Goth Girl and the Pirate Queen: 06/30/23

Goth Girl and the Pirate Queen by Chris Riddell (2015) was World Book Day special publication. It comes in between the second and third Goth Girl books. In it, Ada Goth travels to Brighton to see the new resort the Prince Regent is building and to attend his fancy dress ball.

Much of the gags of this novel center on haute couture and on Brighton specific humor. I've not personally been to Brighton as it's thousands of miles away and I have many closer beaches here in California. But the Brighton Beach holiday trip is as much a British story trope as the onsen trip is to Japanese storytelling.

For the most part it was a cute, fun read with the usual intricate and humor laden drawings that one expects from a Chris Riddell book. But there were some jokes that fell flat for me, especially the ones involving "Kubla Kahn't."

The third book is Goth Girl and the Wuthering Fright (2015).

Four stars

Comments (0)

The Neighbor Favor: 06/29/23

The Neighbor Favor by Kristina Forest (2023) is a romance set in New York City. Lily works in publishing for an imprint specializing in nonfiction but she wants to work in children's literature. Nick wrote a book when he was younger and published it through a small UK house. They met the first time online when Lily, as a fan of his fantasy book, wrote him an email.

After weeks of a happy, long distance relationship via email, Nick ghosts Lily, only to meet her in person some months later when they are now apartment neighbors. Unfortunately they have to work from scratch because Nick has trouble telling the truth for reasons that are slowly revealed over the course of the book.

The email bit, taking up nearly fifty pages, is the strongest and most fun part of novel. It has a similar vibe to Daddy-Long-Legs by Jean Webster (1912) or the more recent Love, Jacaranda by Alex Flinn (2020). I think an entire email epistolary romance would have been a fun page turner.

The problem is one of pacing. The email introduction is fast paced, upbeat, and delightful. It's fun to read. The in person romance settles down to being a slow burn that is really more about the inequities built into the publishing industry. It's also an examination of social prejudices, domestic abuse, anxiety, depression, and so forth.

Four stars

Comments (0)

A Fatal Feast: 06/28/23

A Fatal Feast by Kathleen Bridge and Vanessa Daniels (Narrator) (2021) is the sixth book in the Hamptons Home & Garden mystery series. Meg Barrett was hired to decorate the interior of the exclusive gastronomic club Privé. Before the place can even open, the sous chef is murdered.

There are only so many people who could have committed the murder. There are only so many reasons why someone could have committed the murder. But the Privé group, despite their collective tempers, is still tightly knit. Meg will need to rely on luck and tenacity to figure out who did it.

The problem here is that there's not much in the way of mystery. So there's padding instead. There's a sub plot involving a cast member selling antiques from the on-going historical drama first mentioned in Manor of Dying (2019). Then there is a kidnapped race horse. And finally there's the question of whether or not a particular character is related to Black Jack Bouvier.

The seventh book is The Perfect Staging for Murder (2023).

Dying for Devil's Food: 06/27/23

Dying for Devil's Food by Jenn McKinlay and Susan Boyce (narrator) (2019) is a return to the earlier tone of the books before all the organized crime and romance melodrama. Mel reluctantly goes to the 15 year high school reunion, knowing full well she will probably be bullied again, but she and Angie were hired to provide cupcakes.

Mel's worse bully is there and married to her old crush. When she and he dance, during which he apologizes, the bully loses it. After publicly berating both people, she's later found dead in the bathroom. A clue written in lipstick might point the finger at Mel.

Yes, the set up is full of cliches. But given the melodrama of the last bunch of books, I found a return to form utterly delightful. It was nice to be able to focus on solving a rather mundane mystery.

All the relationship drama between Angie and Tate is over now that they are married. Mel and Joe are happily engaged and actually planning their wedding.

The twelfth book is Pumpkin Spice Peril (2020).

Five stars

Comments (0)

Death Knells and Wedding Bells: 06/26/23

Death Knells and Wedding Bells by Eva Gates and Elise Arsenault (Narrator) (2023) is the tenth book in the Lighthouse Library mystery series. Lucy and Connor had the perfect wedding but the reception proved deadly for her aunt's date.

The assumption is that someone else at the reception committed the murder. It seems like there were any number of possibilities given the dead man's penchant for blackmail. But it just doesn't make sense. Why commit the murder at such a public event?

Maybe I've read too many mysteries set around weddings but I found the solution obvious. It was just a matter of waiting for Lucy to come to the same conclusion. If I weren't so invested in the series and the characters I might have found the plot annoying.

What kept me reading wasn't so much the mystery as the goings-on at Bodie, at the lighthouse, how Charles the cat is adjusting to life outside of the library. I found the crunchiness of Lucy's extended family dynamics interesting, in a cringy way.

Five stars

Comments (0)

Ya Boy Kongming!, Volume 1: 06/25/23

Ya Boy Kongming!, Volume 1 by Yuto Yotsuba and Ryō Ogawa (illustrator) (2020) opens with the death of the Three Kingdoms general and his subsequent reincarnation as a younger adult into modern day Tokyo on Halloween night. From there he starts his new life as the manager of an up and coming singer, and a bartender at a bar run by a Three Kingdoms otaku.

It sounds like a ridiculous premise, and it is. But it works. It takes its premise completely at face value and weaves in lessons from the Romance of the Three Kingdoms to be both completely entertaining and heartwarming.

The manga is also an anime with an absolute banger of an opening. Youtube isn't letting me embed the video, so click on the link and go listen to the music.

Five stars

Comments (0)

Two Dogs: 06/23/23

Two Dogs by Ian Falconer (2022) is the author's last picture book. It's about two dachshunds who find ways of entertaining themselves while their humans are away at work.

Augie the serious dog. Perry is the silly, "all over the place" dog. They were brought home as puppies and played with all the time. Now with the human children older and at school, they aren't getting as much human attention that they used to.

So this is the story of how Augie and Perry learned to live together to get outside to enjoy the garden and the swimming pool.

A lot of the illustrations are just the two against a white background doing separate but similar things. Much of their life has been parallel play but as they learn to cooperate, the illustrations become more colorful and detailed. Cooperation expands their world, their possibilities.

Five stars

Comments (0)

Against the Currant: 06/21/23

Against the Currant by Olivia Matthews and Janina Edwards (Narrator) (2023) is the start of the Spice Isle Bakery mystery series. Lyndsay Murray with the help of her family has opened the Spice Isle Bakery in the Little Caribbean neighborhood of Brooklyn. Her bakery serves the tastes of Grenda, the island nation she and her family emigrated from.

After a lifetime of avoiding conflict, she stands up to Claudio Fabrizi, a rival baker who comes to make trouble. To her dismay, he's later murdered and evidence points to Lyndsay! Now to clear her good name, keep herself out of jail, and keep the bakery open, she and her family need to find other more likely suspects.

An observant reader will spot the murderer pretty easily. Nonetheless, Lyndsay and her family are a lovely, close-knit set and it's fun too cheer along as the bakery becomes successful. There's also a lot of good music mentioned, enough that you might even want to make a playlist!

The second book is Hard Dough Homicide (2023).

Five stars

Comments (0)

Well Matched: 06/20/23

Well Matched by Jen DeLuca (2021) is the third book in the Well Met romance series. This time it's April Parker's turn to fall in love.

April is Emily's big sister. She's the woman whose leg was broken in Well Met (2019). She is the catalyst for the entire romance series, so it's nice to see her be the main character.

For April it begins near the end of her daughter's senior year. She has plans to spruce up her house, sell it, and move to a bigger city. She wrangles help from Mitch, the high school P.E. teacher and coach, only to have him ask her to be his pretend girl friend at a family weekend.

Mitch is closer to Emily's age than April. She has a hard time taking his plan seriously but she goes along with it. Mitch, despite the age gap, is everything her ex-husband never was: kind, considerate, a decent human being. He also seems to be as into her as she is in him.

But she still has a lot of emotional baggage to work through. Part of that is the prospect of being an empty-nester soon. Part of it is the on-going trauma from the bad car accident, which brings to mind Laura Costello from Adult Assembly Required by Abbi Waxman (2022).

The fourth book is Well Traveled (2022).

Five stars

Comments (0)

Death of a Citizen: 06/19/23

Death of a Citizen by Donald Hamilton (1960) is the start of the Matt Helm mystery series. Matt who also goes by Eric was part of a top secret military.

Fifteen years later, he's a writer and a civilian living with his wife and kids in New Mexico. He thought he was done with that part of his life, until a woman he knew as "Tina" appears at a cocktail party.

If you're only a recent reader of my blog, me picking the start of a pulp series that started as a contemporary to the James Bond novels and short stories by Ian Fleming, might seem like a huge departure for me. Matt Helm isn't my typical cozy mystery hero. But there was a time when I almost exclusively read these sorts of books and my recent habit of watching Tubi's Classic Cinema channel whilst painting has re-sparked an interest in some of these older books.

Like James Bond, Matt Helm went on to be a movie hero. His movies stared Dean Martin. There were four of them; I've seen too. The James Bond films pretty quickly started diverging from their source material, going for flashy gadgets, silly gags, and outrageous situations. The Matt Helm movies do a similar thing, while also openly parodying the Bond films.

Likewise, this opening novel is to some degree, a response to the Fleming books. Where Bond is excessively British, Helm is an American from the South West. He eschews the finer things in life for his old, reliable truck. Although a woman is murdered in this book (as the inciting incident), the other women he works with are as competent as he is and do survive. At least by the end of book one, Mrs. Helm is alive and well and quite heroic on her own part.

The second book is The Wrecking Crew (1960)

Three stars

Comments (0)

A Green Velvet Secret: 06/18/23

A Green Velvet Secret by Vicki Grant (2023) is a Canadian middle grade book about the bond between Yardley (YaYa) and her grandmother (Gidge). Unfortunately Gidge has terminal cancer and soon Yardley and her parents are on their own, with just letters written by Gidge to serve as guidance and support.

Typically a middle grade novel, unless it's one that's set during a holiday trip or involves nomadic people, features some time at school. Or at least, interactions with school children. Sometimes it can seem that a book is set too much at school.

Here, though, Yardley seems to live in a vacuum. Beyond a brief description of her home, the thrift store where she ends up working, the hospital, the graveyard, and the Pit of Despair, there's nothing else to her world. There isn't even a good sense of how these settings connect together except vaguely by bus and scooter.

The people in Yardley's life are few and far between too. There are her parents who get a brief description early on and then are just sort of in the wings. There's of course Gidge who is the driving force of the novel, alive and even dead. There is the adult and the teenaged boy who also work at the thrift shop. And finally there's the woman who is given the titular green velvet dress. That's it.

The other people in Yardley's life seem to be as disjointed and disconnected from any greater reality as the places she visits. Save for a brief bit of characterization near the end, not much is said or learned about any of the living people.

But the thing that ultimately didn't work for me is Yardley's naiveté. She goes through the vast majority of the book believing in reincarnation, in the form often used in isekai stories in anime/manga where a dead person is transported to another world fully formed and very much alive, albeit often in a different body. Though there is nothing to the book to support Yardley's conviction, she repeatedly sees her dead grandmother in others she meets.

My initial review on finishing the book sums up my feelings. "Yardley, aka YaYa is so stubbornly naive all the way through. She out-pollyannas Pollyanna."

Two stars

Comments (0)

Fly Me to the Moon, Volume 4: 06/17/23

Fly Me to the Moon, Volume 4 by Kenjirō Hata (2019) finishes the trip to see Nasa's parents and sets the newlyweds on a new path. They arrive home and find their apartment building burnt to the ground.

Where a fire would be a huge set back or dramatic event in most stories, here it's a minor blip in their lives. The reason is many fold. First, it's another example of how over prepared Nasa is for things — so he has the necessary insurance which is kept in a safe place. The second is just how few things they actually owned. And finally it's a testament to how happy they are as a couple.

The remainder of volume 4 is focused on their new life. They are offered a home at the public bath. Part of this is a sign of friendship. It's also an excuse for more comedic set-ups. Fortunately the author isn't into fan service and his characters are genre savvy and self aware enough for a lot of funny comedic asides.

Five stars

Comments (0)

A Cop and a Coop: 06/16/23

A Cop and a Coop by Hillary Avis and Kitty Hendrix (Narrator) (2020) is the start of the Clucks and Clues cozy mystery series. Leona Davis has moved home to rural Honeytree, Oregon to open an egg farm.

She's spent the majority of her divorce settlement to buy a rundown orchard and she has plans to build her dream coop from the ground up. She's about halfway through digging the foundation when she runs across two boots full of skeletal feet. Now her project is on hold even though the chickens are arriving. Worse, though, she has to work with her ex-boyfriend who is now the sheriff.

Long buried bones dug up during a construction or gardening DIY is a popular cozy mystery trope. Leona, though, being in her sixties, is old enough and jaded enough to not immediately freak out when she uncovers the bones. That she considers moving the body and not reporting it struck me as a unique take. She didn't go that route but hearing her consider it because she's on a tight deadline to get the coop built for her chicks endeared me to her. She's an openly flawed character.

The mystery is built around the ins and outs of caring for chickens. There is the right/ideal way, the way Leona wants to do. And then there's the messy, real world way, that Leona learns over and over that she's going to have to accept. Chickens have their own way of complicating things and Leona is finding that she's enough of a softie to let them do that.

Like so many of the mysteries I've read in the last two or three years, this one has a cold case and an active case component. There is the dug up body that starts things off and then at about the halfway point, there is a secondary murder. This present day murder is a brutal, messy affair, one that is gruesome enough to be left to the reader's imagination.

Just before the modern day murder, I figured out who the murderer was and why. Knowing who they were made for a very suspenseful second half. I was also by then throughly invested in Leona's chickens — both her purchased chicks, and her adopted adult strays.

The second book in the series is A Flock and a Fluke (2020).

Five stars

Comments (0)

Disagreement (Discórdia): 06/15/23

Disagreement (Discórdia) by Nani Brunini (2023) was published originally in Portugal by Pato Lógico in 2021.

Told through the art, it's about the toxic nature of argument. Two people begin to shout back and forth at each other across the divide of book's stitching. Soon two more begin to argue. Before long, everyone is caught up in a mob mentality of anger.

Their colorful world — made more so by the contrasting plumes of orange and purple smoke which stands in for the arguments — is made monochrome. The angry mob is swallowed up by a monster.

It takes one person to come to their senses to lead everyone out of their predicament. His method which could be representative of art is shown through a thin white line which he twists into different things.

As this is a wordless picture book, the only things that have changed are the translated title and the publication information on the reverse of the title page. This book could just as easily been released here under the old title but has gone through this transformation because of the highly regional and territorial nature of publishing.

Five stars

Comments (0)

Sweetness and Lightning Volume 3: 06/13/23

Sweetness and Lightning, Volume 3 by Gido Amagakure and Adam Lensenmayer (Translator) (2014) continues Kouhei's journey of learning to cook with the help of his young daughter and one of his math students.

Most of the emotional punch in this volume is centered on the making of a special curry dish — one that Kouhei's late wife used to make. It includes raisins and apples in the mix and reminds me of a frozen meal I sometimes get from Trader Joe's. The recipe is included in the manga if you're curious to try it.

The other big change up in the series is the reopening of the restaurant. All of the lessons and meals have been at the student's family restaurant. Now that her mother is done with the majority of her television commitments, she decides it's time to reopen the restaurant.

Ultimately this volume is a time for character growth for the three protagonists.

Five stars

Comments (0)

Windy McPherson's Son: 06/12/23

Windy McPherson's Son by Sherwood Anderson (1916) is about a son trying to make a name and reputation for himself that isn't tainted by his father. Windy McPherson is a Civil War vet as most men in his generation are but he has come home "struck."

I'll be upfront and say I didn't finish this novel. There wasn't anything wrong with it. I just wasn't in the mood for another novel that is heavy in description and light on action and dialog. Anderson's approach to storytelling here is similar to Victory City by Salman Rushdie (2023). Mind you, Rushdie is aiming for social commentary wrapped up in a historical drama with a fantasy facade. Anderson is also doing social commentary but with a contemporary, realist approach punctuated with humorous beats.

In an ebook format, Anderson's novel is rendered in lengthy paragraphs that are heavy in description. His narrator is omniscient and prone to being distracted. Sam might be on his way to do something, pass someone, and then the narrative will pivot to tell a humorous something about them.

In all fairness to Sherwood Anderson, Windy McPherson's Son was his first novel.

Two stars

Comments (0)

Unspoken Magic: 06/11/23

Unspoken Magic by Emily Lloyd-Jones (2023) is the sequel to Unseen Magic. It's six months later and while things haven't completely returned to normal, Fin has settled in to her life in the magical town of Aldermere. Now, though, a group of cryptid hunters have come to town looking to document the magic for their podcast.

A group of podcasters by themselves would be ok. Aldermere is pretty good at defending itself from people who want to exploit its magic. But things are complicated when Fin, Cedar and Edward stumble upon a baby bigfoot. They need to keep her safe and out of the way of the cryptid hunters while they track down the adult bigfoots.

To keep the baby safe, Fin needs to trust her new friends, something she's still struggling with. Just as Fin has her anxiety, her friends have their own secrets. With the amount of close work needed to save the bigfoot, they need to let their guard down even if that means revealing things they've kept to themselves.

Like the previous book, Unspoken Magic sits on the Road Narrative Spectrum. It's actually not too far removed from the first volume. The only difference between the two is the destination which moves from rural to home. The change in destination reflects a change in how Fin feels about Aldermere. It has stopped being a far away, rural place, and become home. Likewise, the children who want to protect the town, also want to help the bigfoot find her home.

Five stars

Comments (0)

Lost Lad London, Volume Two: 06/10/23

Lost Lad London, Volume Two by Shima Shinya is the middle volume of this three book mystery manga. The planted evidence is mounting to make Al look like the murderer but DCI Ellis doesn't buy it. He doggedly continues his investigation in secret.

If this were all one volume, this section would be the part where Al tries to get back to his normal life while being painfully aware that everything has changed. He goes through the motions in a cold, almost robotic shock.

There are some quiet asides where Al and Ellis are together. Ellis is a loner but has opened his flat to Al. Al, used to more order and cleanliness in his life balks at Ellis's chaotic bachelor lifestyle.

Compared to the first volume, this one is more slice of life and less mystery or thriller. There is still the police presence and the lurking criminal. I know from reading reviews of the final volume that the pace picks up leading to a rapid escalation of events before the mystery is solved.

Five stars

Comments (0)

Lore Olympus, Volume Three: 06/09/23

Lore Olympus: Volume Three by Rachel Smythe (2022) continues the early days of Persephone's internship in the Underworld and various fallout from it. Much of this volume is centered on conversations but Rachel Smythe keeps it interesting and entertaining.

My favorite bit of this volume is an extended side scene with Eros and his family. He's the big brother to a bunch of young and somewhat monstrous siblings. They are a nice distraction from some of the heavy, emotional stuff that came right before, also involving Eros.

Eros while often depicted as flighty or fickle, is recast in a new light. He's all about consent and is the voice of reason and support for what Apollo did to Persephone. It's a scene that some readers will need.

Volume Four released on June 6, 2023.

Five stars

Comments (0)

Thirty-six years of tracking my reading: 06/08/23

It's that time again, when I reflect on my decades long determination to track my reading. Since 1987 I've been tracking my reading. My tracking years run from June 9th to June 8th of the next year. Today ends my thirty-six year of tracking. To read more about the reasons, see 2019's post.

I am on my fourth page into my fourth handwritten volume. By my handwritten account, I'm at 9930 books read. By my calculations in Numbers, I'm at 8952 books, which is a discrepancy of 978 books. Give how easy it is to misread a handwritten number and take up counting from the wrong space, I am more inclined to believe the spreadsheet as it is built on a combination of data I've entered and data pulled from years of tracking on Goodreads.

Last year I started up on transcribing my handwritten diaries, a process I originally started in 1995. Back then I had to stop because my book diary contained more entries than my laptop had RAM. I now have the first two volumes transcribed and I'm about seven pages into volume three.

Two years ago I predicted I should be at over very near 10,000 books by now. That prediction was based on inflated data because of numbering errors. I can say it will happen sometime in volume 4 but I won't know for certain until I am caught up in my data entry.

My first book for year 36 was This Might Get Awkward by Kara McDowell (2022). My last book was Against the Currant by Olivia Matthews and Janina Edwards (Narrator) (2023) which I will review later this month or in early July.

Comments  (0)

The Sister Switch: 06/08/23

The Sister Switch by Sarah Mlynowski, Debbie Rigaud, and Maxine Vee (Illustrator) (2023) is the second book in the Best Wishes series. The wish granting MacGuffin bracelet has found Addie Asante of Columbus, Ohio, a middle sister tired of being a middle sister.

Asante is only two years younger than Sophie but the oldest is treated like the golden child. She gets her own room and doesn't ever have to care for Camille, their youngest sister. Asante, meanwhile, has to share a room with her five year old sister and is treated like a built in baby sister for the youngest.

Obviously things are unfair. But the final straw is when Asante is forbidden to take part in the upcoming talent show. She makes a wish and suddenly everything is shuffled. She's now Sophie. Camille is her. And Sophie is back in pre-K.

To keep things interesting and contained so that all the sisters can interact while in their shuffled bodies, the novel is primarily set at their pre-K-8th grade private school. I found Sophie's anger and resentment at being back in pre-K relatable but thought that Camille in Asante's body acted younger than she actually was.

The next book in the series is Time After Time by Sarah Mlynowski and Christina Soontornvat. It releases November 7, 2023.

Five stars

Comments (0)

Spy x Family, Volume 8: 06/06/23

Spy x Family, Volume 8 by Tatsuya Endo (2021) takes place entirely aboard ship. Yor is serving as a bodyguard for a woman and her son who want to defect. Loid and Anya are onboard playing tourist, although Anya with her psychic abilities knows what Yor is up to and wants desperately to help but keep Loid from figuring out that she's a paid assassin.

Although the setting is in a different era — Cold War adjacent — instead of late Victorian — the ship setting reminds me of the Noatic plot in Moriarty the Patriot (Volume 2) by Ryōsuke Takeuchi. Or perhaps the extended murder mystery plot aboard ship that happens in Gossic.

What's different here, though, is how compartmentalized Yor's story is compared to Anya and Loid's. The assassination plot, even with multiple after the wife and child, remains fairly separate from the goings-on of the ship. From Loid's POV the cruise is a series of diversions with Anya to keep her happy and entertained. He can clearly see that she's upset but never figures out why.

Anya, too, being quite young, is in fact easily distracted by all the things she does with Loid. If she weren't worried about Yor this cruise would probably be the most fun she's had in her entire short life.

Up until now, Yor's abilities as an assassin have been unparalleled. Now, though, she's shown as vulnerable, clearly overwhelmed by the nonstop onslaught of her attackers. She spends a lot of this time reassessing her career choices and thinking about her new life with Loid and Anya.

Volume 8 ends without fully resolving the plot aboard ship, to be continued in Volume 9.

Five stars

Comments (0)

Eaves of Destruction: 06/05/23

Eaves of Destruction by Kate Carlisle and Angela Starling (Narrator) (2017) is the fifth of the Fixer-Upper mysteries. The previous volumes I'd read as paperbacks. Realizing that I am reading through my audiobook mysteries must faster than my print ones, I opted to switch to audiobooks for book five onward.

Shannon Hammer is being kept busy as the annual Victorian House tour and competition is drawing near. Her main contract is the installation of an orangery to the side of a house and the restoration of decorative woodwork inside the house. The woman who hired her is a petty, horrible person. Shannon just wants to finish the contract as efficiently as possible so she doesn't have to work with her ever again.

Unfortunately things are complicated when the town's building inspector is found murdered by a chisel. Does it belong to Shannon's work crew? Did the newest crew member, an expert woodworker, do it? Or did the neighbors, caught up in the frenzy for the upcoming competition?

There's more going on here than is first apparent. Although I was able to sort of the biggest of the plot points, the specifics took longer. There is family drama with secrets going back to the mid 1980s.

In previous volumes, I sometimes find Kate Carlisle's villains to be over the top. In print (meaning read in my own inner voice) the bad guy or potential bad guy often ends up hamming things up to the point of being obvious. Angela Starling, the narrator, has a nice, calm, understated approach to her performance. Everything comes off with less melodrama in part because of how she reads the book.

The sixth book is A Wrench in the Works (2018).

Five stars

Comments (0)

Murder on Mustang Beach: 06/04/23

Murder on Mustang Beach by Alicia Bessette and Karissa Vacker (Narrator) (2023) is the second book in the Outer Banks Bookshop mystery series. It's nearly summertime and Cattail island is abuzz with the anticipated birth of a mustang foal. Unfortunately that's overshadowed by a body found in the local dojo.

The black and white, cut and dry approach to murder in the cozy genre has changed in the post-COVID lockdown years. This particular murder at first glance appears to be in keeping with older, established tropes. The man was a bully and despite stated good intentions, continued to be a bully by many accounts.

This time, though, in the climax, things aren't as cut and dry. The victim wasn't as cut and dry evil as he would have been in previous years. Likewise, his murderer isn't as single minded about the crime as they would have been. Nor was the murder as elaborate a plan as it would have been.

Life on Cattail island isn't as well scripted as life in other fictional small towns. Besides authors the effects of death on the survivors in ways that hadn't been explored in the cozy mystery since its inception, it seems that the fictional day to day events have also become messier and more chaotic.

I've gotten trained to expect the two mysteries to be intertwined. A missing mustang is somehow tied to a murdered man. Here, though, that's not as directly the case. They are related only in that both take place on the island and both are on the minds of the townsfolk and main character.

Despite the deconstruction of established tropes, I was still able to figure out who had committed the murder. Murder on Mustang Beach still follows enough of the genre conventions to lay a ground work for observant readers.

Five stars

Comments (0)

The House in the Cerulean Sea: 06/03/23

The House in the Cerulean Sea by T.J. Klune (2020) is a quiet slice of life fantasy about found family. Linus Baker is a caseworker. He's made a career out of assessing Department in Charge of Magical Youth orphanages. Now the Extremely Upper Management has sent him to a distant orphanage a day's train and ferry ride away for a month long assessment.

Magical people to live among non magical people must have the necessary papers. Some children, though, are so extraordinary that they are best kept away from the general population. Those are the children Linus is sent to assess. They are in the care of Arthur Parnassus.

From their first meeting it's clear that there's chemistry between Linus and Arthur but their ultimate romance is secondary to the needs of the children in Arthur's care. Although they are like no other child Linus has ever met (and of them is literally the antichrist) through Arthur's calm but fierce loyalty to his charges, Linus begins to realize that they are just children despite their strange appearance and abilities.

The book takes a while to find its pace. It might be a little slow for some. The children, Lucy, especially, also tend to prattle on a bit. But the contained chaos of Arthur's home, is set against the drab, controlled, homogenous world that Linus represents.

Linus's journey in The House in the Cerulean Sea also sits on the Road Narrative Spectrum. Linus who has no family to miss him when he's sent on this assignment is thus an orphan traveler (FF). His destination, though he won't realize this until nearly the end of the novel, is home (66). His route there is the railroad (00).

Five stars

Comments (0)

May 2023 Sources: 06/02/23

May had a few more rainy days but now June looks to be dry but cool and sometimes foggy. The school year is wrapping up but with my youngest taking summer school, I'll still have a school centered schedule.

In May I read 17 TBR books, down three from the previous month. Two books were published in May. Four books were for research and there was one review copy. None were from the library. My ROOB score for May is -3.67, up from -4.24. It is my third best April in 14 years of tracking this metric.

The current year's data is represented by a triangle on the graph below.

I predicted an even -4 for May. My actual score was a little higher due to the number of new audiobook mysteries I listened to. For June, I'm predicting -3.5 as there are lots of upcoming releases I'm interested in reading straightaway.

My average for May improved slightly, going from -2.77 to -2.83.

Comments  (0)

Yes & No: 06/01/23

Yes & No by Elisha Cooper (2021) is a follow up to Big Cat, Little Cat (2017). The once little cat is now all grown up and is spending their day with an enthusiastic dog.

This is a day in the life of a dog and a cat. For everything the narrator suggests or describes, there is a yes and a no. The yes is usually from the dog and the no is usually from the cat. But there are a few exceptions that bring humor and warmth to this book.

Ultimately it's a sweet story about found family — of a dog and a cat who despite having very different ideas of how the perfect day should go, manage to enjoy their company together.

Five stars

Comments (0)

May 2023 Summary: 06/01/23

May was a deadline filled one, keeping me busy. I had less time to read or to work on my own paintings, save for one I finished for the upcoming members' show at the Sun Gallery.

Once again I read one less book in May, 24, down from 25 in the previous month. Of my read books, 14 were diverse and only one was queer. I reviewed 27 books, the same as the previous month. On the reviews front, 15 were diverse and four were queer.

I have 29 books left to review of of the 132 I've read.

Comments  (0)

Previous month | Next month