catching up

It looks like I didn't post anything I read in 2010. The next few posts are the things hanging around in draft for since the end of 2009, then I'll get cracking on what I can remember from 2010.

27. Revelations

Revelations (A Blue Bloods novel), by Melissa de la Cruz

I've reviewed the first two Blue Bloods books here, but this time, I actually bought a copy instead of picking up a galley at a conference. I was shopping for groceries, and bought this on impulse. I tend to like to stick with a series once I've started it.

Schuyler Van Allen is kind of a cross between Harry Potter and Serena Van Der Woodsen. She's gorgeous and talented, but a poor relation from a once-powerful supernatural family. In this installment, Schuyler is still in love with Jack Force, but he's still creepily promised to his evil sister, Mimi. The soulmate twins thing really and truly gives me a the creeps. The silver bloods are still sneaking around trying to kill off the blue bloods, and nothing else much has changed. There are some confusing fight scenes and some drama as several people come under suspicion of being a silver blood, but still, the characters all seem to be in the same places as before. Mimi is obviously a bad seed, but she's cleared of being truly, truly a baddie. The Leviathan under the Christ statue in Brazil seemed to come from out of nowhere, but maybe we'll get some of this cleared up later. Ah, well. It's entertaining while I'm reading it, but then pretty much forgotten.

26. True Blue

True Blue, by Luanne Rice 2002)

Another pick from Mom's guest room, True Blue seems like a typical romance novel. The story is about Rumer, a vet who lives in a tiny Connecticut town. Her one true love Zeb, dropped her for her older sister Elizabeth. Years later, Zeb returns, divorced and trying to connect with his son and, not coincidentally, his son's aunt Rumer. You all know what happpens next.

23-25 Tea Shop Mysteries

This winter break, I picked up more of Mom's books, this time the tea shop series. The heroine of this series is Theodosia Browning, who owns the Indigo Tea Shop in Charleston. Theo is a little different from Carmela, the scrapbook protagonist. She's a never-married thirty-five-year-old with no living family. She comes off as a lot older than her age, is kind of buttoned-up, and has a seemingly chaste relationship with her boyfriend Jory Davis, who for some reason, is almost always referred to by his full name.

The language in these books is a bit flowery and the characters seem kind of old-fashioned. If there weren't references to text messages and email, I'd think they were set in the seventies or eighties. They're nice reads, though, and the characters are likeable, if kind of simple and unbelievably talented at whatever they do (except detecting). The descriptions of the teas and foods are great, and probably contributing to me overdoing it on baked goods this winter.

One big gripe I have is that Theo is a such a terrible investigator. She's always lying and hiding evidence from the police and totally misreading every clue she comes upon. If she was a bumbling amateur working with Tidwell, instead of at cross-purposes with him, I'd probably like the books better.

23. Shades of Earl Grey, by Laura Childs (2003)

During an engagement party for a well-to-do Charleston woman, niece of one of Theo's frenemies, at the Heritage Society's house, the greenhouse roof caves in, killing the groom-to-be. The heirloom engagement ring is missing, and doesn't turn up in the rubble. Theodosia decides to nose around and root out the killer, despite grumpy Detective Tidwell's warnings not to get involved. Soon, Theo realizes there's a cat burgler on the loose in Charleston, and the plot thickens!

24. Gunpowder Green, by Laura Childs (2002)

At a yacht club regatta, Oliver Dixon is killed when an antique starting pistol explodes. When it starts to look less like an accident and more like sabotage, Theo looks around for suspects. Is it Dixon's much younger wife of a mere few weeks? Ford Cantrell, whose family has been fueding with the Dixons for generations? A business rival? Of course Theo locks horns with Tidwell in her hunt for the killer.

25. Jasmine Moon Murder, by Laura Childs (2004)

The murder hits closer to home in this installment. During a "ghost crawl" in a historic cemetary, somebody murders Jory Davis's uncle Jasper. Theo literally stumbles over a hypodermic needle, the first clue about the cause of death. Jory begs Theo to look into the murder and figure out who killed his beloved uncle. A fox hunt, a second murder, and a really implausible motive round this one out.

22. Frill Kill

Frill Kill, by Laura Childs (2008)

I'm sure I've mentioned here before that when I visit my parents' house, I stay in a guest room stocked with plenty of paperback romances and mysteries I probably wouldn't otherwise choose for myself, but that I tend to really enjoy. For the past several months, my mom has been really into the Laura Childs scrapbooking and tea shop mystery series'. When I was here in October, I chose this scrappin' story because it takes place at Halloween.

This series centers on Carmela, the owner of Memory Mine, a scrapbooking shop in the French Quarter of New Orleans. Carmela has just reunited with her cheating scoundrel of a husband when she finds his uncle murdered. Of course, the amateur sleuth gets in the middle of the investigation and decides to ferret out the murderer. As in many mysteries aimed at women, Carmela's best friend Ava is the requisite gorgeous, sassy sidekick, and Carmela herself is beautiful and fashionable. The mystery itself is pretty typical, but the writing and characters were entertaining enough to make me decide Laura Childs' books are a good way to spend a few hours when I'm here with family.

Thanks for the Memories

Thanks for the Memories, by Cecilia Ahern

Sometimes I pick up really interesting stuff at conferences. This one is a bittersweet story about two people who start to share each others' memories. I thought it was going to be kind of lightweight, but it really stuck with me and wasn't as chicklit-ish as the pink cover led me to believe--not that I have a problem with chicklit if it's good. Anyway, I remember not being able to put this down until I finished it.

The story is set in Ireland. There are two main characters, Joyce, who has recently had a miscarriage and had to have a blood transfusion, and Justin, who donated the blood Joyce received. It doesn't take long before they start running into each other all over town and taking one each others' thoughts and some characteristics. It's not realistic, but it's believable in the universe of the story. I can't ask more than to be completely entertained by a book, and this one did that for me.

21. Sophomore Undercover

Sophomore Undercover, by Ben Esch

When I was headed for Casper over Thanksgiving break, I hurriedly grabbed a couple of unread galleys from the pile, and this was one of them. The story follows Dixie Nguyen, a Vietnamese orphan adopted by a college professor who ended up dying in a car wreck. so he ended up being taken in by a different family that doesn't understand him. Dixie, the titular sophomore sleuth, is the sole reporter for the school newspaper.

The story Dixie's trying to uncover is a student athlete doping scandal, though his newspaper adviser has ordered him to drop it and cover homecoming instead. I had a hard time getting though the book because Dixie is an almost-impossibly naive and clueless kid who reads every situation incorrectly and unfailingly says exactly the thing that will get his ass kicked by the jocks who love to torment him. All in all, the hijinx are wacky, the comedy crude, and the situations completely implausible. Not my thing, but it might well appeal to its target audience of teen boys.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, by Steig Larsson (2009)

Rick drove me up to Casper on his way to Newcastle for Thanksgiving 2009, and we met up with Nina at Wind City Books. He was looking for something to read, and ended up with this. He read the whole thing over the holiday weekend and gave it to me when we got back to Laramie. I'm glad he did.

Of course, over a year later it's old news, but I loved this book. Honestly, it took me a while to get into it, like four or five chapters, but once the story started unfolding I was hooked. There are probably too many storylines going on at once, but I liked the unfolding of everything happening gradually. Personally, I'm more interested in the Blomkvist character than that of Lisbeth Salander, but that's just me.

At this late date, I probably don't need to say much about the plot, though the mystery of the missing Harriet was pretty disturbing and creepy. I usually don't go for really gritty mysteries, and hate reading about violence against women, but it was nice to find a book that portrays it in a completely unglamorous way. TGTDT is top notch, even if it does have as many endings as the first Lord of the Rings book.

20. Double Cross

Double Cross, by James David Jordon (2009)

I didn't realize at first this was Christian fiction, a genre I don't generally read. That said, I appreciated that the narrative wasn't really preachy or sappy, and that the protagonist was kind of a doubter, a critical thinker (a quality I think is important for everybody). The protagonist, Taylor, is a secret service agent-turned private security provider. What I didn't like about her was her voice, which didn't ring true as a woman. I kept thinking of her as a man, and then would be jarred when references to her dating, looks, etc. came up again. I haven't had this problem with other women characters written my men, either.

The story was interesting enough--Taylor is trying to solve a suicide that might be murder and figure out who might have been blackmailing the victim. At the same time, the mother who abandoned her shows up and Taylor tries to reconnect with her and figure out what's happened in the twenty years since they were together. Still, I wasn't that engaged with any of the characters because I couldn't get a good sense of them. Their motivations weren't clear and it seemed like the author was doing a lot of telling and not a lot of showing.

It's not a terrible book, but not my cup of tea, either.

Lone Star Legend

Lone Star Legend, by Gwendolyn Zepeda (January 2010)

I've been reading Gwen's writing for more than a decade, since I "met" her on a message board sometime in the mid-90s and found out she had a blog. She's one of the smartest, most genuine storytellers I've encountered and it's been really awesome to start to see her work published. I loved her story collection, To the Last Man I Slept With and All the Jerks Just Like Him (2004) and was excited to get my hands on an advance copy of this novel.

It follows Sandy, a blogger who ends up writing for a gossip website, Nacho Papi. When she meets Jaime, a friend of her great-aunt Linda's, she discovers a storyline for the website that makes her one of the site's most popular authors. Unfortunately, Sandy starts to cross the line with the stuff she writes and has to deal with the fallout with her friends and family. Gwen's writing is really sharp, and all the characters are fully formed people I'd love to meet. Each chapter begins with an entry from Sandy's personal blog, and sometimes includes reader comments. Read this one.

19.Fearless Fourteen

Fearless Fourteen, by Janet Evanovich

Sometimes, it's nice to read mindless candy. I picked this up at the grocery store in a weak moment when I was sick, then stayed in bed all day reading and eating Popsicles. Stephanie Plum mysteries are the perfect books for that.

I had forgotten where I left off in the series, so I might have skipped right over thirteen (or twelve). It doesn't really matter, though. I vaguely remember being dissatisfied with the last one I read, but I found Fearless Fourteen had just the right mix of trashy characters and wacky hijinks to entertain me when I was flat on my back.

18. If I Stay

If I Stay, by Gayle Forman

I loved this book. It's short and totally engrossing, so you'll want to read it all in one stretch. Even though I read the jacket, I didn't really get what it was going to be about until I read it, and I'm not sure what I should say about it in order not to spoil anything.

The main character, Mia, plays the cello well enough to get into Julliard, has a family she loves, and a great boyfriend. (Isn't it nice to read a young adult book with a functional family?) She's a little serious and nerdy, but she's pretty happy with her life. The only thing stressing her out is deciding whether to pursue her music or stay with her boyfriend after high school. Then, all of a sudden, everything changes and she has a completely different, much more difficult decision to make.

Do not read this in public. Have tissues on hand. Stay hydrated.

17. The Temptress Four

The Temptress Four, by Gaby Triana

This book kept me entertained on my flight to Chicago. After high school graduation, Fiona and her best friends, Yola, Alma, and Killian, go on a cruise from Miami through the Caribbean. Right before they depart, they visit a fortune teller who tells them one of them won't return from the trip. DOOM!

But this isn't really a mystery. The girls fight, make up, meet boys, go dancing, explore the ports of call, and figure out their futures while on the cruise. One of them doesn't go back to Miami, but I won't spoil it for you and tell you how or why.

16. The Big Dirt Nap

The Big Dirt Nap, by Rosemary Harris

This book's okay, but I wasn't that impressed. Paula Holliday is a gardener-journalist-detective, who has an assignment to write a story about a corpse flower at a local hotel. When her friend Lucy doesn't show up to meet here there and a guy she meets in the hotel bar ends up dead in the alley with a bullet between his eyes, Paula starts sleuthing around. The story has some interesting bits, like a subplot about Indian casinos, but still seemed to fall a little flat for me. Maybe I didn't like Paula enough to care about her.

15. Peace, Love, and Baby Ducks

Peace, Love, and Baby Ducks, by Lauren Myracle

I'm on a YA roll here. Carly is about to start her sophomore year of high school and is just back from volunteering outdoors in Tennessee, which is a far cry from her wealthy suburban Atlanta home. Carly doesn't feel like she fits into the country club set and vows to hold onto her hippie girl ways as she returns to her private Christian high school full of preppy kids.

Carly looks forward to her younger sister, Anna, starting high school and joining her and her best friend Peyton at school. But when she returns home, she finds that Anna has grown up and looks hotter and older than she does, and Peyton has a new boyfriend she's obsessed with. All of a sudden, Anna and Peyton seem to have more in common with each other than with Carly. The rest of the story is Carly coming to terms with things changing and learning how to be a sister and a friend throughout all that. This is a fun, quick read, and I will keep a look out for this author.

14. Karma for Beginners

Karma for Beginners, by Jessica Blank (August 2009)

I wasn't sure about this one, but since it was a free ARC from the ALA conference, I thought I might as well give it a shot. Right off the bat, I liked that the book was set in the mid-1980s instead of current day. Tessa is fourteen and lives with her flaky mom, who pulls up stakes and moves them around pretty often. This time, they move to an ashram near the Catskills, where Tessa feels out of control and out of place. Her mom becomes even less interested in her as she becomes creepily close to the guru of the group, and Tessa finds refuge in a wholly inappropriate place--the arms of the twenty-year-old college dropout who works as the ashram's mechanic.

This is definitely one some parents will find troublesome because, with this older guy, Tessa has sex and does drugs. But the story really reinforces how important strong parent-child relationships are and the importance of supervision and care. It can also bridge the generation gap, showing today's teens that the same problems existed when their parents were kids.

13. Heist Society

Heist Society, by Ally Carter (out February 2010)

Ally Carter is the author of the Gallagher Girls series, which I have enjoyed. At ALA this year, the Hyperion rep was out of the third GG book, but gave me an ARC of this one. It's so early it doesn't even have priliminary cover art. It's similar to GG, except this time, instead of a teenage girl spy, we meet a teenage girl thief. Katarina Bishop is part of a family of master thieves, though she's trying to live a normal life after grifting her way into an elite boarding school. Then her friend Hale drags her back into the heist life in order to save her father from a powerful mafioso. It's good fun.

12. Firefly Lane

Firefly Lane, by Kristin Hannah

Firefly Lane is a lovely story of a friendship that lasts a lifetime. Kristin Hannah is an excellent writer, and I'm so happy the EarlyReviewer program introduced her to me. Both Tully and Kate seem real and true to me, though I had a hard time sympathizing with Tully a lot of the time. Kate, who seemed kind of boring and unambitious in the beginning of the story, really grew on me and I eagerly looked forward to "her" chapters.

I'm also sucker for novels set in western Washington state, since that's where I'm from. Kristin Hannah gets a lot of the little details right, dropping in both local favorite hangouts as well as the important news of the day. It makes sense for a book that follows a journalist through the years to include the major events of the day, but it also helps set the tone for the various decades the characters inhabit.

The only criticism I have is that the story dragged a bit and the book is overly long (and I like long books). Especially toward the end, there seemed to be a lot of repetition. I'm trying not to spoil anything, because I do recommend you read the book, so this might sounds vague. The final section was kind of dragged out and there seemed to me to be too much of the "resolution" after the climax, if that makes sense. Still, I loved it and look forward to reading more from this author.

11. Any Given Doomsday

Any Given Doomsday, by Lori Handeland

I've been gravitating toward fantasy more and more lately, but this book was not for me. It's a huge red light for me when every character is impossibly gorgeous, but I was willing to try to overlook that. The mythology wasn't well-built--I felt like the author tried to cram every supernatural being in too early. If she would have focused on vampires and skinwalkers and then brought in the fairy and werewolves in subsequent books, she might have been able to flesh out the back story.

There's also lot of sex that's very clumsily woven into the plot. Elizabeth can take on the powers of the Nephilim she has sex with? Sounds like something out of a bad porno. I'm not opposed to well-written sex scenes, but these aren't it. If you're into supernatural romance, this might be worth a shot, but I'm not likely to read the rest of the Phoenix Chronicles.

10. Take Your Shirt Off and Cry

Take Your Shirt Off and Cry, by Nancy Balbirer (2009).

Memoirs aren't always my thing, though I do go through phases where I read them.This one didn't work for me. Some of the stories, particularly those about David Mamet, were kind of amusing, but the author's life is just not that compelling. A good memoir makes the reader care about the author, but this one just irritated me. Balbirer is pretty candid about some of her own mistakes, but she comes off as bitter and jealous to me. I found myself unsympathetic to her struggles because I didn't particularly like her.