Speed-Reading Book Nerd Reviews

China Rich Girlfriend

By Kevin Kwan.

Previous book here.

I liked this book a lot better than the first one, oddly enough. The plot is juicy and there's at least a decrease in the constant yammering about richness to focus somewhat more on plot. Still wondering who the "girlfriend" of the title is though. Colette, I guess? 

"Why do things always get fucked up when we come to Asia? Don't answer that." -Rachel

"It's a long story, one that could only happen in China." -Rachel

It's been two years, and Nick is estranged from his family--or at least his mother and grandmother. He's fine with that. He's engaged to Rachel and they're planning a secret wedding, which of course his mother finds out about. 

Oh, Eleanor. She's not in this book much after the first section of the book, but when she is, she's memorable. In the opening chapter of the book, Eddie is forced to actually do some work by escorting around a grieving mother whose son just crashed his car into a Jimmy Choo shop and injured one girl and killed another. He and Eleanor run into each other in England and in a "mutual don't destroy me" sort of move, Eddie gets Eleanor and her visiting friends to look after the grieving mother, Bao Shaoyen. And when Shaoyen pulls out her phone to show pictures of her son Carlton....Well, Carlton is a Sebastian-and-Viola dude twin version of Rachel Chu. Eleanor befriends the family, finds out that of course they're rich, and literally INVADES THE WEDDING IN A HELICOPTER...to say she gives Rachel her blessing now and she's arranged for her and her dad to meet. That's almost awesome of you, Eleanor, though of course we know she's now okay with it because the Baos are loaded now. Of course, she starts regretting it soon after.

Nick and Rachel spend their honeymoon in China when her dad invites them to visit, but when his wife throws a fit, her dad is pretty much making up excuses and not seeing her. Her brother Carlton, on the other hand, chooses to meet her and they instantly hit it off. N&R spend their time with Carlton and his sorta-girlfriend/friend with benefits Colette Bing, who on the one hand is very generous with her money and friendly, but on the other hand can be nitpicky as hell. Colette definitely prefers Carlton to her other suitor but isn't at all interested in getting married right now, but her parents really want her to marry someone else. Uh-oh. Carlton's having a mental crisis, and then someone does something really bad to Rachel...

In other news: Astrid and her husband Michael are still together and now he's "earned" his own riches. However, Michael has turned into an abusive arrogant jerk and Astrid is trying to be in polite denial about it (I'm surprised she's not more worked up that her son is being locked in a closet). She's turning to her ex Charlie Wu for support and he's giving it, while hiding the fact that his marriage is awful in a lot of ways, something Astrid makes even worse inadvertently. You are really rooting for Charlie Wu here, people. They both deserve better than their spouses.

And speaking of spouses, former actress Kitty Pong--now "Mrs. Bernard Tai--" is trying to buy her way into Chinese society. She acquires an expensive mentor to help her get a social makeover since spending tons of money isn't doing the job. But will this work? And where the hell is Bernard, who nobody's seen in ages? Does Kitty really have him tied up in a basement, has he been kidnapped, what is going on? I'll address it below the spoiler cut, but I did not expect that answer. 

Sure, there's a certain quotient of shallow talk and shopping shopping shopping and much less Peik Lin than I would have preferred (I miss you, girl), but overall I really enjoy Nick and Rachel together and I liked and felt for Carlton, and even Rachel's absentee dad feeling caught in the middle. I don't know how I feel about Kitty Pong, but I sympathized with her. And I definitely root for Astrid and Charlie to get together somehow despite their poisonous spouses. 

Oh, I haven't commented on the footnotes. Kevin Kwan does love his footnotes, which started out explaining things like language translations of dirty phrases and social customs, but in this book get even snarkier. He makes jokes about bad Asian drivers, Game of Thrones, and hating a teacher who beat him at school. These books aren't particularly funny except in the footnotes, but I like him taking the piss out of things. 

Something else interesting I want to mention: I liked how Astrid mentions that she wears the same dress to every wedding (something Araminta bitched about in the last book) because she doesn't want to people to talk about her dress instead of the bride's. How sweet are you, girl? 

Now I have to wait for 24 other people to get through the next book at the library, sigh. 

A wee bit of Quote Corner:

• Corinna to Kitty: "When you enter a room, the ladies immediately think, "This woman is either going to steal my husband, my baby, or my yoga mat." 
• Corinna to Kitty, continued, on the decorating scheme of her home, which Bernard picked: "If I recall, the design concept was commissioned by your husband in the early 2000's to evoke the Miami Beach bachelor pad of a Bolivian drug cartel kingpin. This was done extremely successfully. I particularly admired the "chalk body outline" mother-of-pearl inlay on the ebony wood floor and the trompe l'oeil "bullet marks" on your master bedroom headboard, but I think that it would be inadvisable to host a children's birthday party here...."

I'm going to make some more commentary below the spoiler cut.

Beyond that, I think I'm gonna give this book four stars. I really liked it. I read it pretty quickly. 

Crazy Rich Asians

By Kevin Kwan.

I've been conflicted as to whether or not I wanted to read this book for years. To some degree I like Dallas/Dynasty trashy rich people fighting stuff AT TIMES as long as it's fake (ain't watching no "Real Housewives" anything), and then sometimes I roll my eyes at the obnoxious shallowness, and I couldn't tell from flipping through the front of it which one this was going to be. So I was debating on whether or not I wanted this one from the library. Then the movie came out, I loved it and saw it three times, and last I checked 34 other people have holds on that book at the library. Which is how I somehow oops, ended up with the audiobook from the library, which only has five people in line after me. In CD, no less. Do you know how effing hard it is to listen to CDs any more outside of my old car? That's eleven disks of unabridged I have to get done in three weeks and I can't listen to it at work and trying to listen off my CD burner makes you lose your place somehow. Then I started listening to it on the car during my weekend trips, but discs 2 and 4 are hell scratched, and...shyeah. So part of this was consumed by audiobook and part of this was just straight up reading the book in a bookstore. Pardon me if my comprehension and recollections aren't the best 

Anyway: my vote is the movie is better because it cuts a LOT of the cruft out of the book. There's a lot of cruft in this and it takes the slow route to the plot because the author certainly loves to describe the snobbiness and vapid conversations of rich people and what they bought in Singapore and how much they look down on people from the wrong families and the wrong countries without the right lineage. I know very little about Kevin Kwan but apparently he hasn't been back to Singapore since he was eleven and can never return or else he'll be conscripted into the army. So you gotta give him points for imagination as to how things are going there now, I guess. 

The plot of the book is that Rachel Chu, a Chinese-born, American-raised girl, has been raised at various places around the country while her mother worked her way up from restaurant worker, put herself through college and became a real estate agent. Rachel's gone to Good Schools and is now an economics professor at NYU. That's where she met the hunky Singaporean Nick Young, a history professor. They've been dating for about two years when Nick asks Rachel to spend the summer with him in Asia and attend his best friend Colin Khoo's wedding. What she doesn't know is that Nick comes from some ancient family with ancient huge wealth--"crazy rich" is less about anyone's sanity than it's about "so rich it's crazy that anyone can be that rich." And Nick, who's been living the life of a normal plebe professor, does not warn Rachel about any of this until she's on a fancier plane to Singapore than she was expecting, and as time goes on she is more and more shocked at the environment Nick grew up in.

For the record: in the movie everyone's heard of the Youngs and the Internet exists. In this book, somehow the Youngs have managed to keep quiet in the world and their money isn't an open thing, which means that Peik Lin and her dad have to do some investigating to find out who the hell are these people. I don't know how plausible that is (the book's set in time a little earlier, but not THAT earlier) to do in real life, but you have to notice that somehow Nick's grandma's house can't be found on Google Earth. 

Why didn't Nick tell her? Well, to some degree he got raised to not talk about his family and their money, he really has no idea how much anyone has because the family is secretive, and I think he just didn't want to ruin Rachel's perception of him. She went for him, not his family or his money. Rachel mentions how she always got judged by Asian guys in America and the more we get to know the Singaporean girls Nick grew up with, you get that the two of them really like each other's NOT judging of each other. But...the story of this is how Nick's family is putting a buzzkill on their love.

People you will meet:

• Ah Ma, Nick's superrich grandma, who seems friendly at first but hoo boy, can she turn on you.
• Eleanor Young, Nick's mother, who in the book ducks meeting Rachel for as long as she can while she gets a private investigator to investigate her--finding out things Rachel herself had no idea about. Naturally she is fairly polite in public and not happy in private.
• Phillip Young, Nick's dad, who is totally fine with Rachel and spends most of his time in Australia avoiding the family. Smart man.
• Colin Khoo, Nick's best friend/the groom. Nice dude, loves his fiancee but has obvious depression issues.
• Araminta Lee, Colin's fiancee, very nice most of the time but has some brattier/shallow aspects later on that made me sad.
• Alastair Cheng, Nick's cousin who just got engaged to...
• Kitty Pong, trashy dumb actress and the real gold digger around here.
• Edison "Eddie" Cheng, Alastair's super fucking bratty asshole cousin who is constantly throwing fits about not having enough money, bitching out his wife for her wardrobe, and screaming at his children. 
• Fiona Tung, Eddie's wife, who deserves better than this turd.
• Bernard Tai, the most obnoxious little shit in the world who throws the world's most obnoxious bachelor party, which is so obnoxious you can't put it in a movie.
• Astrid Leong, Nick's favorite cousin who everyone loves (beautiful, superrich, super fashionable, super nice too!), but has just found out her husband's cheating on her and is trying to figure out how to manage the situation.
• Michael Teo, Astrid's husband, who may or may not be cheating but he definitely Has Issues about being the poor husband Big Time--they're a parallel/possible future bad omen to Nick and Rachel.
• Peik Lin Goh, Rachel's best friend from undergrad, a nouveau riche girl living in Singapore, awesome and on Rachel's side.
• The rest of the Goh family, who are also very nice and on Rachel's side and do their best to protect Rachel and investigate the situation with Nick. (Note: much less ridiculous than in the movie. and her brother isn't a creeper.) 
• Oliver T'sien, a rogueish cousin who's on Rachel's side from the getgo and gives her all the dish.
• Charlie Wu, Astrid's ex-fiance, who comes in at the end of the book but is a super kind helpful person to Astrid. He still loves her (note: he's separated from his wife) but just wants her to be happy and will do what is needed to help with that..
• Sophie Khoo, Colin's sister/Astrid's cousin, is a doctor and the one that comes to Rachel's rescue in a bad moment.
• Francesca, the requisite head Mean Girl who gets up to the mean shit that was given to Amanda in the movie. Why is she acting like that? Bitches be bitches, I guess.
• Amanda, Nick's ex who was prominent in the movie but isn't in this book very much and makes a bit of a weaksauce attempt at some shit.

So Rachel and Nick arrive in Singapore and at first it's all happy hangouts with Colin and Araminta and Peik Lin--and then once Rachel sees Ah Ma's Tyersall Park estate, she and Peik Lin are all ohhhhhhhhhhshiiiiiiiiiiiit. And when Rachel goes along to Araminta's bachelorette party, most of the girls except for Sophie are complete bitches to her once they find out that no, she's not one of the Taipei Plastics Chus. Meanwhile, Nick, Colin, Alastair and another friend of theirs are miserable at the bachelor party Bernard (whose dad is the biggest minority shareholder in Colin's dad's business and Colin has to be nice to him) throws, which involves dog fights and hiring all the ladies in a brothel. To get off the boat, they seriously have Colin fake a bout of pancreatitis--or just alcohol poisoning--to get a helicopter to get the fuck out of there. It's pretty funny and I'm a little disappointed that wasn't in the movie. 

As time goes on and the wedding goes on, Nick realizes that yes, he wants to propose to Rachel. And dear lord, HIS FAMILY AIN'T ABOUT TO HAVE THAT, so they drop their little investigation bomb on Rachel and rock her world. And not only is Rachel wondering about her own past, now she's debating whether or not she can even marry into a family that doesn't want her. Which you can't help but compare to Astrid's problems with Michael never fitting in with her family either. Will they survive? Nick will do his best to make sure they do...

The ending's a bit different from the movie--it's a little less resolved--but overall I was good with it. And I managed to score a free copy of book 2, so hopefully I can read that more easily. 

Overall, I like the nicer characters--Rachel and Nick, Astrid, Peik Lin and her family, Rachel's mom, Colin, Sophie--and you definitely have big hate on for Bernard and Eddie. And the plot, when you get to it, is good. But you do need to wade through a lot of very shallow talk about say, whether or not it's socially acceptable for Eddie to borrow his rich friend's jet three times in a row, or how much it costs to be a rich person and to keep up your wardrobe, or the various scorning of where you come from and why it's not quite good enough and blah blah blah...So in short, this book is a total mix of what I enjoy about rich people soaps and what I'm not interested in in rich people soaps. So overall, I give it three stars. Reading the book is optional, but that movie did it great. Movie gets four stars. 

 

Home to Big Stone Gap

By Adriana Trigiani.

Previous book here.

After the events of the last book, Ave Maria and Jack come back home without their kid, trying to figure out life without her. Jack has a few health scares that indicate that he may not be living to age 97, which may not surprise you since he's a former miner. After Ave Maria finds his scrawled bucket list, she does what she can to make it happen, and wonders who the heck "Annie" on the list is.* Ave Maria is roped into directing The Sound of Music, which isn't covered nearly enough because it sounds like it should have been a crazy laugh riot.** Iva Lou's long lost daughter turns up, which causes some awkward estrangement between Iva Lou and Ave Maria when Ave Maria asks about the daughter. Some creepy dude wants to basically destroy the local mountain and wants to hire Jack for it. Jack is oddly fine with this, prioritizing making money in any way he can since he may not be able to do construction forever, but Ave Maria hates it. She finds an ally in a roaming college student that reminds her of her dead son. 

* Don't worry about it. It's a nothingburger that made no sense on a bucket list.

** Ave Maria didn't get to cast the show. Captain Von Trapp is creeping out Maria with his advances, something I wish someone had told him to back off about. People are drastically out of the supposed age ranges for the show, like Iva Lou is playing the Baroness as Belle Watling with upspeak. The guy playing Rolfe left and the only guy left to play him is Indian, which makes me wonder what kind of hullabaloo would happen if this happened in 2018 and the Internet heard about it. Oh, and finally the Captain really does in his knee during final dress rehearsal and Theodore has to step in, which makes the show a huge sellout. Seriously, another book could have made SUCH HAY from this, I wish it was covered more. 

In other news, Theodore is single again but his career is going well and he visits or she visits periodically. Fleeta gets married for the insurance, or so she says. Pete Rutledge is still hanging around being flirty, to the point where I can't help but think that if the author had wanted to do a fifth book it would be one where Jack dies and Ave Maria can finally be with him guilt-free. 

I don't know if I'm as touched by this last book as I was the first two, but the section where Ave Maria talks about the books Iva Lou gave her was extremely sweet. 

"Where would I be if she hadn't given me The Ancient Art of Chinese Face-Reading?"

"You were obsessed with that book."

"It changed my life. It was like I was a carpenter and somebody finally handed me a hammer and nails and wood. Everything clicked." 

As well as:

"It was as if Iva Lou was emptying the shelves of the county library, trying desperately to find proof in the pages of books that I too could be happy and spin my own tale of daring and seduction."

And:

"When I look back, though, I see that the books Iva Lou recommended were, for the most part, stories about strong women at a crossroads. She liked plots wherein a female protagonist struggles to learn how to stand up for herself, until, with newfound strength, she finally takes charge of her destiny and finds happiness."

Also amusing is Fleeta and Theodore at Christmas. Theodore gives Fleeta shit about her sweater. In return, Theodore announces he is doing a musical based on his life, and Fleeta just goes on and on and on about how Burt Reynolds should be in it because that's the only way she'd watch the show because she wants to bone Burt (see below).

By the end, Ave Maria learns to accept that Etta's gonna do what she's going to do, school be damned when she's got love (you can guess where I'm going with this, I think), and figures out a way to get her husband to Scotland and get that bucket list taken care of. Overall, it's a nice end to the series without getting too fatal, which I suspect would happen if the series went on from here. I admit I'm curious to see if Ave Maria would marry Pete if/when Jack is dead after all of that pining/secret lusting, but eh...let's just leave them happy. Four stars. 

I've been too lazy to Quote Corner these books but I think I'll do a bit here:

• Ave Maria corrects Iva Lou's pronunciation of "George" as "GAY-org." Her response: "Honey, I don't care if he's gay or hetero, I'm the Baroness Von Love Interest, and the Captain's gonna know it before the final curtain."
• Less funny: "I have a way of ending an argument that has always worked in my marriage. I give up; I stop fighting, I pretend to agree, and then we move off the hot topic and on to the business of life."
• "You've always played it very safe when it came to men. You don't relate to women who fall in love, lose their minds--sometimes more than their minds--then are hurt and disappointed and move on. That's out of your orbit entirely." -Theodore
• "You know, Fleeta, you don't have to wear everything you're given." "What the hell else am I supposed to do with it?" -Theodore and Fleeta
• "I would also like to thank the Lord for Fleeta's sweater, which reminds all of us that there can never be too many sequins at Christmas." -Theodore
• "Bedazzle or die" is a motto to live by." -Fleeta
• "He seemed like he'd give every girl an equial shot to get in his drawers." -Fleeta on Burt Reynolds

 

Milk Glass Moon

By Adriana Trigiani.

Previous book here.

This book starts out with Ave Maria going to a fortune teller who tells her that she has to redream her life and figure out what she wants to do with the second half of it. This has promise, but this book doesn't really go there. 

I liked Milk Glass Moon, but a little bit less than the other two books, which surprised me more with their depths with regards to Ave Maria. This book focuses more on the raising of Ave's daughter Etta, who goes from 12 to 18 within the course of this novel. Unfortunately--or at least I didn't like that aspect of it--there's a lot of one, two, skip a few, now she's fifteen, blink and shes's sixteen, now she's eighteen, time jumps going on that the narration doesn't even really clarify--you're just going along reading it like you always did and then you're all wait, Etta's WHAT now? If you're going to do that, please put "1996" or "One year later" or SOMETHING at the top of the chapter or ...just distinguish it, okay?

Anyway. Etta's overall a good kid but occasionally gets stubborn and occasionally gets herself up to some trouble--Ave Maria's particularly triggered when Etta and her friends prank a new teacher, because Ave Maria knows what it's like to not belong here. They have fights periodically, which bothers Ave Maria a lot, but it doesn't seem out of the ordinary for teenage girls to have those sorts of fights and issues. 

Ave Maria and Jack's marriage is still going very well, though Pete Rutledge is still around occasionally--now he's friends with Jack too, which makes me go HMMMM. Karen Bell briefly returns, looking trashy and with an awful boyfriend, as you'd want to have happen for revenge. Pete gets married in a "settling" sort of way, which goes about as well as you'd think. Clearly dude is still pining for Ave (who admits he's her fantasy material at times still), but it ain't happening unless Jack dies, I think. Theodore has moved to NYC and found love, so he's doing great. Pearl has a baby, Fleeta gets a beau, Iva Lou has a brief stint of breast cancer that the "one, two, skip a few" style of this one doesn't cover well. 

The thing that stands out to me in this book is Etta's mad insta-love for Stefano Grassi, an Italian boy she fell in love with when she was eight and he was thirteen in the last book. Ave Maria likes Stefano but was hoping Etta would get over it--nope, she does not get over it! I feel like the poor girl must have been doing a jail bait wait on herself just waiting until she could turn eighteen and finally, finally have it go somewhere. Which it does, shocking the shit out of Ave Maria with ah, how fast it progresses. I sympathized with Ave Maria's anger at Etta throwing out her life plans for a boy at 18, but at the same time I felt like she'd been waiting for that all her life and now she finally got it--of course she's going to grab on!

With an empty nest, what will Ave Maria do? I guess we'll find out. Three and a half stars, but still pretty good, if a little weaker by comparison to the other two. 

 

Big Cherry Holler

By Adriana Trigiani.

Previous book here. 

"I thought I knew my issues." -Ave Maria

Even though I'm not sure why the book is titled "Big Cherry Holler" (she lives in Cracker's Neck Holler), this book does live up to and continues well from Big Stone Gap. There's been a time jump of 7-8(?) years or so, during which Ave Maria has had a daughter, Etta, and a son, Joe. Joe came down with leukemia and died at age 4, and three years later Ave Maria is still grieving quietly and trying to recover. In this book, the mines finally close down, forcing her husband Jack to get into a new line of work and start a construction company with his bros. Ave Maria gets more work hours at the pharmacy and is offered a partnership when it expands, which kind of cheeses off Jack when Ave Maria gets (justifiably) distracted and doesn't get to tell him before the rumor mill does. Unfortunately as a result of Jack getting a new line of work, he meets a highly dubious hot blonde named Karen who does apparently go around all of their area telling everyone she's going to steal Jack away from his wife--and Jack obviously does find her attractive. Ave Maria's friend who used to be "the other woman" all over town tries to advise her on how to handle the situation by not calling it out and being sweet as pie and not having any problems whatsoever--something Jack deems to be fake. 

By the time the family is about to go to Italy for a month to visit Ave Maria's relatives, Jack bails on the trip at the last minute--not because he plans on banging Karen for a month uninterrupted, or because he's "too busy with work," but because Ave Maria's fakeness, and overall lack of real love he's been feeling from her, makes him think she needs to take some time to figure out whether or not she still wants to remain married. Oy. In the words of Vivian from Pretty Woman: "Big mistake. Huge." Dude, you don't send your wife off to Italy alone! Because sure 'nuff, Ave Maria meets a hot guy (from New Jersey!?) who's also visiting and definitely wants to bang her--and she now has her own ethical marital crisis. 

This actually goes to a pretty dark place for Ave Maria, as others point out her flaws and how she's still in some shellshock from being a spinster for so long, how her kids became more important than her husband even though she does love him, that her husband didn't quite feel the same grief as she did over Joe, etc. Even her bestie Theodore basically rips her a new one when she shows up on his doorstep in distress again, which I found kinda harsh. Then she realizes that while Jack chose her, did she ever choose him? 

I'm going to put one comment below the spoiler cut, but otherwise, I thought this was just as good and thoughtful and well done as the last book. It's an emotional ride for Ave Maria, but you end with hope that things will be okay. So, four stars. 

The Book of Essie

By Meghan MacLean Weir.

Esther "Essie" Hicks has spent her whole life living in her parents' reality show. Her father is a famous preacher (though her mother Celia seems to be the real power behind the throne) who's turned their family life into a hit reality show, "Six for Hicks." However, Essie has just turned up pregnant at age 17--and she has never had a boyfriend--and her mother decides to handle the situation by getting Essie married off real quick.

Essie, however, has been in a bad situation for a very long time. And she has been making plans for what to do if this ever happens to her. And with this idea of a marriage, she sees a way out. She gently directs her mother to a potential husband target, Rourke Richards, who she's been eyeing for quite some time if she needs assistance even if she doesn't know him. Rourke is a smart kid and future valedictorian who got into Columbia, but his parents are dead broke and there's no way they can afford college. Rourke is nice. Rourke is also secretly gay, which Essie has deduced. He seems to be the one guy in town who needs to GTFO as much as she does.

Rourke certainly can use the money and the GTFO'ing, so he agrees to it even though he finds the Hicks family disturbing and he's barely met Essie once this proposal happens. But as he gets to know Essie, who's honest with him and offers him a real partnership and friendship, they fall in deep friend love (which is a little bit told not shown at the start, but they grow on you). And by the time he finds out about her pregnancy and how it happened, he is absolutely down with her secret plans for escape, and revenge on the family that betrayed her big time.

Also involved in the plot (the narration changes between all three) is Liberty Bell, a reporter who focuses on the Hicks family. Liberty has been through her own shit--her family was involved in a cult that had to be taken down by the government and her twin sister Justice died in the altercation. After writing a book as a teenager and being a prominent blogging right wing bigot, she's gotten over that stuff and has moved on to a happy relationship and mostly not communicating with her parents any more. So when Essie asks her for help--first in tracking down her sister Lissa who fled the family when she went to college, and later for more--Libby is down to help, big time--as is anyone else who finds out.

The book covers the engagement and up to the wedding, where Essie plans to reveal the truth and get her revenge--though her partners wonder if she's really going to go as far as she wants to go. While the book takes its slow time to reveal the real horror that Essie has been dealing with, you can slowly guess it along the way (even if you're not me and uh, I peeked ahead of time). And boy, do you root for her to burn it all down. The main characters are good people that you root for and you feel for them as they're trying to stomach being around the less good ones. This was a compelling book to read and I pretty much did nothing else but read it until I was done. It was brilliant. Four stars. 

The Coincidence Makers

By Yoav Blum.

This is an odd book.

There's three coincidence makers (who seem to be some kind of angelic-ish beings, or at least they aren't humans but are living human-y lives right now) featured in this book: Guy, Emily, and Eric. The three of them went through, essentially, Coincidence Maker School together and still try to hang out on occasion. They get instructions submitted to them in envelopes and they have to figure out how to make one butterfly's wing flap or how to matchmake couples or get an accountant to realize that he should be a poet. There are some technical documents or notes or some such* that the likes of me mostly did not understand, but uh, it's complicated. Guy used to be an imaginary friend (the previous jobs of Emily and Eric are eventually revealed but not until the end) and that occupation seems to overshadow a lot of things for him. 

• note to the publishers: might have been cool to have had those formatted to look different, like actual publications or something

We see some of Guy and Emily's work (mostly just hear about Eric's) in this book with others, but mostly the plot focuses on about three plotlines:

• Alberto Brown, a gentle giant who gets forced into working for the mob as an assassin when people notice his mysterious ability to have intended targets die of natural causes. Honestly, this was the most intriguing thing in here.
• Guy gets roped into a coincidence working by a higher level coincidence maker calling himself Pierre, who's been the man behind Alberto's inexplicable career. Alberto has a very, very high destiny in store for him as long as his record isn't ruined, so could Guy please talk to one of his old imaginary friend clients and convince him to...you know... well, the guy needs to die, eh? As you can imagine, Guy does not like this.
• Meanwhile, Emily is secretly in love with Guy, but he won't go for her because he's already in love with Cassandra, another imaginary friend that he lost (literally) some years back. Since imaginary friends are totally malleable, the odds of him finding her again are...well, take a guess. 

I admit that throughout most of the book I was kind of involved and kind of confused/depressed. I really hated Emily's storyline, which is pretty damn depressing (though I won't spoil it). Alberto's was interesting and I did like Guy's rebellion about it. And I did wonder what the point of Eric was, since he's pretty much absent in the middle of the book. However, the ending REALLY came together, and came together even more and more as it went on. The ending makes it work, in true coincidence maker style. I was pretty impressed at how it all worked. So, good job there.

But until you get there... I agree with this review:

"Although Blum's tale is unique and quite original, the apparent lack of direction makes you gradually lose interest as the chapters come and go. The Coincidence Makers weighs in at only 291 pages, yet it often feels as though you're reading a doorstopper. The pace can be extremely slow and the plot drags along at a snail's pace. The structure of the book probably doesn't help. Indeed, some chapters occur in "real time", while others are flashbacks scenes focusing on the characters' training as coincidence makers, and some feature extracts from coincidence making manuals.

For some reason, I found it hard to connect with the protagonists. Guy and Emily take center stage and are fully-developed characters. Still, for some reason, I found it hard to root for them. Both of them are broken and flawed and genuine. But there was something missing. Something I can't quite put my finger on."

I do think this is gonna be a hard book to get into/stick with. The ending makes it work, but I don't know if everyone would stick with it that long. If you can stay interested in at least some things and bear with Emily's storyline (which sucks, but you can see why it's going that way at the end), you may enjoy it. So, three and a half stars. 

 

A Queen from the North

By Erin McRae and Racheline Maltese. 

This is an alternate universe book in which the Lancasters won the War of the Roses. If you are like me and pick this up having zero prior knowledge about the War of the Roses before reading it...well, you shouldn't. At the least go read the TV Tropes page about it or something before you begin because I'm sure I've missed all kinds of crucial details. Anyway, the Lancasters rule Britain, and the North (York) end of the country is still mad about it even in our modern era. However, Prince Arthur, a widowed 40 year old, needs to get married again. So he gets the bright idea to, on very little acquaintance, propose to Lady Amelia Brockett, a 22-year-old York noble who previously was wanting to attend grad school for science. But never mind that now, let's get a northerner on the throne! Amelia agrees to this on not a whole lot of time to consider it, and then ... well, things seem to blow hot and cold on the way to the aisle, to say the least, and a real life surprise event changes things as well.

I get the feeling that this book is supposed to be a romance, but it's probably one of the least romantic "romances" I've ever read. Hell, the one where the guy turned out to be a total jerk after his wife got pregnant and the "happy ending" was her miscarrying (I forget the title of this, but I reviewed it here somewhere and it was really bad) still had more closeness and romance at the start of it than poor Amelia gets with Arthur. Throughout the book, Arthur seems very nice but also a very, very cold fish. I don't mean in a "I'm asexual or gay so good luck making heirs" sort of way (though you might wonder) so much as most of the time he seems to back away from any hint of romance. There's the occasional clinch between them here and there, but they also don't spend much time together and it takes a while before the guy will like, even contact her at all at times. I don't get how he's so sold on this York queen idea and of marrying this girl when he barely even spends time with her. The age difference of 40 vs 22 is not my favorite thing either, I will say politely since i have personal bias on that issue that influences me. I gather this is kind of modeled after Charles and Diana except less terrible, but I dunno if I'd think that's the best model for a romance. It really didn't help them have anything in common, which is a huge problem for me as well. Also it's a little weird how Amelia just chucks her scientific interests out the window for a guy she is clearly not even in love with, though she's willing to try to love him.

As for Arthur, he's always "busy" or "I need to go to bed early" or whatever. Even though Amelia is an inexplicable virgin--why is she 22 with a boyfriend she planned to marry in this time period, didn't grow up with anyone who harps on getting married before having sex, and just... never got around to it? Who knows, we don't find out--and is advised to ah, test the merch before she buys it, Arthur somehow just doesn't seem interested in trying out those connecting doors until the end. It's such a DISTANT relationship that I was not invested. I'm not sure why they are invested, either, beyond "You seem nice enough and then there's the politics." And when the populace gets more forceful about objecting to the idea, you wonder. I see "slow burn" being used in reviews and for me it was like low to no burn. I'm ridiculously bad at lighting fires and this reminded me of how I can just fizzle and fizzle with a match or lighter. Not much emotion is going on here, so why should I care?  It's not romantic if they aren't actually trying to be together very much. Can't these folks just at least try to Netflix and chill or do something to get to know each other more? I'm blaming Arthur on this since he has the power more than Amelia does and we can tell she's at least interested in trying. But...I don't know how much he loved his first wife or what is going on with that or if that's an influence because clearly at this point he doesn't have a choice about remarrying anyway. It could be likely that he loved his first wife so much that he's just biting the bullet here. That could have been a good book, with a guy who has to remarry when his heart isn't in it and then they get interested in each other. But I didn't feel like this book went there because Arthur just doesn't seem to have much in the way of feelings to share, if he says much of anything at all. I have no idea if the dead wife is why he's so distant or if he just is secretly asexual despite the "playboy prince" rep, which I really doubted. Dude just doesn't have a lot there to share, I guess. 

I was really circling the drain of making this a DNF book and switched off reading it with others and otherwise dawdling along. 

There's a slight bit of interest regarding the ravens because Princess George, the genderqueer* likely heir to the throne if Arthur doesn't make any babies, is also a straight up witch and has some kind of psychic connection to the ravens at the Tower of London and whether or not they are going to bug off. Unlike the real life ones, I guess these do still have the ability to voluntarily leave on their own, which can happen here. I was mildly curious enough about this to wonder about it, and the acceptance of George's ability by the royal family, who isn't even fazed about this (and Amelia is all, "guess I have to throw out my scientific training for this, sure"), is rather cool. The more you find out about whatever George is up to, the more interesting it got, for what that's worth. You get the feeling George is masterminding and matchmaking everything. 

• Imagine the joys of being a genderqueer royal: can't get your pronouns or your heavily gendered title changed.

When Amelia and Arthur finally get down to Business Time, it's like "finally!" and then they wake up and Arthur sees some tweet from a grad school Amelia applied to before this happened and throws the biggest fit out of bloody nowhere. The guy had more passion about that than anything else in the book. Jeez. No sooner do they get together than they come apart again and get distant AGAIN. Sure, Arthur gets romantic at the very end, but I didn't finish this book feeling like they were gonna be happy ever after. More like "Amelia does her duty, they are even farther apart than ever, Amelia is bored as shit and keeps trying to get Arthur to boink her again and he always has to go to bed early." Have fun being queen if that happens. Sigh. 

So on the supposed romance side, I found this to be very disappointing. I truly do not get the high reviews everyone else but me is doing with this book. The only thing that was interesting since the romance didn't even have a chance to spark and then fizzle was George's witchiness and the ravens, and I did not get enough of that to really get what is going on. From what I checked online, the authors want to do a sequel about George and I think THAT would be far more interesting than this one. Maybe I'd read it. I just hope if George gets involved with anyone, there's actually well, involvement. 

Two stars. 

The Noticer

By Andy Andrews.

My mom forced me to read this book. Seriously, she was all, "some woman at Jafra loved it and recommended it to me and I thought it might help you. What do you think?" (I was all, eh....) "Don't you think it would help you? Won't you give it a chance?" And we were stuck in a car. Fine. I give in. Here you go.

I don't know squat about whoever wrote this book, but I'm going to guess this is a made up story because even though it is supposedly based on a true story (or at least the opening story of Andy meeting a guy named Jones under a pier is), I kinda have my doubts after awhile. It is a freaking Magical Negro book. I did not know this trope was still going on after Bagger Vance. So that's odd. 

Anyway: Jones is a mysterious, vague Person of Color (it's implied black at first even though the writer seems to be trying to say he doesn't think of him as black? I handed the book right back after I was done so I can't check) who wanders into town with his suitcase, declares someone who doesn't know him to be his new best friend, and spends some intense moments with the new bestie. For example, he insists on getting a ride from a lady, tells her that her husband is his best friend, and then when all three of them are having a meal together, the wife is all "Hey, he's your best friend" and the guy is all, what, I never met him before! Jones was all, "Hey, I think you waved to me at the grocery store once," or something like that. Uh-HUH. 

His gig is that he "notices" things that you might not have known, points them out to you, and then everything is better.  For example, the big advice he gives to Andy/the narrator is to think of the one thing that other people wish you'd improve about yourself, because the point is that you'd better make people like you. (I unfortunately know exactly what people wish I'd change about myself, I've spent around $1000 on this to get coaching on that so I can start pleasing people, and is it working?) I found that to be a very depressing thought. Other deep thoughts from Jones involve explaining The Five Love Languages so a couple doesn't get divorced and pointing out to a guy about how apologies should work. Or telling an older woman that older people can still achieve stuff later in life. It's all along those lines, generally reasonable advice. Jones breezes in and out and disappears in between gigs, as it were.

Oh yeah, and he may not be a black man. Andy eventually finds out that some people think he is named Chen, or Garcia, and then suddenly Andy can see him as Asian or Hispanic! So....that was odd. 

Eventually Jones uh...disappears, leaving his suitcase behind and the entire town wondering WTF happened. They finally cave in and open his suitcase, which is filled with seeds and a note essentially saying farewell, you probably won't see me around any more. Probably because he's an angel and went back to heaven, I'm presuming. Except I guess not, because there's a sequel. After that ending, I was all, wtf there's a sequel? According to the video link above, the author is all, "oh, I just ran into him 5 years later." So...angel, schmangel? What? 

I don't even know what to make of stuff like this. The concept of a "noticer" isn't a bad one, per se. The advice isn't bad even though the "what other people think" thing makes me want to start drinking heavily just thinking about it.  However, the "is he some angel or not" thing is probably not my favorite trope of all time and was giving me flashbacks to watching Battlestar Galactica. If it was based on a real guy, why can't it just be that this is a regular human guy who makes that his life's work? I can kind of see Jones being a bit Miss Marple in a sense, but the hinted angel thing is... not my bag. 

So I'm going with two and a half stars. And I fully admit that my personal biases are influencing this choice. 

 

Coincidence

By J.W. Ironmonger.

"What would be the characteristics of a universe determined by free will?"

"I don't know."

"Non-randomness. We need to look for things in the universe that ought to be random, but aren't....We need to look at the areas where we might expect free will to make a difference. And there is only one area where we can realistically look for that--and that has to be in human events."

So I was reading a book called Connecting With Coincidence at the time I stumbled across this one in the dollar store (?). Obviously I kinda had to go with it.

The story is about a woman named Azalea, who's had a hell of a lot of coincidences in her life involving dead moms, blind supplemental dads, and a lot of relatives dying on June 21 (more or less). I'm summing that up pretty quickly, but despite the oddness of the storytelling voice (which is both kinda omniscient and also not...?), you find yourself interested in the tangled web that is around Azalea: she lost her mother mysteriously as a small child, lost her adoptive parents when living in Uganda and their mission got attacked by Joseph Kony, and she's had some very weird coincidences about the men who might have been her father. It's certainly enough to give you pause. It especially gives Azalea pause once she finds out that most of her relatives keep dying on June 21 at 10-year-intervals, and it somewhat reasonably makes her wonder if she's going to die on this upcoming June 21 herself.

Azalea decides to get advice from an expert. She meets and starts dating Thomas Post, the "coincidence man," a fellow working at the same college she does who debunks coincidences for a living. Thomas is willing to help her out in investigating the weirdness, but naturally has some mental boggling to do at all of this stuff. Is coincidence something to believe in, or not? The answer is, of course, "maybe?" and "stop trying to analyze or dismiss it all, Thomas, just kinda go with it." Because what else can you do, really?

The ending is fairly anticlimactic (see spoiler space), which was kind of a fizzle given the concept of the book. I also would have liked to have gotten more of a sense of certain characters and their personalities. I got a fairly strong sense of the strongwilled Rebecca (the moment of confrontation of Kony and how she handles it...wow, girl) and Thomas's kind yet rational mentor Clementine, but Thomas and Azalea and Luke and most of the rest of them are kind of ...middlingly portrayed without the amounts of depth you'd expect given the subject matter. Or at least I think more could have been done with them. They don't end up being very vivid personalities most of the time, and I think that's sad. More could have been done with them.

Three stars. It's not bad but not super outstanding. I think more could have been done with it to make it more outstanding.