Reading List by Sunita for May and June (Part 1)
Book ReviewsContemporary romance / Historical fiction / mystery / novella / Reading lists / Small Town Romance / Tudor-England17 Comments
I’m still reading across different genres and choosing books on a whim, so the last two months have featured romance, historical fiction, and SFF, with story lengths ranging from novella to doorstop. I wound up writing mini-reviews/reflections, so here are the first set. More to come!
Four Nights to Forever by Jennifer Lohmann
Lohmann submitted her first self-published story to DA for review a few weeks ago, and while I’m not taking ARCs as a rule, I have been wanting to read another book by her since I read her debut SuperRomance. Lohmann and I have tweeted and emailed about books in the past, but I didn’t know she was working on this until I saw the blurb.
This novella is in the style of others I’ve read, where there is a very tight focus on the romance and there isn’t much plot to speak of. Cassie Sumner is a recently divorced mother of a college-age daughter. She’s about to turn 40, and her best friend has persuaded her to celebrate it with a skiing week in Utah. Skiing is one of the many things Cassie stopped doing when she married very young. The Best Friend breaks her leg on the first day of ski lessons, so Cassie is suddenly on-on-one with the younger, hot, ski instructor, Doug Vanderholt.
Doug has sworn off flings with his students, not only because the ski lodge frowns on them, but also because a previous fling put the nail in the coffin of his already failing marriage. Now Doug is focused on his job and being a good parent to his two young children. Lohmann is very good at writing not-entirely-admirable men in the hero role, and while I didn’t think she pulled it off in the HSR I read, I liked Doug and thought he worked. The age difference thing was also well handled.
I like Lohmann’s books because they are intelligent as well as romantic. Not showoff smart, but the characters are thoughtful and reflective. And they have friends! And families! Even in the relatively short space of a novella, Cassie has meaningful interactions with her daughter and her friend, and the reader gets the sense that Doug is embedded into the life around him.
My negative is the usual one: I prefer stories that have more plot. This has a fair amount of sex (all nicely written and fitting the story), which I guess is the point, since it’s about a week-long fling that becomes something more. I believed in the possibility of the more, I just wanted more non-romance stuff. But that’s asking a lot for a novella. Grade: B.
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First Time in Forever by Sarah Morgan
This is the first installment in Morgan’s new single-title trilogy, set in Maine and involving a trio of women who have been close friends since college, and Kaetrin did a proper review for DA when it was released. Each of them comes to a cottage on Puffin Island when they need to get away or have a life crisis, and of course they find romance. I read Morgan’s HP earlier this year, which was a prequel of sorts. It involved a different heroine but introduced two of the trio who are featured in this series. I loved that book, it ranks up there with my favorite Morgan HPs (please note that Morgan is one of my favorite authors, so this is as much a within-oeuvre comparison as anything).
I liked this book a lot too. Morgan takes a couple of standard character tropes and subverts them. We have a hero, Ryan, who is allergic to commitment and children, but it’s because he was one of the primary parental figures to his siblings at a young age after his parents’ death. We have a heroine, Emily, who is allergic to commitment and children, also because of too-early responsibilities, but hers left her with more trauma. Manhattan-based management consultant Emily winds up on Puffin Island to get her niece, Lizzy, away from the paparazzi after Lizzy’s mother (Emily’s sister), a famous actor, is killed in a plane crash and Emily becomes the sole guardian. Emily is sure she will be a terrible parental figure but there’s no one else.
Of course neither Ryan nor Emily want to become serious with anyone, and of course they are hot for each other as soon as they meet. So the plot is basically Emily learning to take care of and feel confident about her new relationship with Lizzy, Emily and Ryan falling in love, and Lizzy avoiding being discovered by the paparazzi. Along the way all three of them grow to love and trust each other and Emily overcomes her various traumas (so does Ryan, but his are more manageable and Emily is the focus here). Ryan does a bit of the magical-cure-through-sex thing, but for the most part Emily navigates and overcomes her issues on her own, and in her own time.
Morgan does settings so well, and Puffin Island is a character in its own right. There are mini-crises that move the story along and develop Emily and Ryan’s relationships, but no Big Misunderstandings or Idiot Plot points. If you’ve spent any time in US east-coast ocean communities, you’ll recognize the feel of Puffin Island. By the end of the story we’ve met all the characters that will be featured in the upcoming books, but they don’t crowd the pages as much as in Morgan’s Vermont-set trilogy. This is partly because everyone’s not related and they’re not all in one place. It’s a very nice start to the series. Grade: B+
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Death Without Company by Craig Johnson
This is the second installment in the (Sheriff Walt) Longmire series; I’ve been watching the TV show based on the books since it began a few years ago, but I’m just catching up with the novels. It was good, without any big twists like the first one, and more of a straightforward mystery. We get more backstory on Lucian Connelly, Walt hires a new deputy, and we see more of Walt and Henry Standing Bear’s relationship. There’s a bit of mysticism, but not as much as in the debut installment.
The story is about a Basque woman in a nursing home whose death turns out to be homicide, and who was married very briefly to Lucian. Finding out what happened means delving into the past and finding lots of connections with people in the present. I liked the integration of Basque settlers in Wyoming (and the west more generally), and Lucian’s subplot was pretty good.
I’m developing a love-hate with Johnson’s series. Walt feels a bit too much like wish-fulfillment. All the interesting women are attracted to him (if they’re not then they’re usually not people we’d like), he gets shot, beat up, etc. and recovers at TV-show speed, and he’s just a bit too good to be true. I’m starting to appreciate TV Walt more because he (and Henry) feel more Everyman to me. Henry here is almost as superhuman as Walt. And the writing isn’t quite under control. Sometimes it’s strong, other times the lyricism veers dangerously close to overwrought.
Still, I’m sure I’ll go on to the next novels at some point. I sound unenthusiastic, don’t I? It’s more that I’m conflicted. They’re not meh books, they’re more like good/annoying/good/annoying. Grade: B-
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Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel
I’m still working my way through this one. I started it last year and put it aside, and then after watching the BBC series I had to pick it up again. I thought Mark Rylance was brilliant as Cromwell and now I hear his voice when I read Cromwell’s dialogue, but I don’t find that to be a bad thing.
Even though the novel is very immersive, I have to be in the mood to read it because Mantel’s voice is so singular and so powerful. She pulls off the rare feat of making the book feel both of its time and utterly relevant to the contemporary world; I don’t know how she does it. Jennie has a great review here at DA, so I won’t recap the very complex plot, but I’m completely enthralled by the small- and large-scale machinations of the various characters. Cromwell is neither lovable nor admirable when viewed with any objectivity, but he’s endlessly fascinating to me. Unlike a lot of historical romance readers, I’m not a big reader of Tudor history or historical fiction, so Mantel’s views of the characters aren’t warring with previous depictions in my mind.
In some ways the pace of the story is glacial, but there’s always something interesting going on. At this point Anne is still (supposedly) barring Henry from her bed, and yet I’m trying not to read too fast because I don’t want to miss anything. Grade so far: A.
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I feel the same about Craig Johnson’s books. I haven’t read another in quite sometime but I know I will. I like his voice/style of writing when it’s good. His first book is still tops with me. I’ll read Wolf Hall, eventually.
I love TV Longmire. I have not tried the books. I think sometimes that with mysteries–where plot plays such a huge role and has by necessity to be largely about people other than the detective protagonist–the story can really benefit from the translation to TV, because an actor can bring a huge amount to the character with performance.
I am just happy when reviews from you appear :-).
Try the Longmire books on audio. The narrator is fantastic. Sometimes I don’t care very much about the story itself, I just like to listen to the voice.
Re:Longmire–
Big fan of the books, not so much a fan of the TV series, as the TV show changed the mood and messed with some of the basic storylines (and not for the better, IMHO). Whether you come at the characters book-first or TV-first does make difference in your perception/enjoyment of the story when you encounter it in the ‘other’ format.
I have always been fond of the bits of mysticism; and the ‘other-worldly’ plays a part in all of the books, in one way or another. You have been warned.
Since you and Jennie both give the Mantel books good grades, I need to add them to my TBR list. I saw the Lohmann submission too and will give that a try at some point. Maybe when it’s steaming hot in August and I need to read something to make me feel cool.
I’ve been glomming the Longmire books recently (out of order, since I’m just reading them as they become available from the library in digital). I find them super compelling and enjoyable while I’m reading them, for the most part, and then I keep only giving them two or three stars when I file them away on Goodreads… I think it’s the voice and the atmosphere that really hit the spot for me, while the plot/subject matter is often kind of a miss.
Great to hear you’re loving Wolf Hall so far. I have it in the TBR pile and need to make time for it.
Glad you’re enjoying Wolf Hall. I haven’t watched the series yet, though I intend to.
I agree that Cromwell is not lovable (I admire his intellect), but I found myself liking him perversely. It’s hard for me not to like a smart, self-aware person when I’m essentially getting his POV throughout a story.
Hubs and I finished watching series 1 of Longmire the TV show recently and have series 2 waiting – we’ve been enjoying it. I’m not as big a fan of mysteries as hubs is but our Venn diagram does converge somewhat within a small subset of police procedurals and I really like Katee Sackhoff.
@Keishon: The first book both impressed me and made me outraged. It’s not one I’ll forget quickly, that’s for sure! I think I’ll keep reading them as well.
@Sirius: LOL, thanks! It’s nice to be reading and reviewing again.
@Kim W: That’s a great idea. I’ve seen them at the Audible website but I haven’t tried one yet, despite enjoying mysteries on audio.
@Donna Thorland: @Barb in Maryland: TheHusband read some of the books before he saw the TV show, and he has a slightly different take on the characters and adaptation because of that. And I know I’m mentally comparing the two when I read the books, even though I try not to.
I don’t hate the mysticism, but I think because I had TV Walt in my head, it worked less well for me because I didn’t buy the mystical aspects through his character on the TV show. The actors really do bring a lot to the part; I really like Lou Diamond Phillips’ Henry, but he’s very different from the book to me. Both good, but different.
@Jayne: The snow scenes are great. I like Lohmann’s voice and style quite a bit, and while the plots etc. are not unusual, she gives them an individual spin.
@Christine: Same for me; the voice and atmosphere are terrific, and I like the depiction of Wyoming.
@Janine: I don’t know what I was expecting from Mantel, but she more than met them. Other people talk about how engrossing and just plain readable the book is, and I agree with that.
@Jennie: I agree that being in his POV makes it hard to withstand him, and in my case I conflate the narrator Cromwell with Rylance, whom I found really effective, so I’m totally on his side. Even though I know I probably shouldn’t be. ;)
@Kaetrin: I like her too, and Branch’s character (and the actor’s portrayal) has really grown on me. I like him in spite of myself.
@Sunita: Yes. We’re only at the end of S1 of course but I feel a bit sorry for him. He really cared for Cady and I think his bid for Sheriff was borne out of Walt being AWOL for the year prior to the series beginning. Hubs and I decided we really couldn’t blame him for that. He even offered to pull out of the race for Cady! How romantic is that?? :) (And then she stomped on his heart because she was just using him for sex, the floozy! LOL /jk)
Ha! That description of the Longmire books is exactly right. I watched the show because of Katee Sackhoff, then wanted to read the books to get more in-depth characterization. The books make me like the show better, and the show makes me like the books better.
I had a huge problem with Johnson’s writing in the first one – headhopping, lack of proper punctuation, unclear dialogue attributions, other things I can’t even remember now – and yet, I loved it.
Frankly, I was baffled by that, but I’ve continued to read the series as I find them on paperbackswap or at my local library, and I continue to like them. His writing technique (or maybe the editing) does get better/cleaner.
There was one with a LOT of flashbacks to Viet Nam, and though I liked that one fine, I felt like the flashbacks took up more space than the current events did, and it took away from the story for me. I kept having to flip back and forth to remember what was happening in current time, because the flashbacks were so frakking long. I would have enjoyed the flashback part of the story by itself; it was interesting. I just felt like it overshadowed the NOW story too much.
@Lana Baker: I like Sackhoff a lot too; she’s different from the character in the books, but I like how she’s made the part her own.
Your description of Book 1 is pretty much my experience too.