winter? spring? reading list

My quarterly book reviews have fallen by the wayside mostly because I just haven’t had time to sit and read. I used to read two books every two to three weeks. If I get one book read a month these days I’m doing good. Spending too much time online or on my device playing games or streaming something in the evenings and now with spring I’m spending a lot of time outside working in the yard. Anyway, here’s the last six books I’ve read.

The Choice by Nora Roberts – the third in the Dragon Heart Legacy trilogy. I skimmed over probably about the first third of this final volume because it was basically repetitive stuff aimed at anyone who hadn't read the first two. Breen, Daughter of the Fey and granddaughter of the evil god Odran, has come into her powers but still spends her days training in Talamh  with Keegan, her lover and the taoiseach of Talamh, in the afternoons and writing her book in her cottage in Ireland in the mornings with her best friend Marco, all human, who has also been embraced by the Fey in Talamh. Odran is building an army of dark warriors to take over and burn Talamh. capture Breen so as to suck all her powers, make him god of all worlds and rain chaos and horror over all the worlds. He launches his attack on the summer solstice, a day of glorious celebration in Talamh but the Fey and Keegan and Breen are ready for him and the battle ensues. And of course good triumphs over evil.

Things In Jars by Jess Kidd – This is the second book of hers I've read and I really liked it. I just wish I had had longer spells for reading than the 15 or 20 minute time spans in which I did read it. I may even check it out again and reread it, something I rarely, almost never, do. Set in the late 1800's London during the Cabinet of Curiosities fad, Bridie is a street waif whose protector, Gan, provided dead bodies for doctors and medical students. Bridie is quick and intelligent and so impressed a local surgeon when she was somewhere between 8 and 10 that he bought her for a guinea to train her as an apprentice. Now grown, Bridie lives alone, her mythical husband dead, she provides for herself by conducting domestic investigations and minor surgery. Bridie is retained to find the kidnapped 6 year old daughter of Sir Edmund Berwick, Christabel, around which there is much mystery. Christabel is not an ordinary child. Early in Bridie's investigtion she encounters a ghost, Ruby, who attaches himself to her, unable to move on until she remembers him, and who assists her in her search for the child. Bridie is determined to find and rescue the Christabel before she ends up with a Collector or in a circus sideshow. I don't want to reveal too much but I do recommend it. 

An Evil Heart by Linda Castillo – another Chief of Police Kate Burkholder murder mystery set in the English/Amish community of Painter's Mill. Amish Aden Karn is found on the road murdered and the weapon appeared to be a crossbow. The community is devastated, especially the young Amish girl he was courting, because Aden was clearly loved by everyone as the kindest, gentlest, most helpful, funny young man. Who would want to kill Aden? Days later the body of a young English woman is discovered and Kate is convinced the two murders are related. Kate sets out to learn as much as she can about Aden by questioning everyone who knew him, especially the young men that hang out at an abandoned gas station. The more Kate learns, the more she suspects that Aden was not who people think he was and when a young Amish girl comes forward with a horrible tale, Kate is even more convinced the two murders are connected. As Kate's own wedding day approaches, as she gets closer and closer to the truth, she comes face to face with the murderer and nearly loses her own life. 

Starling House by Alex E. Harrow - Opal and her younger brother Jasper were orphaned when Opal was 14 and her mother’s car suddenly swerved off the road and into the river where she drowned. Opal nearly drowned herself but woke up on the river bank. Since then she has lied, cheated, and stolen to support herself and her very talented and smart brother with the one goal of getting Jasper out of Eden, the small town where they live in room 12 of a motel. Eden, a snakebite town if ever there was one where tragedy frequently visits, was founded as a coal town and is controlled by the Gravely’s and their power plant and shadowed by the immense mysterious Starling house behind always locked gates. There are many stories about Starling house and Eleanor Starling who married the eldest Gravely who turned up dead the day after their wedding and who used his fortune to build the sprawling house. Eleanor eventually disappeared and a new Starling showed up to maintain the house and so it went decade after decade. Opal has dreamed about the house since she was a child, sometimes nightmares, sometimes not. Now in her mid-20s one day she passes by the gates and they open for her and she knocks on the door where she meets the current Warden of Starling House, Arthur. Arthur tells her to leave and never come back. When she refuses he hires her as a housekeeper and Opal sets about cleaning and painting and making small repairs to the dirty dilapidated house. Eventually she learns that there are beasts that come from Underland over which Starling House was built and which only the Warden can see and fight to keep them from the town to commit mayhem and tragedy. Arthur is determined to be the last Warden whatever that takes and Opal joins him in the fight as they descend into Underland to take the battle to the beasts where Opal encounters the vengeful ghost of Eleanor Starling. I’m not sure how I feel about the ending. I did enjoy the book though and I have, of course, left a lot out. It has small illustrations and two full page illustrations scattered throughout and also 22 footnotes the purpose of which I’m not sure and we do get the various stories about Starling House, it’s history. 

Book of Night by Holly Black - Charlie never met a bad idea she didn’t like or a bad decision she didn’t make. In this world of shadow magic where gloamists, magicians, manipulated shadows by changing their shapes for aesthetic reasons or, more dangerously, giving them the power to do the bidding of their owners, an underground of magic books exists which are highly prized by gloamists so as to increase their powers, Charlie has worked for them as a thief for half her life. After ending up in the hospital after once such job she decides she needs to change her ways and gets job as a bartender. She’s doing her best to keep from being pulled back into that world and pay for her younger sister’s college when she reluctantly agrees to find a friend’s boyfriend, Adam, who has gone missing. When she locates him she steals one of those magic books she finds in his possession. When she is subsequently attacked by a shadow in the bar, her boyfriend Vince comes to her rescue and she discovers that he has been lying to her about who he really is and how he is connected to an evil person from her past, which evil person has now given her a deadline to find a particular book or else he will send a shadow to crack her open like a spatchcocked chicken. Charlie sets out to find the book, save herself and Vince and boy I did not expect the ending.

Eileen by Ottessa Moshfegh - the twins read this book and passed it on to me wanting to know what I thought of it. here’s what I think…don’t bother. It’s 260 pages of monologue by an older woman recounting her late childhood and early adulthood whose mother is deceased, the caretaker of her ex-cop alcoholic father with dementia who works at the prison for boys with plans to leave it all behind. She paints herself as an unappealing and envious person with no hope or future, filling her time with pretend interactions and conversations in her head and sexual obsessions when she’s not getting drunk with her father. When the new counselor at the boy’s prison becomes obsessed with one of the inmates, she draws Eileen into her obsession and hounding of the boy’s mother and which event finally precipitates Eileen’s flight from her home and life and that’s the end, she leaves, there is no what comes after. The blurb on the back called it “creepy, mesmerizing, and sublimely funny”. Creepy, somewhat. Mesmerizing, if mesmerizing means boring. Sublimely funny, uh, no.