Speed-Reading Book Nerd Reviews

Rites of Spring (Break)

By Diana Peterfreund.

Previous book here.

Amy's winter in Rose and Grave isn't going too great. She gets pegged as being a member of the Diggers during a raid on another secret society's (Dragon's Head) tomb, and then is the target of many a nasty prank. Adding to the complications, she briefly considers getting back together with her ex Brandon.... and the two come together into one bad, bad night for Amy.

So, hey, who could use a vacation, to the super-secret Rose and Grave PRIVATE ISLAND, Cavador Key in Florida?!

Vacation, alas, is not what it's cracked up to be. Even though R&G has their own private Idaho island, it's not nearly as ritzy as one would assume. The island caretaker is a very paranoid guy- as it turns out, he has good reason to be. Any patriarch that wants to can come stay...and recently politically disgraced (and enemy of Amy's club, D177) Kurt Gehry is hiding out with his family on the island. Also on vacation are the Myers, one of whom is pretty bigoted. But on the good side, Malcolm returns (though he isn't seen as much as I would have liked), as well as Poe, Amy's enemy-turned-who-knows-what over the last year.

Amy has a rough time from the getgo, as she is Not A Swimmer. This bites her in the ass right from the getgo when she has a nasty pitched-out-of-the-boat incident upon arrival. But pranks abound on Cavador Key, some of which are looking suspiciously nasty. Who's doing it? Kurt Gehry? The Myers? Dragon's Head? The people who seem to be sneaking onto the key? This takes a different twist, one that is kind of hard to handle...

And then there's Poe, who Amy's slowly seeing as not such a bad guy. They start hooking up on the island, but they also fight over the nature of the pranks. See, Poe is pretty convinced that someone's out to kill Amy...and Poe's not a dumb guy...

Now, I generally don't like the Asshole Love Pairing sort of story. Which anyone can figure out by reading any of my reviews of the Gardella Vampire books- I still do NOT love Max, I still think he acts like a dick to Victoria about 97% of the time (I can cite in my head about three times when he's not being a dick), and I can't root for a guy who acts like that. I keep hoping he'll make a drastic change and make even me like him by book 4, we'll see next month, but so far, it ain't working for me. (Though oddly enough, she is managing to morph Sebastian into a more sympathetic guy. Go figure.)

Diana Peterfreund, on the other hand, totally gets it right on how to make that sort of pairing work. Jamie/Poe doesn't lose his bad traits necessarily that you saw in the first few books, but you see the good side of him, he softens up some, you like him. I was semi-liking him in the second book, but I do root for him now. Yay. See, THIS is how you do it.  I look forward to seeing him with Amy in the next book. And much like the scenes with George in the previous book, I got pretty hot and bothered reading about Poe. So, yay.

With regards to the other developments in the book, I'm not sure what to think. I can see why people think the way that they do towards the end, and how it would be a hard situation to handle. I do like how it's pointed out to our current crop of Diggers that they seem to be more "D177 against the world" and not so friendly to others already in the organization, and how that may very well come to bite them in the ass later on.  I'm not sure how our Diggers would manage to fix that problem (especially since well, that's how their year has been going due to other people like Kurt Gehry), but I think it's good to point out.

I will be interested to see how this goes.  I am giving it three and a half stars because I'm not quite as in love with it as the last two, and I'm not sure what to make of the non-romantic developments in it. But still, good stuff. I am sad the series ends in another book.

Hissy Fit

By Mary Kay Andrews.

When Keeley Murdock finds her fiance and the maid of honor fucking each other at the rehearsal dinner at the country club, she...well, you can guess how she reacted. Suffice it to say a country club membership is lost, relationships end, things are destroyed, and Keeley finds herself with some free time on her hands since her fiance's family decides to force her various clients (she's an interior designer) to cancel.

This leads her to taking on various rush jobs for the hot newcomer in town, Will, who's bought the local bra manufacturing plant. The plant has been slowly dying for years, and Will brings hope that he'll revitalize it and bring jobs to the area. Will, on the other hand, may not be doing that. Plus, he's decided to use his vast financial resources to hire Keeley to decorate his new house...to impress a girl that he hasn't even managed to go on a date with yet.

Yes, I'm serious. He "fell in love" seeing Stephanie work a pledgeathon on television and now wants to design a house that will entice her to leave The Big City and settle down in the burbs with him. Without having even talked to her very much, he does this. I can't help but think that Will has some screws loose with this one, as does Keeley, but hey, at least he's paying. (One wonders why everyone in town starts telling Keeley to date Will, given the aforementioned loose screws in his head here.)

Keeley goes to Stephanie's home and job to investigate her taste, and gets caught by her. I do have to give props her for Keeley actually SAYING why she is there, rather than coming up with some dumbassed sitcom lie. Of course, it's all the more disturbing when Stephanie actually goes with this idea and starts asking how rich Will is and saying what she likes in home decor.  Sure enough, Stephanie's a blatant money-grubber who immediately starts plotting how she wants the house of a guy she's just dating decorated, and Keeley gets annoyed (as well she should).

In between working for Will, Keeley and her friend Austin go on a search for Keeley's mom, who ran off with her father's employee when Keeley was a kid and was never heard from again. This takes Keeley down a road that she certainly wasn't expecting.

I don't think this is quite a romance, exactly. There's not much of that, since 95% of the plot involving Will is due to him courting Stephanie. It's kind of almost an afterthought and I didn't much care if he and Keeley got together or not. Especially since like I said, he seems kind of nuts when it comes to relationships. And the whole house plot is kind of deranged in general. But even if there's the weird romance plot, and way too many descriptions of Keeley going shopping for various expensive pieces of furniture (I am a shopping whore myself, but reading about shopping is dull), I found myself interested in everything else, particularly the plots about the bra company and the search for Keeley's mother.

So... I'll give it two and a half stars.

Three Wishes

By Liane Moriarty.

I'm generally not a fan of the ol' "start the book out with a dramatic scene, than rewind back a year or something" trick, but this one was actually kind of interesting: which triplet was pregnant, and which one threw a fork into her stomach at their birthday dinner?

The 33rd year of Aussie triplets Cat, Lyn, and Gemma is pretty busy. Cat finds out her husband cheated on her around the same time that she finds out she's pregnant, and things slide on downhill from there. "Perfect" triplet Lyn is juggling a business, a toddler, a husband and stepdaughter, and starts to have a meltdown. And drifty Gemma finds herself a nice boyfriend...who is unfortunately involved in Cat's marital separation. And to some degree, things do not play out the way you'd expect with that. It's a well-told story, balancing out the family dramas and explaining how things went the way they did.

The only thing I didn't think worked in the novel were the various interludes where some nameless strangers who had seen the triplets over the years talk about the experience they had seeing them. This technique works well enough (albeit it's disorienting) at the start of the novel when describing the fork-throwing dinner, and it works at the end of the book, but I just plain didn't see the point of doing it the rest of the time.

Three and a half stars.

Sorcery and the Single Girl

By Mindy Klasky.

The sequel to Girl's Guide to Witchcraft starts out good...and then has issues.

Ten months after the last book, Jane's been practicing hard with her Watcher warder David, and she's just gotten an invite to join the Coven, the oh-so-big-deal magical organization that dominates everything in her area. It is Very Very Important that she get in, since if she doesn't, her personal library of magical books (and familiar Neko) will be confiscated by them. These are NOT people you want to make enemies of.

...Too bad the Coven is a bunch of snotty Junior League types that Jane never managed to fit in with in her younger days, and sure as hell doesn't seem to be fitting in with them now. The bigwig running the operation is snooty enough to go by three names at all times (she's also been running the thing since she was ten?!), and almost everyone else falls in line with the snootiness. They act downright strange when it comes to Jane's family as well.. The coven members do seem to acknowledge Jane's talent, and give her a big task to do as her initiation into the group. But only one member is remotely friendly to her, and David seems to have a problem with that.

As for Jane's social life, her familiar and her best friend have a feud going on (Neko stole a guy Melissa was on a second date with), which well...comes off as pretty silly and stupid. Said feud leads to Jane having to cover up the fact that she's dating someone new due to a "Friendship Test" that Melissa demands of her. This, to put it bluntly, makes little to no sense.

Okay, I'm going to attempt to discuss the spoilery aspects of this plot without spoilering now. This could get...iffy.

The problem with this book is that it runs on Idiot Plot. More specifically, various aspects of what TV Tropes calls Can Not Spit It Out. The main plot does not work without Jane not knowing some specific information. Fine. But how the plot makes sure Jane doesn't find it out is...silly. There's an eventual explanation for it (i.e. this, don't click if you don't want to be spoiled), but the explanation for it comes in way too late. Mostly you just keep thinking throughout the story, "Oh, for chrissake, the reason for not (spilling the beans) is stupid, just SAY IT already." That drags on way too long to keep the reader sympathetic.

Adding to the mess, there's TWO Idiot Plots in this, not just one. The second one I guess kind of boils down to Poor Communication Kills, because it just seemed plain unreasonable that Character A would never, not once, explain why they have an issue with Character B, and not mention why to Character C. Especially since Character C is aware that Character A certainly had a problem with someone in the past. It actually seemed unnecessary to me that this be kept under wraps, since I could certainly see Character C taking in the information but not thinking it to be all that bad, and thus the plot could still work.

It ends very nicely, and I approve of the ending.  I will most likely read the third book in the trilogy to see where it goes after this. I just wish there had been some more reasonable plot elements thrown in to make it work in order to get there. Really, couldn't the author had come up with a better reason for anyone not to talk? Death threats, perhaps?

Oh, before I end this review, I just want to mention one aspect of the book that I just can't get into the flow of this narrative: the scene where Jane "wraps" a gift for Teresa Allison Sidney was freaking awesome and cool. I wish the rest of the book had lived up to it.

Two and a half stars.

Girl's Guide to Witchcraft

By Mindy Klasky.

Jane Madison is a librarian under stress. She works in a colonial library that's fallen on hard times, and is now making her (a) dress up in colonial garb every dang day, (b) run a coffee bar, and (c) lose a quarter of her salary. But the one lucky stroke for Jane is that in order to making up for her being poorer, the library is offering her free on-grounds housing in a cottage. Jane moves in and discovers a secret trove of magical books in the basement...as well as a cat-turned-gay-human familiar that she dubs Neko. Turns out that Jane's magical and the books sensed it. Since the original owner is long-gone, there's nobody to train her in magic, and the local coven would LOVE to get their hands on the collection.

After Jane casts her first spell, she gets a knock on the door from one David Montrose, a Watcher Warder who monitors spellcraft cast by the witch assigned to him (that would be Jane). He comes off stern at first, but later agrees to be her teacher since she doesn't have one. They're attracted to each other, but decide not to get involved due to their work relationship. Instead, Jane casts a love spell and gets involved with the hottie she's been eyeing at the library for quite some time now.

It's a fun little story. The antics Jane's friend and familiar get up to are entertaining, and it's interesting to see Jane trying to figure out magic. Then there's a few moments that all single dating girls will relate to (particularly a heinous relative mouthing off to Jane that I wanted to stab with a fork). Jane's other family issues are interesting, since she was raised by her grandmother and only finds out now that her mother's not dead, but ran off when she was a baby. Clara's now clean and sober and involved with a mystical religion, which makes Jane wonder if magic does run in her family.

It was pretty entertaining. Three and a half stars.

Bobbie Faye's (kinda, sorta, not exactly) Family Jewels

By Toni McGee Causey.

(Disclaimer: I got this one from the author, via her publisher.)

Oh, I did like this one. More Bobbie Faye drama!

Bobbie Faye's at her job, trying to not sell a little old lady a gun, when her hussy cousin Francesca, whose dad is a mobster, comes stomping in. Turns out that her mom made off with some diamonds, and "supposedly" Bobbie Faye's the only one who knows where they are. Naturally, she has no idea, but this starts off yet another Bobbie Faye Day (or days, as it turns out).

This one is really awesome. Trevor returns as Bobbie Faye's partner in not-exactly-crime, and her ex Cam is still around, and he and Bobbie actually do some interesting communication in this one. And one of the bad guys starts to like Bobbie Faye, but uh...you really don't want her to end up with him. We also get to meet more of her family, including her absentee dad, her mobster uncle, her alcoholic sister, her blind psychic aunt...Turns out psychic powers run in the family, which makes me wonder about Bobbie Faye. Her boss Ce Ce also continues to work up magical mojo to protect her friend, which works better this time. And the resolution of this one is very interesting, though I am still confused on one plot point (see below the cut). I adore the love triangle and its participants in it, and I love how it's going. And there's a lot of good moments elsewhere in the book, such as the old lady with the gun, various shootouts, and one terrorized governor. Not to mention the awesome revelation about someone at the end....I'm looking forward to seeing how that comes out.

So, big love for this book! Five stars from me.

Certain Girls

By Jennifer Weiner.

I'm not sure what to make of Certain Girls, the long-awaited sequel to Good In Bed.

For those who haven't read the first one: in her 20's, Cannie Shapiro got dumped by her boyfriend, found out she was pregnant, got shoved by her ex's girlfriend and had a premature, uterus-removing, life-threatening emergency birth, had a daughter, and got a boyfriend.

Thirteen years later, Cannie is mostly happy, married to the boyfriend, writing cheesy sci-fi adventure novels under a pen name, and has a teenager, Joy. In between the two books, we find out she had a period of singlehood for awhile, and wrote a book called Big Girls Don't Cry in which she "got revenge" by telling a thinly veiled version of her life story. (Oh, you authors.) However, she decided she really didn't like the fame that came from the book, being called fat in the media all the time, etc., and hid in obscurity. But now, just as Joy's planning her bat mitzvah, her husband decides he wants a baby of his own and wants to look into surrogacy.

The chapters alternate between Cannie and Joy as narrators, which is... I don't know. Joy is...a harder character to read than Cannie. She's got an awkward family situation, she's got hearing aids she's embarrassed by, she's kind of getting into the "cool crowd" at school, and...she's just found out about her mom's best seller, which to Joy looks like it's telling the real ugly truth about her mom's past. Joy is ticked off and tries to figure out what really went on, and where she belongs. She's also practically screaming for independence from her mom, who she sees as too smothering. I'm not sure what to make of her:  Sometimes I thought she seemed almost too mature (in narrative style if not behavior!) and that came off as fake to me. It was a little too similar to what Cannie sounds like.  She has a fair amount of bratty behavior going on, though it's understandable why- and she has a few redemptive moments I enjoyed later on.

I felt rather sorry for Cannie reading this, though. While to some degree she does have "happily ever after" going on (at least at the start of the book, she did), I felt terribly sad to find out that becoming famous had crushed her so much that she was now writing a cheesy book series under a pen name. It seemed like old insecure Cannie was in force there more than ever, especially when she's asked to do real novel writing again and all Cannie can do is nod and fake a smile and then ignore the request. Ouch.

And then there's the ending. *sigh* Let's just say that the book appears to be winding its way towards a nice conclusion when at the last minute, a BIG ISSUE is dealt. I can't say I was too thrilled with that, since it seemed to smack of "whoops, I need to throw in some major drama in this nice story and really do some crushing." And the last few chapters are REALLY of the "one, two, skip a few, 99, 100" school of writing, which doesn't fit too well with the rest of the novel's style. I can't help but think that if the BIG ISSUE absolutely HAD to be in here, it should have happened earlier and been integrated into the plot instead of whiplashing the audience at the end.

I'm giving it three stars. It's not bad, but...I don't know. Maybe it wasn't quite what I was hoping for somehow.

The Queen Gene

By Jennifer Coburn.

(Note: this is a sequel to Tales From The Crib, which I did not pick up. Oops.)

I find myself in the interesting situation of late of having read two books (Curse of the Spellmans being the other one) that are...I'll call it, "low on plot." I am big on plot, and I can't say that either of these two books has a whole lot of them. They are more along the lines of going along with a character, watching as wacky things happen to them. And yet, they are still entertaining.

This certainly applies to The Queen Gene, which features a woman named Lucy who's started an artist's colony in the Berkshires with her artist husband Jack. Lucy also has a very wacky mother named Anjoli (yes, I kept having that "I can bring home the bacon, fry it up in a pan" song going through my head every time I saw that) who is always having some kind of drama going on, whether it's sorority girls moving in on her block or her niece going off to college to look for a young stud to knock her up. But Anjoli's main drama is getting herself a very nervous, fur-chewing dog that she takes around to various hippie-dippie types, looking for a cure. It's quite funny, and one of those books where you find yourself reading aloud lines about how the dog calls her multiple times a day from Anjoli's phone.

As for Lucy, her new home in the Berkshires has its problems too. The artists that come to stay at her place start having drastic cases of artist's block and nasty personality changes almost immediately upon moving in. And somehow no female can walk up the steps of her home without injuring a leg, and it doesn't heal too quickly either. On the other hand, someone who's not Jack or the local handyman is fixing stuff, so it's not all bad...but what IS causing that? A ghost?

There's not massive plot to this story- it's pretty much Lucy going along through life, hearing of other people's drama (or her aunt's lasered pubic hair!), getting annoyed at the artists, and trying to figure out if the ghost thing is happening for real. And yet, it's entertaining as hell. Fun fluff to read.

Four stars from me.

Seeing Me Naked

By Liza Palmer.

Elisabeth Page is one of the Pages. Her father is a literary star. Her mother's from a rich family. Her brother Rascal (his given name is even worse!) is following in the literary footsteps of Dad. Elisabeth, on the other hand...is a pastry chef at a prestigious restaurant who's wondering if she wants to live her life as it currently is- busy all the time, and quietly pining for her childhood sweetheart who's always flying off to Darfur or some such. So she makes some changes, such as dating a basketball coach and pondering the idea of her own television show- the latter of which is definitely considered to be "selling out" by dear old Dad. Considering that Rascal's book is being made into a movie, well...that's double the fun at home, eh?

I'm clearly not doing terribly well at describing the plot or the experience of this book. I'm sorry, it deserves better than I'm doing at the moment.  But it's a sensible book. I liked the Page/Foster family dynamics, and Elisabeth's trying to figure out her own way, and Rascal and his daddy issues (particularly uh, Thanksgiving). It's of the sort of chick lit I like, one where the narrator is thoughtful and goes through life changes rather than going on about her shoes (even though the main character seems to be doing comfortably financially) and her size as a means to a plot.

So, pretty good read. I'll give it four stars.

A Little Ray of Sunshine

By Lani Diane Rich.

I normally hate anything to do with angels.  (Except for Demon Angel, apparently.) So if this had been written by anyone but Lani Diane Rich, I probably would have put it down. But...it was Lani. And thankfully, this is not remotely twee just because the A-word is dropped in the plot.

Emmy "EJ" James has spent the last six years of her life roaming about in an Airstream trailer, working menial jobs, and steadfastly avoiding the family and friends she left behind. But when she's working her Quik-E-Mart job one night, a customer pesters her to go help a girl whose car just broke down. Said girl, a chick named Jess, claims to be an angel that specializes in cosmic relationship mending, and she figures her car broke down for a reason, so EJ must be in need.

Sure enough, the next day EJ is tracked down by old family friend Digs, the brother of her ex, Luke. He's got some news... his father and EJ's mother are getting married, and her dad wants her at the wedding. Period.

EJ's mother is a former child star actress who, before Luke and Digs's dad, had been married seven times. She made no secret of not being into parenting. The story is interspersed with quotes from Lilly that will make your mouth drop open in sheer horror at the nasty narcissism this woman has going on. And by the time you finally meet Lilly in person... she's become drastically different. Sure, she's still got a few of her old traits, like not eating and still being really ticked off at Shelley Fabares, but this woman cooks. She has hobbies. She's not nearly the nasty bitch she used to be. And at the very least, she'd like to make up with her daughter before the wedding. But Emmy's got a lot of past history to try to get over before that can be done.

And then there's Luke, the fellow she ran out on. Will he ever want to deal with her again after what she did? Can big fat horrible mistakes be remedied after so long? This book does a good job of answering that question. And as for Jess the angel, I liked how she was handled, especially the surprise revelation towards the end.

My only quibble with the book: Too short!

Four stars from me.