thing is slightly odd, because Tommy is an unreliable narrator about everything, so we have layers of unreliable narrators telling us this story. Still, it's funny and oddly touching at the end.

Grade: B

#1 in 2017

The Victorian City: Everyday Life in Dickens' London, Judith Flanders

This makes me want to reread Dickens, which is HIGH PRAISE because I hated Dickens in high school (except A Tale of Two Cities. I looooved me some Sidney Carton). But this book is FASCINATING. There are chapters on everything, from how sewer systems worked before the Great Stink, to what street sellers shouted as they sold stuff, to what prostitutes wore (fun fact: we're not sure!). This is a fun book, and there's a lot of great stuff here to excitedly tell people as you're reading.

For example, I just turned to my roommate and said, "So it turns out no one was sure who were the prostitutes and who weren't in London; all the records are from men who were like THERE ARE SO MANY PROSTITUTES ON THE STREETS," by which they mostly meant women who were out in public or maybe looked at them in what they considered a friendly way. It's hilariously ridiculous. Also, because the prostitutes allegedly dressed so brightly, they were known as "gay women," and the streets were just FILLED with gay women. I'll be honest -- that sounds great.

On the other hand, huge amounts of the chapters are just listing things; 74 kinds of street sellers, 93 things for sale for breakfast, the cost of 112 different rolls. I'm kidding, but not really. It gets exhausting, which is why it took me so long to get through the whole book.

Grade: B
#94 in 2016

The Final Deduction, Rex Stout

So this lady comes to Nero Wolfe and says her husband has been kidnapped, and she wants his help. She pays the ransom, the husband is returned, and then he winds up dead. What could have happened???

The charm of these books, as always, is in Archie Goodwin's narration and voice. I'm going to start putting in cute quotes or something from these books, because the patter and the flavor is just so good, and otherwise every summary is "oh hey, another book! Wolfe ate some stuff, Archie was sarcastic, Cramer chewed on a cigar." (That is not a complaint.)

#93 in 2016
Grade: B

Silent in the Grave (Lady Julia Grey, #1) , Deanna Raybourne

** spoiler alert ** Eh. I love a good mystery, but there's barely any mystery here, and I knew who the bad guy had to be. The hero was too rude to be charming, and not in a Mr. Darcy way, and the heroine's big modern family felt forced. (They are cool with EVERYTHING, including encouraging her to have affairs, her sister having a female lover, venereal disease, prostitutes... awesome, but jarring every time it's just shrugged off. The heroine will never speak to her family doctor again after learning that he's anti-semitic. Oh boy, I wish people reacted like that.) 

The heroine was fine, but didn't do much, and I didn't like the hero enough to root for them to get together. Also, the book keeps dropping really heavy foreshadowing -- "Would I have gone that night HAD I REALIZED HOW TERRIBLE THE SITUATION WOULD GET????" when nothing terrible ever really happens.

Oh, and then on the last page someone mentions that the hero turned into a cat, and the heroine says, "Of course; I should have realized it was him."


Grade: D
#92 in 2016

Too Many Clients, Rex Stout

In this book, written in 1955, Archie Goodwin describes the area around 82nd street and Columbus Ave in NYC as just about the worst neighborhood anyone can imagine. You can't imagine how loudly I sighed, pretending I could afford an apartment there now.

A man is murdered! It turns out to involve a sex attic, which I hadn't really considered as a thing. Nero Wolfe agrees to somehow solve the mystery without telling the cops about the sex attic where the murder happened. Archie barely argues with any police, nor does he spend the weekend with Lily Rowan. (Nor does he take her to the sex attic, unfortunately.)

Grade: B
#91 in 2016

Wild at Whiskey Creek

The only reason this book is a B instead of an A is that Julie Anne Long wrote one of my top-five romances of all time, and until she writes a book that makes me feel that phenomenal again, I am unfairly docking her points. Yes, I know it's unfair, but oh god I loved that book.

This book is the second in her contemporary series, set in a charming small-town in the West. I grew up in a small town, so I have a lot of feelings about how it's often made out to be charming and wonderful; I appreciate that Julie Anne Long has made it clear that a lot of people want to leave Hellcat Canyon. In particular her heroine in this book, Glory Greenleaf, is from the kind of small-town family I recognize. Single-parent, financially disastrous, brother in jail, barely scraping by keeping a job, but that's just sort of how life is. Glory is a very talented singer and songwriter, and everyone thought she was going away to be successful, but her family has pulled her back. That feels incredibly real to me.

A lot less of the book is spent on her love interest, Eli, whose name I had literally forgotten and had to go look up. He's the local sheriff, and of course they grew up together, and of course they were madly in love, until of course he had to arrest her brother (his best friend) and send him to jail.

It's a really lovely romance, and Glory gets to live her dreams and love her family. I liked it a lot. (Could I do without the "she's pregnant" epilogue? Yeah, probably. I'm so tired of romance novels tacking on a "she's pregnant" epilogue. THERE ARE OTHER WAYS TO HAVE A HAPPY FAMILY. But whatever.)

Grade: B
#90 in 2016

Six of Crows/Crooked Kingdom, by Leigh Bardugo

These books are GREAT. I really really really liked them a lot. These are the "read on the subway, read during lunch, read in your spare five minutes, stay up too late to finish" kind of books.

Things I loved: the world building is so interesting! It's set in what I think of as fantasy Netherlands, although fantasy Russia, fantasy Germany (or maybe Finland/Sweden), and fantasy China make appearances. Old school fantasy used to have each country be a different type of person, as if all the people from country X are evil, and from country Y are religious zealots, and from country Q are proud but dumb (cough cough David Eddings cough). This does a great job of showing people from each country being influenced by their own culture and history, but also able to grow and change when they meet new people. There are good and bad people from everywhere.

Things I loved: the characters! A great range are assembled as part of Kaz's gang, not just "a sassy girl" and "a smart boy" and "the love interest." Everyone is complex, everyone gets flashbacks about how they became who they are, and everyone contributes. There is no whiny princess dragged along against her will, nor is there an ass-kicking warrior chick who never talks except to growl or be sexy. I liked everyone. (Okay, I especially liked Inej and Wylan.)

I haven't told you anything about the plot because book 1 is about a heist, and book 2 is about the repercussions of that heist, and you'll be happiest not knowing anything except that. I was sold on these books when I was told that Lymond is one of Bardugo's favorite hero-types, and you can see reflections of that in Kaz, but again, you'll be happiest not explicitly trying to compare this to Dunnett. It's twisty it's exciting, it's awesome.

One thing that made me laugh: everyone is a teenager, because it's YA, but also everyone is weighed down by endless tragic backstory and difficult experiences. These are some worldly, grizzled teens.

Grade: A
#88 and #89 in 2016

The Fate of the Tearling, Erika Johansen

Oh my goddddddddddddddddddd.

I am not sure how to talk about this without spoiling the very end of the series. Here is the non-spoilery review: It did not wrap up the way I expected! I think the ending works, and it definitely builds on the themes that came before it. I loved Lily and Katie and Kelsea. I liked the book's discussion of what is or isn't a utopia and what it means to create a "better world." I liked Kelsea's struggle between wanting to help people and do good things, and wanting to just destroy the shit out of bad guys once she had that power. This book was more dystopian than I usually go for, but it's not utterly hopeless. It's not a Hunger Games ending, if you know what I mean by that. It's really well written, and nearly every question that was asked, gets answered. It takes a lot of YA fantasy tropes and spins them on their heads, for better or worse. And after I finished it, I needed to run around shouting at a friend for a long, long time. I think it's well worth a read.






OKAY HERE ARE SPOILERS. STOP READING NOW. GO READ THE BOOKS. SPOILERS.




One thing that had carried me through the dystopian parts were the little excerpts of books at the beginning of each chapter, implying that Kelsea would win the war and the future would be bright. And at some point in this book you realize that although she wins, these books come from a darker future timeline where everything is even more fucked up -- and when Kelsea makes her ultimate decision to use the Tear jewel to go back in time, they vanish. I loved that.

I had spent a lot of books 1 and 2 wondering why William Tear's vision of a perfect utopia was a kingdom, not a democracy. And that question is pretty thoroughly answered in this book. Because it got fucked up. Because he got killed. Because Jonathan got killed, too, and because the Raleighs were jerks. So in the final timeline there are not and never have been any kings, only one Queen of the Tearling.

SO let's talk about that ending. I figured we were going somewhere ~it's all a dream~ about the time Aisa died horribly, but was absolutely not expecting the way it actually all came down. On the one hand, yeah, it feels a little bit cheap to erase everything. Row gets a fast death after creating centuries of suffering and violence and destroying everything in his path, including children. None of Kelsea's sacrifices or struggle really happened. She never killed anyone, she never had to deal with that. She goes back in time and undoes the major turning point in history, and then that's it. Gavin doesn't have to atone for centuries, either. (Can we talk for a second about the sexy, daring Fetch as a whiny little monster of a teenage boy? I laaaaaaughed.)

But on the other hand -- oh my god, does she pay a price for that. The scene where she murders Row is one of the creepiest things I have ever read. And then at the end, when she wakes up in what is inarguably the Better World at last, having saved her kingdom, having saved all her friends, having saved the world... she's all alone, and she will be forever. She saved the world and lost literally everything doing it. No one knows her. I still expected some kind of wink at the end, for the Mace or someone to also vaguely remember or recognize her. But no one does, not the Mace, not Father Tyler, not Pen. It's devastating. It balances out how good things are really beautifully, but oh my god, it leaves you feeling hollowed out and miserable at the same time. She saved the world! And no one knows, or cares, or remembers her. What a fucking gut-punch.

Grade: A
#87 in 2016