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

The Hanging Tree, Ben Aaronovitch

I have this book because one of my bffs lives in London and shipped it to me in hardcover when it was released in the U.K. It'll be released in mid-January in the states. (Allegedly. They pushed this release back over a year, and it's been driving me nuts.)

I love this series! I really should have reread all the books before I sat down with this one, because it heavily references earlier books and characters. I don't want to talk about what happens, because it's a mystery series (and this one deals with the ongoing reveal of the Big Bad) so I'll just say it's a delight to spend another few hours reading about Peter Grant. Although, thematically the whole thing didn't come together at the end the way I expected. And now I need the next one, so PLEASE don't push it back another two years, Ben Aaronovitch.

Note: I haven't read a real hardcover book in a long time and I forgot how annoying it is compared to my kindle. I needed a way to mark my page, I couldn't carry it around from room to room nearly as easily, and when I went to bed I had to leave the lights on to read it. I love turning the lights on and using the backlight on my kindle to read until I fall asleep. Also, I found I skipped paragraphs more often while reading actual paper, and had to go back and make myself read more slowly. All around kind of a weird experience.

Grade: A
#86 in 2016

And Four to Go, Champagne for One, Plot it Yourself, by Rex Stout

Three Nero Wolfe books! They are my comfort food books.

And Four to Go has four holiday-themed stories. What do I remember... Uh, the Christmas one is hilarious nonsense -- zero percent chance Wolfe dresses up like Santa Claus. Be serious. The easter one is something about cameras that shoot poison darts. Okay, what I really remember is that one of these stories gives us actual Archie backstory -- that he tried college, dropped out after 2 weeks, became a guard on the docks, shot a guy, lost his job, and got hired by Wolfe. I would swear we didn't know that before. This is also about where Doll Bonner starts showing up -- an actual female private detective! The late 50s sure were something.

Champagne for One is about someone being poisoned at a party that Archie was invited to, and even though there's an obvious solution for the police (the poisonee was suicidal and poisoned herself) Archie was watching her and knows she didn't do it. It's great.

Plot It Yourself is about books and publishing. Authors with popular books are being sued for having ripped someone off, and they need a way to prove they haven't. The book is great (Archie spends the weekend with Lily Rowan, glad to hear they're still doing well) although the ending is a little silly. It's great when a murderer decides to make a full confession just for fun.

Grade(s): B
#83, 84, 85 in 2016