the serpent's tale

the serpent's tale
mistress of the art of death #2
ariana franklin
fiction/historical/mystery
putnam adult
published 2008

Since she solved a particularly nasty case of a child murder using her forensic skills, Adelia Aguilar is deemed too valuable to send back to the School of Medicine in Salerno where she was trained.  Instead, King Henry II has decided to keep her in England.  This is bad news for Adelia - in free-thinking Salerno, women doctors are accepted but in twelfth-century England they're unheard of and regarded as witches.  Under suspicion, and with her illegitimate child, Adelia is forced to live and practice in the secrecy of Cambridgeshire's fenland.  But at Henry's court, terrible things are happening.  Out of jealousy, Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine is not only stirring up revolt against her husband, rumor has it that she has also poisoned Fair Rosamund Clifford - the King's favorite mistress.  If Henry believes the stories, England will be torn apart as King battles Queen.  In a race against time to prove that Eleanor is at least innocent of Rosamund's murder, Adelia is recruitd by Rowley, her former lover and father of her child, to help avoid a civil war.  It isn't easy.  An assassin is on the loose and so is Queen Eleanor with a small army.  Adelia encounters both as, in the middle of a terrible medieval winter, she tries to pierce the physical and metaphorical maze that surrounds Rosamund's tower and they mystery of the dead woman who lies frozen inside.

Historical fiction is not my favorite genre.  It's not even my second favorite genre.  In fact, I think I can count on one hand the number of historical fiction books I've read.  Ariana Franklin's Mistress of the Art of Death was a book I read for a book group years ago and I loved it.  The idea of a woman medical examiner back in the twelfth century was fascinating and the murders she was solving were captivating.

This time around I wasn't so enamored with this Mistress.  Adelia is the same, for the most part, but this story wasn't my cup of tea.  Too much talk of kings and queens and treason and plotting and God.  There were so many characters to keep track of I would forget who was who and the way that Franklin cloaks her mystery from the reader makes things confusing at times.  As if I'm missing something.  And I guess I am.  I was frustrated with Rowley and irritated at Adelia's forced citizenship.

Had this been the first book of Adelia I wouldn't have read any more after it.  As it stands I did purchase the third book so I'll probably read that one as well.  Hopefully the case will be more up my alley.

pure

pure
the pure trilogy #1
julianna baggott
ya/dystopia
grand central publishing
published 2012

We know you are here, our brothers and sisters....

Pressia barely remembers the Detonations or much about life during the Before.  At an age when everyone is required to turn themselves over to the militia to either be trained as a soldier or, if they are too damaged and wear, to be used as live targets, Pressia can no longer pretend to be small.  Pressia is on the run.

Burn a Pure and Breathe the Ash....

There are those who escaped the apocalypse unmarked.  Pures.  Partridge, a Pure, whose father is one of the most influential men in the Dome, feels isolated and lonely.He thinks about loss - maybe just because his family is broken; his father is emotionally distant; his brother killed himself; and his mother never made it inside their shelter.  When a slipped phrase suggests his mother might still be alive, Partridge risks his life to leave the Dome to find her.

When Pressia meets Partridge, their worlds shatter all over again.

I can barely explain how much I loved this book. These are big bold words, but I think I loved this more than I did The Hunger Games or Divergent.  At times I put the book down to collect myself for a minute because something disturbed me so much.

Dusts, Groupies, The Meltlands, The Good Mother.  These things will haunt me.  Pressia, Partridge, Lyda, El Capitan, Bradwell.  These characters will stay with me always.

There were just so many holy shit moments, things I never saw coming.  I don't know if it was because I was so into the story that I didn't have time to look ahead or put the pieces together.  I didn't stop long enough to think about it.  I just read.

The story skips around to different points of view.  Usually this frustrates me because it feels sometimes difficult to follow, but I didn't seem to have a problem.  There were times when the story is being told from Partridges point of view, but would jump over to Bradwell for a minute and while that seemed weird I wasn't confused.

I don't know.  This was different.  My library actually has this in the adult fiction section instead of the YA section and while I don't think it's too mature for teens it was definitely disturbing.  For me, even more so when they got to the Meltlands.  When I finally got a grasp on what had happened, what the Detonations caused I thought it was terrifying.

We're left with the perfect continuing series book.  There is some bit of an ending, but you know the story goes on.  You know there's more, but you're not left with this awful cliffhanger.  Nonetheless, I finished this book at 1:20am and ran to the library this morning to get the next book.

It was just that good.

god-shaped hole

god-shaped hole
tiffanie debartolo
fiction/romance
sourcebooks landmark
published 2002

Tired of the usual dating politics, Beatrice "Trixie" Jordan follows an impulse and replies to a personal ad: "If your intentions are pure, I'm seeking a friend for the end of the world."  In doing so, she meets Jacob Grace, a charming young writer, a passionate seeker of life.  Despite their jaded views of the world, they fall immediately in love.

Trixie and Jacob begin an emotionally charge and tumultuous affair, one they try desperately to keep sacred.  As they struggle to carve out a future beyond the Los Angeles hills, Trixie and Jacob face family secrets that threaten to keep the two close to home ... or at least apart from one another.

Anything less than mad, passionate, extraordinary love is a waste of your time.  There are too many mediocre things in life to deal with and love shouldn't be one of them.

Over a decade ago a movie changed my life.  It sounds so cliche but it is the truth.  Dream For An Insomniac starring Ione Skye & Jennifer Anniston.  I can close my eyes and watch the movie in my head from beginning to end despite having not watched it in several years.  Ione Skye's Frankie was a romantic who would settle for nothing less than what she deemed to be perfect love and I, well I was stuck in a marriage with a man I didn't even like anymore.  Everything in the movie spoke to me.  I was Frankie.  I was certain I wasn't going to settle for anything less than extraordinary love.

So I booked a flight out of Texas and never went back.

Years later I stumbled upon two books written by Tiffanie DeBartolo who wrote that life-changing movie and finally, I've read one.

Every character came to life for me.  I could feel the desperation at the idea of being stuck in their hell forever.  The helplessness when things began to spiral, the content and giddiness when things were on track....it was all so much life it sparked within the pages.

It's hard to articulate how I feel after reading God-Shaped Hole without spoiling the book for anyone who should want to read it and you should want to read it.  DeBartolo has a way with words.  It made me want to write again, to keep a journal, to write everything down.  To create a story and despite having very little in common with Trixie I related to her in a way that made everything too personal so that when the book was finished I felt broken.

The worst book hangover ever, but truly worth it.

the name of the wind

the name of the wind
kingkiller chronicles #1
patrick rothfuss
fiction/high fantasy
daw
published 2007

The riveting first-person narrative of a young man who grows to be the most notorious magician his world has ever seen.  From his childhood in a troupe of traveling players to years spent as near-feral orphan in a crime-ridden city, to his daringly brazen yet successful bid to enter a legendary school of magic.

The Name of the Wind is one of those books that can be described as epic because that's really what it is, an epic.  Kvothe is an unassuming innkeeper at the Waystone Inn serving the very few patrons of farmers and the very infrequent traveler.  In the past few months the roads have become increasingly unsafe so Waystone Inn has not seen a new face in quite some time.  And that's mostly okay with Kvothe who just wants to polish his bottles and listen to stories that the villagers tell.

Until a battered and terrified regular comes in carrying a bundle of nightmares.  Now Kvothe knows that the quiet in his life might be coming to and end.  When he comes across a Chronicler he decides that now is the perfect time to tell the story of his life.

This book is what one might also describe as a brick.  The paperback that was lent to me is a cool 722.  It's no The Game of Thrones, but it's pretty long nonetheless.  It was recommended to me by a friend and has been sitting on my shelf for many, many months.  It took me awhile to get into the book at all.  I'm not a big fantasy reader, especially not these sort of epic high fantasy books (I just learned what the term high fantasy means!) so I was a little lost until I found the rhythm.  Then the pages seemed to fly by until I got to the last 20-30 pages.  Then it sort of slowed down.

Also called The Name of the Wind: Day One, the book is Kvothe's telling of the story of his life to the Chronicler while they are sitting in his deserted inn.  He takes us from his childhood days all the way through his teens.  I think by the time he takes a break for the day he is about 17 or 18 years old.

Kvothe is one of the luckiest and yet, unluckiest people ever.  He's arrogant, having discovered at a young age that he was scarily intelligent and apt at sympathy, a sort of alchemist/magician sort of thing.  And his high opinion of himself is generally what gets him into rough spots.  The book is packed with adventure, mystery and sadness and it ends with a sort of cliffhanger.  There is still so much story to tell!

If you're a reader of fantasy you've probably already read this.  If you're not you should definitely give it a try.  Fans of The Game of Thrones books will enjoy this as well.

wicked

wicked
pretty little liars #5
sara shepard
ya/mystery
harper collins
published 2008

In idyllic Rosewood, Pennsylvania, four very pretty girls just can't help but be bad...

Hanna will do anything to be Rosewood's queen bee.  Spencer's digging up her family's secrets.  Emily can't stop thinking about her new boyfriend.  And Aria approves a little too strongly of her mom's taste in men.

Now that Ali's killer is finally behind bars, the girls think they're safe.  But those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it.  And they should know by now that I'm always watching...

This little 'idyllic' town is harboring one too many psychos and they're all obsessed with the same four high school girls.

Yeah, I don't know why I'm reading them either.

They are quick reads, for sure and they keep me reading.  No matter what dumb things these idiot girls do.  The thing is, they really should have ended with #4.  'A' was outed, the killer was arrested and the fearful foursome was safe (except from themselves).  But then we return to Rosewood and there's another 'A' and maybe the killer isn't the killer and the girls still keep making the same dumb decisions they made in the previous books.

I feel bad for Spencer - her family is a nightmare.  Those parents should not be parents.  Emily is trying her best and is usually the one who goes for the truth instead of more lies.  Hanna is just a waste of a human being.  Get over yourself already.  And Aria, well she's just gross.  Daddy issues much?

I'm committed to finishing this series (at this point), but it's going to be hard since I just finished #5 and there's 100 of them or something.  Or maybe it just feels like that....

reconstructing amelia

reconstructing amelia
kimberly mccreight
fiction/contemporary/mystery
harper collins
published 2013

Kate's in the middle of the biggest meeting of her career whens he gets the telephone call from Grace Hall, her daughter's exclusive private school in Park Slope, Brooklyn.  Amelia has been suspended, effective immediately, and Kate must come get her daughter - now.  But Kate's stress over leaving work quickly turns to panic when she arrives at the school and finds it surrounded by police officers, fire trucks, and an ambulance.  Bu then it's already too late for Amelia.  And for Kate.

An academic overachiever despondent over getting caught cheating has jumped to her death.  At least that's the story Grace Hall tells Kate.  And clouded as she is by her guilt and grief, it is the one she forces herself to believe.  Until she gets an anonymous text: She didn't jump.

A parent's worst nightmare is the death of their child way before their time.  I sit here thinking about Reconstructing Amelia and how I don't know what I would do.  Could I survive that?  Could I continue on as Kate had?

I would like to think that I would search for answers as she does.  That I would not rest until I knew exactly what happened to my child.  But then, when you find out what do you do with that information?

I expected the story for Kate's POV.  A single, working mother who despite her busy hours tries to make time for her daughter.  I didn't expect to see things through Amelia's perspective.  It's heartbreaking.  To know how Amelia felt about everything that was going on around her, how she truly felt about her mother and Kate would never really know.

Of course, spanning out around Amelia is the hot topic of bullying.  I always thought about how much more vicious girls can be than boys.  Never is that more true than in Reconstructing Amelia.

There is much about this book that hurts to read.  When Kate talks about not being able to remember what Amelia smelled like despite searching desperately on pillows she hadn't washed I started to cry.  I remember once hearing a man talking about dealing with the death of his young son.  He mentioned that he was down in the basement laundry room where he had kept a bag of his son's clothes that he never washed.  Every once in a while he would pull something out of that bag to just inhale, hoping to catch a whiff of that little boy smell.  Even now, thinking about that man I cry.  It's like the last physical manifestation of your child who is gone is there for a brief time after they have left and you find comfort in being able to hold onto this proof that they had actually existed.

This is not a book that leaves you feeling relived.  There is no happy ending.  The people who should be punished seem to skate away unscathed while Amelia is still gone.  I suppose, like most things in life, it's meant to be not fair.

Kimberly McCreight flutters flawlessly between Kate's voice and Amelia's.  Both are believable and smartly fleshed out.  Sometimes both do something that just seems nuts, but then you remember that sometimes you do things that are nuts.  Some parts of the mystery were obvious, but it didn't deter me from wanting to continue.

But the whole time I was reading I kept thinking, Amelia isn't coming back.  This bright, beautiful, loved young girl isn't getting her happy ending.  And that was hard.

farm fatale

farm fatale
wendy holden
fiction/brit chick lit
headline books publishing
published 2001

Cash-strapped Rosie and her boyfriend Mark are city folk longing for a country cottage.  Rampantly nouveaux-riches Samantha and Guy are also searching for rustic bliss - a mansion complete with all the fancy trappings.  The village of Eight Mile Bottom seems quiet enough, despite a nosy postman, a reclusive rock star, a glamorous Bond Girl, and a ghost with a knife in its back.  But there are unexpected thrills in the hills, and the two couples are soon swept up in various romantic entanglements, mix-ups, slip-ups, and unlikely seductions in their search for ever-greener pastures.

What to say....what to say.....

I didn't love this book, but then I didn't hate it either.  It was just....there.  Rosie wasn't that bad of a character, but I never really got a sense of who she really was.  I definitely got a sense of other characters.  Like Samantha and Mark.  Awful, awful people.  I don't understand at all why we were stuck in Samantha's head at all.  I kept waiting for the moment when something changes for Samantha, when she realizes she's a horrible person, but that never comes.  From the synopsis I was expecting a much different couple.  The story would have been just fine if she was never in it, albeit much shorter.

Everything kind of dragged on and then suddenly took this sharp turn and as the pages flipped away with very little pages left to read I wondered how things were going to get wrapped up.  Holden wrapped everything up in about 7 pages.  It was kind of disappointing.  And predictable.

I still have two other books by Wendy Holden to read for the off the shelf challenges.  Hopefully they'll be a little better than this one.  I'm generally a sucker for brit chick lit, but this one didn't thrill me.

still life

still life
armand gamache #1
louise penny
fiction/mystery
minotaur books
published 2006

Chief Inspector Armand Gamache of the Surêté du Québec and his team of investigators are called in to the scene of a suspicious death in a rural village south of Montreal. Jane Neal, a local fixture in the tiny hamlet of Three Pines, just north of the U.S. border, has been found dead in the woods. The locals are certain it’s a tragic hunting accident and nothing more, but Gamache smells something foul in these remote woods, and is soon certain that Jane Neal died at the hands of someone much more sinister than a careless bowhunter. 

I was so pleasantly surprised by this book.  I'll admit that I got the book because I loved the cover of The Beautiful Mystery and found out it was part of series so I picked up the first few.  Then I found the Cruisin' the Cozies challenge and I thought these would be perfect, might as well try one.

It is definitely a book that you want to curl up next to a cozy fire and cuddle up with.  It's charming, suspenseful and mysterious.  Usually when you read a mystery or thriller the victim is kind of unknown.  After all, their death is the catalyst for the book.  Without that there is no story so generally that person gets killed right away, before you get a chance to know them or care.  You care about the ones left behind (if it's a good writer), but you're not really invested in the victim.

Jane Neal is killed in the first sentence of the book, although we go back in time a little to the days before her death.  Still we don't get to spend a lot of time with Ms. Neal before she meets her demise.  And yet, by the time the killer in Three Pines is revealed I felt like I knew Jane Neal better than any other character in the book and I mourned her as such.  

Penny writes characters that glow with life on the pages.  And yet they still remain mysterious enough to keep you wondering who isn't true.  And she also writes the people you love to hate.  For me, besides the obvious Yolande Fontaine was Agent Yvette Nichol.  I loathed her.  It was such an interesting addition to the cast of characters.

The mystery itself was gripping.  I didn't know who the killer could be.  Just when I thought it was someone, something would change my mind or prove them innocent.  And there were all these little side stories.  The portraits of a small, close knit community.  I was hooked.

Once again, judging a book by its cover works for me!  

meet the protagonist challenge

Over at Litlequeen Rules there's an interesting challenge gearing up for 2014.  Meet the Protagonist gives us the type of protagonist we're looking for, in 8 different categories.  Rules are similar to other challenges.  The challenge runs from Jan 1, 2014 through Dec 31, 2014.  Everything except for anthologies and essay collections are allowed (self-published books are allowed too!) in any format.  Rereads count too!  You don't have to have a blog, but make sure to post your reviews somewhere.  You have to read at least one book from each category and each book can only be used in one category.  Crossovers from other challenges are okay.

Categories are:

1. A woman who is a mother: Reconstructing Amelia - Kimberly McCreight
2. A real life person who is written into a fictional story: The Serpent's Tale - Ariana Franklin (King Henry & Queen Eleanor & Rosamund)
3. A person that changes forms: Pure - Julianna Baggott
4. A person who is from a country different than the one you currently live in: Farm Fatale - Wendy Holden (takes place in England)
5. A person who lived before WWI: Still Life - Louise Penny (Ruth & Jane were both born in the 1930's)
6. A person who lives by a body of water: God-Shaped Hole - Tiffanie DeBartolo (Venice Beach)
7. A person younger than 18: Wicked - Sara Shepard
8. A character that is in a book series: The Name of the Wind - Patrick Rothfus (Kingkiller series)

I'm kicking myself for reading the Nicholas Flamel series this year.  I could have used that one for #2!  That one's going to take some research I think!  Sign up to join me here.