Speed-Reading Book Nerd Reviews

My Lady Jane

By Cynthia Hand, Brodi Ashton and Jodi Meadows.

As previously mentioned, I read another book by these authors and loved it, so I devoured this one in like 24 hours. It's...sort of...a series? Or at least it's historical Janes being rewritten, anyway.

This tells a much happier version of the Lady Jane Grey (she of the "queen for nine days and then beheaded" life story) story, featuring her, her bestie/cousin King Edward, and her future husband, Gifford Dudley. Oh yeah, and people in this world can spontaneously develop the ability to turn into animals,* which they may or may not be able to control, but it runs in families and appears to run rampant in nobility/this world. Of course, there' s also people who are totally against them (Verities). However, ever since King Henry VIII suddenly turned into a lion and ate his jester, England's been more friendly towards these people existing. But will that last?

* I feel like a jerkass saying this, but I can't spell or pronounce the word for these types of people. I don't know where the authors got that word (I can understand where garou came from, but this one? Confused), but that word just kind of broke my brain every time they said it. It's a similar effect to whenever I'm trying to read up on that Eurovision Icelandic band. Love y'all, can't say or spell it correctly and am an idiot.) 

Poor young Edward IRL died young of illness, and at the beginning of the book is told he's dying and he's told by his advisor, John Dudley, that he needs to appoint an animal-friendly heir, and his oldest sister Mary is a straight up hater. Dudley manages to talk Edward into making Jane (or at least her sons) his heir, and to have her married off to his younger son Gifford. Gifford spends his days (uncontrollably) as a horse and his nights as a man, and nobody can be arsed to get up the nerve to tell Jane about this until she finds out the morning after the wedding. Guess how :P Though Gifford is hot and sweet and a closet poetry writer/public performer of said poetry. Jane's an extreme book nerd and despite some protest and writing her cousin a letter about the whole thing, takes it relatively well. 

Then Edward's dog alerts him to the fact that he's being poisoned, and he figures out it's all a plot to get him off the throne, and he needs to make a break for it...leaving Jane to her brief royal stint, being thrown into the Tower, and....well, there's good plot reasons why people can suddenly turn into useful animals under stress. (I note that the story of how Edward's grandmother became a skunk is hilarious.) So things shall end better for our sweet, smart Jane, her sweet, loyal horse/husband, and the well-meaning Edward, who finally meets a girl and at one point has to meet his ex-fiancee, Mary, Queen of Scots. (More on her later.) 

Anyway, this was great fun and super sweet and the romantic couplings were adorable and you really root for them. I definitely enjoy the whole animal-aspects thing, how it works in the plot, thematically, personality-wise, all of it. I enjoy that this goes a lot better than real life. Four stars! I had a great time reading it. 

Quotes:

• "Which brings us to on fateful afternoon in the royal court of England, when King Henry VIII, during a fit of rage, transformed into a great lion and devoured the court jester, much to the audience's delight. They clapped enthusiastically, for no one really liked the jester. (Later, the courtiers discovered the incident was not a rehearsed act of artful deception, but indeed an actual lion masticating the jester. When the audience found out the truth they no longer clapped, but they did remark, "That clown had it coming.")
• "The head of the Verity Church was not pleased with King Henry's decision, but every time Rome sent a missive denouncing the decree, the Lion King ate the messenger. Hence the phrase, Don't eat the messenger."
• "It was only an engagement, after all. She'd been engaged before. Four times, as a matter of fact." ... "Well, I'm sure he'll be just as wonderful as the other fiances were."
• "Dearest Jane, Sorry I made you marry a horse. Your father-in-law is trying to kill me. Send help." 
• "There were also a handful of invitations to preside over state events, visit various nobles' country homes, and attend something called the Red Wedding. Jane checked the "will not attend" box without giving this last invitation a second thought. As if she wanted to go to any more weddings."
• "Once, she made Father so angry that he turned into a lion, and we were afraid he'd devour her, but then she turned into a skunk and sprayed him right in the face.. It took weeks for him to be rid of the smell." 

My Calamity Jane

By Cynthia Hand, Brodi Ashton and Jodi Meadows.

I have vaguely seen this sort-of-book-series around and found the most recent two of them at the library. As far as I can tell, these three authors team up to write books from three different points of view, taking historical figures with common first names and writing alternate, more cheerful histories of them, while throwing in say, paranormal stuff and authorial fourth-wall-breaking snark.

I am DEFINTELY DOWN FOR THAT.

Anyway: this one retells the story of Calamity Jane, Frank Butler, and Annie Oakley....with garou (werewolves). Wild Bill Hickok was a famous garou hunter and now is doing a traveling Wild West show that's secretly doing undercover garou investigation. They're trying to track the "Alpha" who seems to be biting people without their consent and brainwashing them.

• Jane grew up with a garou mother--this didn't go well--and early in the book, gets bitten and becomes a garou herself. After being informed that there's supposedly a cure in Deadwood for this, she travels there and is....well, quite surprised at what's going on there. (I will note that the authors take some fun and creative historical liberties with the Deadwood story.)
• Annie Oakley's a sharpshooter who really wants to join the Wild West show and also falls for Frank (and his dog George, who she's not allergic to) at first sight, and she figures out they're secret garou hunters early on. She's excited to join that, since she had a horrendous experience with some bad garou in her childhood and is totally down for killing them.
• Frank Butler got bitten and turned garou as a small child and was rescued/adopted by Wild Bill. He's  kept the secret, learned to tame his inner wolf, and helps the recently bitten to manage to have a good life without getting violent. (Their gang only goes after badly behaving garou.) He falls in love with Annie at first sight, but when she starts spouting off that she hates garou, well, that hurts his feelings. 

Overall, I loved this, it's really fun. Once everyone gets to Deadwood, the plot details you know about Wild Bill and Al Swearengen get thrown for delightful loops that I really enjoyed. I also really enjoyed the overall authorial fourth-wall-breaking snark, and throwing in historical exposition, and using famous lines from modern times just for the heck of it. I loved the other characters, such as Edwina/Edward, a reporter that Calamity Jane goes for and vice versa, but her writing career gets in the way. I also really liked the Lakota sisters, Many Horses and Walks Looking, that Annie befriends later on, those were great girls. (I note that the authors consulted with a sensitivity reader on this topic.) And Wild Bill himself is very endearing as the proud papa to this bunch. 

Here's some quotes so you get the feel of what reading this is like:

• On Jane's various claims: "Again, reader, this was not exactly the truth. Or even a little bit the truth."
• "The truth is, up to this point in her life Jane had never been in a skirmish with the Sioux. She had never actually met a Native American in person, let alone in any kind of combat. In her past adventures, as a scout or driver, if Jane ever had reason to believe that an Indian was thereabouts, she'd turn right around and go quick as she could in the opposite direction."
• "And thus, dear readers, the very first game of H-O-R-S-E was played, Of course, now the game uses trick basketball shots instead of trick gun shots, and this change is probably a good thing, because no one was as good at shooting as Frank and Annie, and therefore if other people tried to replicate the game, there would be blood. Anyway, back to this delightful scene of a boy and girl, flirting with the rules of propriety and shooting guns at each other." 
• Annie: "Hey, big guy. Sun's getting' real low." "Still hours 'til sunset," muttered someone outside. "how long's this girl been drinking?"
• "Ahem, narrators here. We know, we're supposed to be writing a comedy, and this whole part is pretty sad, but sometimes bad things happen and people are sad. That's the truth of life. Still, even the saddest of times can have moments of humor to help pull you through to the other side of grief. We'll get you there. We promise." 

I'm going to put one more quote behind the spoiler space, for my own amusement.

Anyway, this is four stars, highly recommended, great fun! I'll get the rest of them when I can.

Mind the Gap, Dash and Lily

By Rachel Cohn and David Levithan.

Previous book here. 

It's another Christmas later, and things have changed. Dash has gone to college...in Oxford, where he's not really enjoying much of it except for hanging out with his grandma, Gem. (Thank goodness Dash has one good relative!) Lily's taking a "gap year" to work on her dogwalking business, which has now turned into an Instagram business in which she sells dog treats, dog clothes, etc. "Lily Dogcrafts" has become so popular that people recognize her when she flies to England to visit Dash for Christmas. 

Anyway, I think this one is my favorite with regards to D&L's relationship--there's not much drama over whether or not they get together or are going to break up, even if they are long distance. D&L are cool and chill with each other and are pretty much ignoring Lily's family grumbling that they don't want her settled down with this guy at her age and all that jazz. At one point someone suggests they elope and D&L are like "the hell?" and "ah, clearly you're just trying to screw with us a bit." 

Most of the drama here is regarding their futures. Dash is feeling kind of limited on his academics and mostly friendless in England and wants to go back home, while Lily's considering going to a dog school in England, but not just to be with Dash. When asked what they want to do with their lives by his grandma, Dash says he wants to work with books--basically being a book editor, I think. So she contacts someone to work on that, which is sweet. Lily, ah....decides she wants to work with dogs, specifically being a "dogtrepreneur," a word that definitely makes people look askance, instead of going to Barnard like her family insists on. Dash, thankfully, comes up with a more plausible schooling plan with regards to that idea. 

Even though we're in England for this one, there's cameos by pretty much everyone regardless of location, and I rather liked the schoolmates of Dash's that got introduced in this one.

Overall, I really enjoyed this. I don't know if this is the last in the series or what exactly, but if it is, it's a great note to end on. Four stars. 

What You Wish For

By Katherine Center.

This book is amazing.

Backstory: Librarian Samantha Casey has epilepsy, which literally made her father decide to ditch her forever. She basically lost her family over this.. Later, she worked at a school in California and fell madly in love with Duncan Carpenter, a totally wacky, happy, enthusiastic guy who was always wearing crazy outfits and doing amazing things in the classroom. (He sounds like great fun, I gotta say.) But she never got up the nerve to really interact with him, someone else asked him out. The one time they had any interaction, he asked her to cat-sit and when she found herself reading through a notebook of his, she was all, "This is Too Much," and she got another job in Galveston, Texas. 

The new job in Galveston has been heavenly. It's a little patch of hippies in the middle of Texas, and Sam lives in the carriage house of the school founders, Max and Babette Kempner. She adores Max and Babette and feels like she's a second daughter/found a new family with them--even if their actual daughter Tina hates her for this. (I note that Tina is married to Kent, a complete jerk who runs the school board, and has a sweet kid named Clay who thankfully takes after his grandfather.) Everything there is really great.

And then Max drops dead while dancing at his party. Everyone is devastated. And it's even worse when Kent takes over and hires a new principal.... which turns out to be Duncan. At first Sam is delighted--he'd be a new Max all over again!--except Duncan HAS CHANGED. He's now a boring suit guy. He's no fun at all. He's completely obsessed with safety above all else. And he pulls out a painted squirt gun in the middle of a meeting to scare the shit out of everybody. THE FUCK?!? AT A SCHOOL?!?!

Soon everyone hates him and his memos about firing the security guard, canceling all field trips forever, canceling the playground, and painting all walls gray. On the one hand, this sure helps Sam get over that crush she had. On the other hand, this guy has turned hella awful and she openly declares him her enemy and the rest of the school feels the same way.

So what happened to Duncan? You the reader will have long since figured it out before Sam does as to what happened to him to make him suddenly change into a guy who's literally all about nothing but school security--I can only assume that's Idiot Ball sort of logic to put off a big reveal. That said, I did really enjoy HOW it came about, i.e. Duncan needs someone to give him a ride/watch him after surgery that gets him high and amnesiac about everything he blabs about liking Sam, as well as what happened to him.

After finding that information out, that changes the plans, and Sam and Babette and company come up with a plan to improve Duncan/get him to have fun again/get him into therapy, not get his ass fired, and it's all very sweet. 

The relationship between Sam and Duncan is pretty damn adorable, even if the whole "you shouldn't be dating your boss" thing is utterly ignored in this one. (I guess private schools...don't care?) You definitely feel they are Meant To Be, even if it took some time. And I love how Sam came out of her shell after being a boring dresser when she originally worked with Duncan--after her epilepsy came back, Max encouraged her to do things that made her happy, like dressing colorfully and having pink bangs. (I don't have pink bangs, but did have pink hair for awhile.) Though even though Sam seems like she mostly is over her own stuff, she does get triggered about her epilepsy and whether or not it will drive someone away like it did in the past. 

Anyway, I found this sweet and adorable and inspirational and four and a half stars. I got it as a library book, I may need to purchase it to keep. 

Quotes:

• "One flower hat can't fix all my problems." "No, but it can sure help." -Sam and Max
• "The point is to be happy anyway. As often as you can." -Max
• "I might never drive, but dammit--I had a fun wardrobe." -Sam
• "Fuck lunch duty." -Sam
• "I bite and scratch and claw my way toward happiness every day." -Sam

The Inheritance Games

By Jennifer Lynn Barnes.

Avery Grambs is just trying to get by. Her mom's dead, her dad's a deadbeat, and she's being nominally raised by her older sister Libby, who's in an abusive relationship and Avery's about ready to start living in her car to avoid that situation. She has dreams of going into actuarial science and making a life for herself as soon as she can.

And then out of fucking nowhere, she finds out that she's inherited billions of dollars from Tobias Hawthorne, a now-dead billionaire Texan SHE'S NEVER HEARD OF BEFORE IN HER LIFE. She's forced to live in the family mansion in Texas for a year and isn't allowed to throw out any of the mostly-disinherited family members, most of whom are reasonably cheesed off at not getting much money in the will. We're told the will is diehard, that if anyone challenges it they lose their money, and that in a previous will, Tobias planned to disinherit his entire family anyway and just give the majority of the money to charity. And no, Avery ISN'T in any way related to the Hawthorne family (DNA testing appears to have gone on quickly offscreen). SO WHY THE HELL DID SOME STRANGER GIFT A TEENAGER BILLIONS? 

All Avery gets in a posthumous letter from her benefactor is a note saying "I'm sorry." THE FUCK? 

Naturally, the female relatives in the family--Tobias's daughters and one confusingly-vaguely-related teen girl named Thea--Have Issues with this. And then there's four hot young grandsons ranging from 17-22 hanging around the house. Nash, the oldest "rescues" people and at one point was engaged to Avery's new lawyer (huh?). Grayson is suspicious of Avery. Xander and Jameson are friendlier and more intrigued, but particularly Jameson, who introduces Avery to his grandfather's obsession with puzzles and how this is all some kind of giant puzzle to be solved. 

So essentially this book is about solving the mysteries that a dead guy left behind, combined with the mystery of Dead Girl Emily--the housekeepers' granddaughter who had bad health and various entanglements with the teenagers. And Libby's shitty abusive boyfriend is all PAYDAY!!!!! and gets more and more horrendous as the book goes on, of course. 

I'll say this: it's intriguing, but not much is solved or resolved by the end of this, which I found VERY FRUSTRATING. By the end of the book you will only have slightly more of a clue as to "why Avery?" and I was really irritated by that. I also can't figure out for the life of me if I am supposed to be rooting for Avery to have any kind of romance with any of the Hawthorne boys. She kisses one of them, but seems to get attracted to at least the younger three at different points, and they're all a mix of "I'm not sure if they're good or bad or have ulterior motives or WHAT" here. Do I want her to be with any of them? Is that a good idea? HELL IF I KNOW WHAT IS GOING ON HERE.

I'm not even sure if I want to read the next book (though I did reserve it at the library, I admit it...), given how irritated I am at the finish of this one. I usually really like this author's books (The Fixer and The Long Game being my favorites for tricksy shit) and you'd think this is more of the same, but the vague open-door-ness of this one was just frustrating as fuck and as things went on and you're more like "I don't think much of anything is going to resolve here," uck. There's one Crucial Reveal at the end about someone we've barely heard of that suddenly becomes A Big Deal. I also kind of wondered at the attention paid to Avery's perpetually-locked-up best friend Max, who seems to only be there so Avery can't manage to have a conversation with her most of the time? The girl needs support outside of the situation and she can't get any, apparently. 

I don't know....it was just a frustrating experience for me to read this book. Kinda leaves a bad taste in the mouth when reading it made you annoyed and mad, and usually the author's a lot better at not doing that. Three stars. 

A Deadly Education

By Naomi Novik.

This is a book I've been vaguely debating reading for a year. On the one hand, I like Naomi Novik books. On the other hand, the concept behind this one is depressing as fuck. I saw it in the library, I flicked open the first page, and the narrative voice was so compelling that I grabbed it.

The concept behind this book is that magically gifted people--apparently just young kids to especially teenagers though--are just walking bait for every single hungry magical monster roaming the world, of which there are MANY. Kids/teenagers are just literally constantly being eaten. And to quote the book, "the best solution that all the most powerful and brilliant wizards of the last century and more have been able to come up with," is to have all teenagers go to a magically automated high school of death, with no adults, no teachers, just magically automated learning for 4 years, while monsters are constantly attacking them. You seriously need a bodyguard just to take a shower. You can't have any contact with the outside world, more people die than survive, and "graduation" is trying to fight your way out of the school while all the monsters attack, and nobody's been able to fix the "scouring machinery" in the graduation hall for the entire existence of the school. And this is literally the best solution they have to keep as many teens alive as possible. Why is anyone having kids if this crap is going on? 

So yeah, DEPRESSING AS FUCK CONCEPT OF HORRIBLE DEATH SCHOOL. To quote our narrator,

"For the last three years, I've had to think and plan and strategize how I'm going to survive every single meal in here, and I'm so tired of it, and I'm tired of all of them, hating me for no reason, nothing I've ever done. I've been tying myself in knots and working myself to exhaustion just to avoid hurting any of them." 

Meet Galadriel "El" Higgins: her Welsh mother Gwen and her Indian father Arjun fell in love and got pregnant in the Scholomance, and he got eaten by a maw-mouth at graduation getting her out. Gwen is the biggest giant good happy hippie you ever heard of in your life...and in compensation, her daughter is prophesied to be a horrible murdering dark wizard and her father's family would have nothing to do with her after that. El loves her mother, but learned at age 9 that literally nobody in their hippie commune would lift a finger to save her life when she was being attacked. "People don't like me enough to help me even if I scream." And virtually nobody likes her, as she gives off bad vibes. And to be fair, El is justifiably Very Cranky about how her life is going. Her affinity is for being gifted with say, mass murder curses every time she just wants a spell to mop the floor. She's "strict mana" (not fueling herself with any life force) and actively trying to NOT GO EVIL. Trying very hard. The poor girl needs to be liked on some level because one can't survive alone, but it's extremely hard going. 

At the beginning of the book, El is angry/snarky about the school hero, Orion Lake, saving her bacon. Orion basically is the Class Hero from Buffy, having saved hundreds of lives (to be fair, his power affinity helps with that sort of thing). He's from an enclave--enclaves being the safest way to live as a wizard, if you can get a group to take you--and he's famous and popular and whatnot. This is the sort of thing that makes El want to barf, even though she has secret plans to try to earn her way into an enclave circa senior year if she can just figure out the ah, likeability issue.  However, as she gets to know the guy as a real person, she develops sympathy and friendship for him, given his issues.  "He was living the same garbage story I was, only in mirror image." While this book really doesn't get very romantic, given the circumstances, you enjoy how El is all "I treat him like a normal person, why don't the rest of you try it?" to his enclave-mates. El also makes a few friends of her own during the book, which is great.

At the end (I note that El and company are in their junior year, so there's one more year/book to go in this duology), the seniors point out that Orion has saved too many lives over the course of his career--not only does the school not provide enough food for that many people to eat, it means the mals only get hungrier and therefore more seniors are likely to die, and they're resentful of this. This leads to a scheme of Orion, El, and various seniors trying to fix the scouring equipment in the graduation hall so less people die. 

(I'm not entirely sure I understand all the technical details of the magic, scouring equipment, etc.to be honest.)

Anyway, this is disturbing and depressing but interesting? I like El. She's cranky AF and unpleasant but you root for her anyway, given what she's dealing with. Orion is an interesting situation as well. I liked El's eventual friends/allies that she makes, and even Chloe, a New York enclaver who starts out not liking El but finding hidden depths in her later, has potential.

And then there's the fact that El figures out how to take out a mal-mouth (the kind of creature that ate her dad) all by herself, and then continues to be utterly shaken and horrified that she managed it and realizes that's not something she can let get around. Maybe her powers for mass destruction could be used that way...? 

We'll see in book 2, I guess. Four stars.  

Royal

By Danielle Steel.

This has a great premise, but frankly doesn't do as much with it as one could. 

The whole idea of it is "what if there was a long lost member of the British royal family who didn't know she was royal?" So about 150 pages of the book sets up the premise. The BRF in this story are thinly veiled fictional versions of the original bunch during WW2, with the "dutiful" oldest sister Alexandra and the "rebel" (re: obnoxious) younger one Victoria--and then we have the third daughter, Charlotte. Charlotte is 17, tiny, asthmatic, and a diehard horse rider. Charlotte's parents decide to send her away during the war to live in the countryside under a fake name (somehow nobody recognizes her?) with a noble family. Because of the war and security, they can't do phone calls and Charlotte doesn't tell her parents anything about what's REALLY going on with her life, nor do her guardians. So the royals have no idea of the following:

Charlotte falls in love with the son, gets pregnant, gets married, the son goes to war and dies, Charlotte dies soon after the birth and how she died is lied about on the death certificate, his parents die within the year...it's just a yearlong chain of death, and the only household survivor is another girl living in the house, Lucy. This is about the first 150 pages, right there.

Lucy falls in love with baby Annie (Anne Louise) and adopts her since nobody else is left to want her, and later finds a trove of royal letters and the like proving Charlotte's true identity. However, at this point she loves the kid and keeps her, figuring she'll tell eventually. Lucy gets married, has twins, and the entire family's happy until Lucy gets cancer and dies, telling her husband Jonathan on her deathbed about the whole thing. 

After Lucy's dead, Jonathan does his duty and lets the royal family know what went on, they prove Annie's identity and....honestly, there's not much drama about this? The family is nice, accepts her right off, even Victoria is nice to her, it's all very chill and stress free. Okay, so maybe the media might have been slightly less insane in the late 1950's/1960's when Annie's all grown up, but seriously, there's just not much going on with "Oh hey, I'm a princess!" Now, it's nice for Annie that the fictional BRF is a lot nicer than the original people inspiring the plot--I presume the real BRF would be complete jerks about finding another family member. 

But really, by the time we get to the reveal for Annie that she's royal, it feels like the author lost interest in the royal plot. What she REALLY wants to write about is how Annie wants to be the first female horse jockey. Great, but I kinda wish that the author had decided to either (a) just write a book about being surprise royal or (b) just write a book about being a horse jockey. The two combined together just don't get enough attention/juice for me to super care, I guess?

I also didn't really like Annie's love interest Anthony. He's kind of vaguely jerky. I also didn't like how he started harping on about marriage and babies and Annie is all "I really don't care about having kids, I just wanna ride horses." (I'll note that since Annie's bio-mom died right after childbirth and it seems to be blamed on Charlotte being "small," wouldn't Annie be more concerned about possible death by baby?) 

I do give Annie credit for breaking up with Anthony once he starts in on the whole "I don't want the mother of my babies to die in a horseback riding accident" thing, and they don't speak for a year, and her career takes off and I was all GOOD FOR HER! Sadly, this is (very tokenly) a romance novel and thus they have to get back together again, with Anthony tokenly apologizing and saying they can wait 10 years to have kids (well, that'd be fine, but....) and Annie being all "it's okay, I got my horseback riding ya-yas out, I only wanted to do it for a year!" Sigh.

I have a lot to critique about this book, but really it's a solid three star, not that memorable read. Not terrible but not exciting either. Which is a shame, because it really could have been something with the potential plot ideas. I also felt like it was so busy narrating all the different deaths/plot details that we don't get that much character development for anybody to feel attached to them. Everyone who isn't Anthony is pleasant enough, but I won't remember this book a few months from now. Oh well. 

When Sorrows Come

By Seanan McGuire.

Previous book here. Review goes behind the spoiler cut. Four stars.

The Perfect Escape

By Suzanne Park.

This is a nice, sweet story with a fun premise and ah....some definite surprises.

Nate is an entrepreneurial lad from a family that's not doing too well financially, looking to make some big bucks. He works at an escape room, where he meets Kate and they hit it off in a friendly way pretty quickly. Both of them are into escape rooms and zombies and could use some cash, so they team up to enter a weekend survivalist competition together.

Nate's family situation is fairly normal--dad just lost his job, he has a little sister who keeps being a 5-year-old, he's got a pointless crush on a female friend that obviously I'm not really concerned about given that Kate exists. There's a wee bit of mystery regarding not knowing too much about his family members when anyone's assigned to do a family tree in school, but that's eventually explained. 

However, Kate's in a bad way. Her mom died and her father's a big time tech entrepreneur who, after her mother's death, is basically tech-stalking, drone-stalking, helicopter parenting her to the point where it sure does seem like she's in jail. I note that she has recently turned 18 but still in school, but her dad sure acts like she has no choice in doing what he says. The amount of nitpicking and stalking he does... He nitpicks every penny she spends (72 cents over budget!), every phone call she makes or gets, going over allotted Internet usage by 14 minutes, there's a house robot to take her vital signs... It's incredibly creepy. Nate actually admires her dad, not having any idea that it's her dad. He's got a cardboard popup of the guy, and imagine poor Kate's reaction upon seeing that! (I note that Kate's last name is a generic one, so it's not totally obvious that they might be related.) 

I do seriously wonder if this book is a bit ahead of us in time/in the future from the technology used in it? It feels about fifteen minutes into the future, for various reasons.  

Overall, at least until we get to the point of the competition, it's a sweet friends-to-something-more relationship between Nate and Kate, who are nice people. They have awkward moments ("I left my wig in his car!" "I feel forced to eat a burger I don't want to eat!") but get over it. There's a bit brought up about how Nate's a scholarship student at a snooty school and someone's trying to get him to commit grade fraud, but it doesn't get as much play as you might think.

And then comes the competition... This goes into straight up spoiler territory so I'll have to address it in detail in the spoiler cut below. What I will say above the cut is that I was suddenly very surprised and things go from fairly normal world (other than Daddy Techstalker) to HOO BOY I WAS NOT EXPECTING THIS territory. I felt like I was suddenly reading a Jennifer Lynn Barnes book, THAT kind of levels of twists. It didn't match the previous tone of the book, so it was a huge surprise. Like "conspiracy theories are real!" level of it. I'm not saying that makes it bad, but I definitely didn't expect the book to hit that level of craycray. Like Kate's life, I can see some level of craziness happening given what her dad is like, but to have it end up all over Nate? Dang. 

Overall, it's a very good book, but it definitely takes A Jump and escalates in ways I was not expecting. I also kind of wonder how things resolve with Kate's dad, but again, that's spoiler cut territory. I'm giving it three and a half stars. If you want to know why, check the spoiler cut.

Pride and Premeditation

By Tirzah Price.

This alt-universe version of Pride and Prejudice has the Bennets as lower middle class working people, in which Mr. Bennet is a barrister with a business called "Longbourn and Sons" (I see what you did there) even though he only has Mr. Collins around to inherit. Lizzie desperately wants in the family business, but of course she's a woman. She tries to drum up some business by sneaking into jail to visit a guy who's been accused of killing his divey brother-in-law....that'd be Mr. Bingley. Of course Mr. Bingley's already got a barrister, his buddy Mr. Darcy, but Lizzie is on the case to figure out whodunit anyway.

I was...mildly into this and also kind of mildly finding it hard to stick with. I got it as a library book so that made me have to get through it more. It's both kind of interesting and kind of middling?  Maybe a bit slow somehow? Like I enjoy Lizzie as a more active detective, for sure, and it's less maritally obsessed. The Bingleys as a more broke family who keep having their ships pirated and a shitty brother in law is rather refreshing. One character ends up being more of a dynamic personality in this one. However, with regards to whodunit, well, you should presume that your least favorite characters in the original are Up To Something in this one. There's not that much romance in it by comparison, but this Mr. Darcy is a pretty nice bloke in the end. It did speed up with a lot more crazy action at the end, which I did like.

Though factually....I kept thinking "ain't no way a woman's going to be allowed to be a barrister" and I did some Googling and well, nope, not in Austen's time. Yes, the author took some liberties with that one, and I appreciated the author's note about the legal system back then.

Overall, three stars.