Keira Soleore: Cogitations and Meditations

Happy New Year 2024

noreply@blogger.com (Keira Soleore) — Tue, 02 Jan 2024 02:13:00 +0000

Rang out the old year and rang in the new year in Japanese Buddist style. So grateful I had the opportunity to participate in this tradition and hope to do so every year. I reached there around 11pm New Year's Eve to line up in front of this bronze friendship bell gifted to our city from a sister Japanese city. A Buddhist priestess was in attendance who sang an invocation, before allowing us to step up to the bell one-by-one. She anointed our hands with incense to inhale it deep into our bodies and wash our whole bodies in it. Essentially, we acknowledge that we, as humans, are flawed and need to symbolically eliminate all the possible (up to 108) imperfections that we may have. Then we ring the bell to start the new year afresh.

Wishing you, dear readers of my much-neglected blog, a very HAPPY NEW YEAR! May 2024 bring you joy, silliness, fun, and lots of laughter. My wish for you is Health and Happiness, in that order. Everything else is unimportant. Thank you for sticking with me month after month. There is a Japanese saying that I love: "Which is more important, the journey or the destination? The company." You. You, dear readers, are the company I am grateful for.

*This copyrighted image is from the immensely talented British illustrator: Yuval Zommer. (Used with permission.)

As my last update indicated, 2023 was an EXECRABLE year for me and my family. Ill health has dogged every single one of us. But it didn't leave me defeated. I coped with the bad and appreciated the good. Despite everything, I was a happier person in 2023. I focused inside myself and indentified just three things that would improve my life and put them into action. And made progress. I am immensely grateful.

The New Me Project

(I am the one in red.)
This is the energy of The New Me Project that sustained me in 2023 and that I will carry into 2024.

Words That Really Speak To Me

"It is never too late to make new choices, to change your perspective, to take risks." Helen Garner: "I'm not going to spend what's left of my life hanging around waiting for happiness. I am going to settle for small, random stabs of extreme interestingness—moments of intense awareness of things and of gladness that they exist."

Things from 2023 I will carry forward: Deepen Friendships; Go on Adventures, no matter how small; Focus on Health Plan; Walking...oceans & forests

My Word for the Year: "Beginning"

Goal for the Year: "Health"

Reading Goals: Read Everyday; Read One Book a Week

Writing Goals: Write Everyday...notebook & letters; Write Letters for Charity. What I will not be doing, alas!, is reguarly writing this blog. (For now.)

Favorite Books of 2023:

First Pile of Books of the New Year

An Update...

noreply@blogger.com (Keira Soleore) — Tue, 20 Jun 2023 04:39:00 +0000

It has been nearly four months since my last post. I kept on hoping that my fibromyalgia brain fog would evaporate SOON and I would be able to start reading more and be able to muster up the energy to write my usual short review roundups. However, the reading is hardly happening and the inclination and attention span to do the short reviews is non-existent. So I have finally decided to let myself formally announce that I am taking a blogging break this year. I have taken a break from my journaling and my Morning Pages this year as well. And I have taken a break from almost all professional book reviewing work.

All my days are spent at the doctors or on the couch, when I am not running errands, doing household chores, or chivving and cajoling the family. Pain is my constant companion. It never forsakes me, even in the night. However, every few days, I do make myself go out and do fun things either by myself, with my family, or with friends. I draw so much energy from being around other people. As a result, social media remains as strong a force in my life as ever. And I continue to be so grateful to Zoom, Eventbrite, and other online video events that many organizations here in the US and abroad offer. I may never ever be able to go see these events or travel to these places in person, but at least I can see photos, videos, and live walks of places and people.

On another positive note, I have acquired a new hobby, or rather, I have expanded on an existing hobby: handwritten letters and postcards. I now send at least a handful of letters and/or postcards every week to people all over the world. I have always loved sending and receiving letters, ever since I started writing to my grandparents and my first penpal from at ten. I moved cities and countries, got jobs and got married, had children and had severe health issues, but through it all, I never stopped writing. Right now, my correspondence is at its highest, and through this hobby, I have made new local friends and new friends across the globe.

Sept, Oct, Nov, Dec, Jan, Feb Reading Notes

noreply@blogger.com (Keira Soleore) — Sun, 26 Feb 2023 20:40:00 +0000

AHEM! So I've FINALLY gotten around to writing my reading roundup post for the months of September, October, November, December, January, and February. At the end of every month since September, I planned to write up my usual mini reviews, but things kept sliding away in a brain fog of pain, lassitude, and inability to focus. I have not written Morning Pages or in my Live Journal, both things I truly enjoy, or rather, enjoyed in the past. Neither have I kept up with my handwritten letter correspondence with dear friends, which I am really sad about. I'm sure they've been really worried. All I have been capable of is casual comments on social media every once in a while and endless scrolling of who-knows-what. I have barely been able to focus on reading.

Since October, chronic pain has had me whipped. Physical Therapy including massage three times a week is holding me together, body and soul. No answers from the doctors yet. I have further scans and tests and appointments scheduled as everyone hunts for an answer. In the meantime, I am spending quality time in bed, or on the couch on a better day, when I absolutely cannot force myself to be out and about and cheerful. Health is my only focus for this new year.

Now, it is the end of the second month of the new year, and I am finally mustering up the energy to get this post out. As a result, the post is rather on the longer side with reviews of fiction and romance.

The Shadow of a Queen by Heather B. Moore
Category: Historical Fiction
Comments: Moore truly knows how to set the stage on which her tale of historical fiction, based on true people and events, unfolds. Her deep research and skillful storytelling immerse you into the Victorian era and life in Queen Victoria's household. The story is mainly about Princess Louise, the sixth of Victoria's nine children, and it is as much about Louise as it is about Victoria and their private family life. [My Review]

Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan
Category: Literary Fiction
Comments: This small book was shortlisted for the 2022 Booker Prize and won the Orwell Prize for Political Fiction. I was pleased that the Booker Committee recognized the value of small books with modest stories among the doorstoppers and grand epics as worthy of the Prize. I was awed by Keegan's writing chops, and how smoothly and almost unknowably, she constructs a complex story, moving seamlessly from observant details to deep ideas. Set in Ireland in the 1980s, this is a story of a town controlled completely by the Catholic Church, and how the village folks are determined to walk on the right side of religion, despite horrific things happening under their noses. Amongst these, lives a man who was born to an unwed teenage mother who was taken in by one of the town's wealthiest of people and given a good education and start to life. The protagonist never forgot how lucky he and his mother had been, and chooses to do the right thing in spite of his wife's and townspeople's disapproval. Such emotional writing even though the protagonist is outwardly quite stoic.

Foster by Claire Keegan
Category: Literary Fiction
Comments: My fascination with the above book led me to immediately buy this Ireland-set book from Book Depository, since the US version was going to be released later on. And I was amply rewarded for my impatience. It is likewise a small, initimate book, in which a monumental change happens in the life of a child, while on the surface, the child moves through each day filled with seemingly banal things. The inciting incidence is that an unwanted girl in a poor family with many children, a pregnant mother, and a wasteral of a father, is shunted off to the mother's sister's house for a few months. That is when she realized what it means to be brought up by a caring family. Beautiful writing!

A Dream Life by Claire Messud
Category: Literary Fiction
Comments: Another small book of towering reputation from a fabulous writer, who the New Yorker calls one of our "greatest contemporary writers." In the 1970s, a middle class NYC family of modest means moves to Sydney because the man is ostensibly given a promotion, but in reality, is being sidelined by his company. His wife was vehemently opposed to the move, but their family of four has no choice. The story of their glittering socialite life then unfolds to the woman's utter disbelievement. She tries hard to fit in, to be one of them, but knows that the high class society only tolerates her. This gem of a book is her story and her choices in her new life in Sydney.

Roses, in the Mouth of a Lion by Bushra Rehman
Category: Literary Fiction
Comments: Razia Mirza is a Pakistani American growing up in 1980s Corona, a conservative, immigrant Muslim community in Queens surrounding the first Sunni mosque built in New York. Rehman’s masterful prose, peppered with Urdu phrases, evokes rich emotional and social nuances regarding a particularly sensitive divide between generations in a community of immigrants trying to hold on to their culture even as they make new lives for themselves in a new country. This was a brilliant book in how she constructed the story, the twist to Razia's story in the end, and above all, in what minute detail she brought twi. This is a YA story, but Rehman has written Razia's adult story in the book, titled Corona. [My Review]

Independence by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
Category: Literary Fiction
Comments: Divakaruni’s latest brilliant novel coincides with the seventy-fifth anniversary of the independence of India from British rule and its partition into India, Pakistan, and East Pakistan (now Bangladesh). With great attention to detail regarding the political and religious upheaval this caused and its impact on ordinary citizens, Divakaruni tells a highly nuanced tale of a Hindu Bengali family living in the village of Ranipur near Calcutta (Kolkata). Divakaruni is superb in this book. She had always been a great storyteller, but in this highly emotional tale about a cause that is so dear to her, her writing really shines. [My Review]

Do You Take This Man by Denise Williams
Category: Contemporary Romance
Comments: In this book, Williams has crafted a fun enemies-to-lovers tale set in Asheville, North Carolina, featuring a no-nonsense divorce attorney who moonlights as a wedding officiant and a wedding planner who used to be a pro-football events manager. I really enjoy Williams' writing, especially, her characterization. This one quite up to the high benchmark she set in her earlier book.

Never Rescue a Rogue by Virginia Heath
Category: Historical Romance
Comments: Heath is carving a name for herself in historical rom-coms. I enjoyed her first book. This one is a frenemies-to-lovers story of an illegitimate duke and a clandestine journalist. Claiming to be a copyeditor at a newspaper, she is actually the anonymous Sentinel who sniffs out the illegal shenanigans of powerful people and brings them to justice through the power of her words. Gentle and kind, Giles Sinclair is the new duke of Harpenden, a hated title he associates with his late father, who always hated him. [My Review]

A Cosmic Kind of Love by Samantha Young
Category: Contemporary Romance
Comments: In Young’s (Fight or Flight, 2018) sweep-you-off-your-feet, tender-hearted romance, pink-haired Hallie Goodman loves her job organizing high-profile events all over New York. Her people-pleasing, conflict-avoiding ways have her constantly appeasing her selfish parents during their acrimonious divorce, while her ex’s scathing words still rankle. After a stint on the International Space Station, astronaut Captain Christopher Ortiz is back in New York. ince birth, his estranged, domineering father has kept him from his Mexican heritage, which he now wants to explore. This was an unusual story with characterization and plot. I recommend it.

The Rewind by Allison Winn Scotch
Category: Contemporary Romance
Comments: This was such an unusual book. I had never read anything like it before. It is a second-chance rom-com set on a snowbound New England college campus at the turn of the millennium and told mainly through the internal monologues of the protagonists; actual dialogue is sparse. College sweethearts Frankie Harriman and Ezra Jones broke up before graduation and put the breadth of the country between them. Ten years later, they’re back on campus to celebrate the wedding of mutual friends. On the surface it is straightforward story, but it is the two protagonists' backstories and vulnerabilities where this book shines. [My Review]

Georgie, All Along by Kate Clayborn
Category: Contemporary Romance
Comments: I could wax lyrical for eons about Clayborn's Love Lettering. I found her next, Love At Sight, quite interesting, and this third one as well. Clayborn is a very good writer with great character work, but I kept feeling like her latter two books were crowdsourced or she was consulting people she had not consulted in her first book. I know most people loved all three of these books, but for me, the first one was so good, that my expectations were set high, and the other two didn't quite match that level of excellence. This is a story where two misfit protagonists grow up in a small town. She leaves for the glamor of Hollywood for work, and he scrapes together a successful business through the kindness and care of a benefactor. Now, she is back, and these two completely opposite strangers work on their past difficulties to forge a strong future together.

So This Is Christmas by Jenny Holiday
Category: Contemporary Romance
Comments: Holiday follows her popular Christmas books—A Princess for Christmas and Duke, Actually—set in the tiny, fictitious German-speaking alpine country of Eldovia with this story of the cupid behind those tales. This is a gentle romance between a strait-laced, traditional European man and a gregarious, ever-changing New Yorker. He is the royal equerry whereas she has been brought in to fix the problem of the main export company of Eldovia bleeding money. Clash? Of course, they do.

Where We End & Begin by Jane Igharo
Category: Contemporary Romance
Comments: I have loved all of Igharo's books. She is a talented writer and incorporates her Nigerian culture to go effect in setting stories in North America and Nigeria. Her stories are always complex and involve intricate emotional pitfalls for her two protagonists. They can, at times, flirt with the line between romance and women's fiction. This is romance and is a second-chance story between a Yoruba Nigerian boy/man and an Igbo girl/woman. They were sure they were destined to be together. And yet, when the girl goes off to America for college, he breaks off the relationship, staying back in Nigeria. Twelve years later, when she returns, life has completely changed for both of them, and yet, that old magical pull is still there. A memorable book. [My Review]

Lady Ludmilla's Accidental Letter by Sofi Laporte
Category: Historical Romance
Comments: This self-published author was one of my surprise finds in 2022. These days, I rarely take a chance on unknown self-pubbed authors, but the premise seemed too irresistible, and I am so glad I went with my gut feeling. Written in a trad Regency style with farcical and serious elements intermingled with laugh-out-loud moments, this was a wonderful book, and I shall be reading more of this author's work, in particular, Lucy and the Duke of Secrets. A lonely spinster deals with the circumestances of her dreary existence by a letter correspondence with someone who has become a dear friend with whom she has fallen in love, sight unseen. (Here is a fabulous case made for handwritten letters.) She decides to meet him and goes to London. And to her horror, she discovers that he is an inverterate rake.

The Candid Life of Meena Dave by Namrata Patel
Category: Fiction
Comments: This author was a surprise find of 2022 as well, thanks to a discussion about South Asian writers that I was following on Twitter. I am looking forward to her next book Scent of a Garden coming out in June. I'm not fond of the term "women's fiction," but this is about the heroine self-discovery and features some romantic elements towards the end. I would label this simply as "mainstream fiction." This was a debut book, but reads like a novel by an assured writer. She is a photo-journalist of repute, leading a roving, rootless life around the world. But her life is turned upside down when she inherits an apartment in Boston. And there begins her interactions with the quirky (to the nth degree) residents of the large Victorian house split into ownership apartments. They surround her with affection and are up in her business 24x7. At first, she balks at this encroachment into her privacy and is anxious about this house anchoring her down. But gradually, she changes and starts to build tentative roots.

Part of Your World by Abby Jimenez
Category: Contemporary Romance
Comments: This is one of the best books I read in 2022. I have enjoyed every single one of Jimenez' books. Her characters are so emotionally mature that they are able to calibrate themselves and empathize with others with a great degree of nuance. I can hardly wait to read her next April book. In this book, Jimenez has her characters truly grapple with small town versus big city living. Most of such type of books, gloss over the difficulties and has the city person move happily into the small town. But this book has them both contemplating life in the other person's milieu. She is an ER doctor in a big city, belonging to a wealthy family of high profile surgeons who have been involved in the same hospital for generations. Her father is disappointed that she only wants to be an ER doctor and not a surgeon and/or the board chairman. He is a talented carpenter and artist in wood who lives in a modest life in a small town, not far away from the big city. He is also ten years younger, which he is fine with but she isn't. Can she bring him into her world? Can she move into his world? Such a fabulous story. Highly recommended!

Love, Theoretically by Ali Hazelwood
Category: Contemporary Romance
Comments: I started the year off with a bang with a book that is going to be one of the best of 2023 for me. Hazelwood's writing just clicks with me with her alternately quirky and serious characters, the tenderness and trust and understanding between them, and their unfailing support for each other. I know, last summer, when I read her entire backlist back-to-back, while I loved each book individually, I felt that the characterization was a bit repetitive, but I had also suspected that time and distance would make the next book exciting to read. And it turned out to be true. I enjoyed this book thoroughly. This book is a clash between a theoretical physicist adjunct professor and an experimental physicist tenured professor, set in Cambridge (Boston). He disapproves of theoretical physicists and has recommended another experimentalist for the dream job she is gunning for at MIT. Since her paycheck as an adjunct in non-existent, she supplements her income by offering her services as a fake girlfriend. This book contains more science than her previous books; that actually was a draw for me. Untangling their vulnerabilities and deep-seated views of self is where Hazelwood shines. Highly recommended!

Attribution by Lisa Moore
Category: Mystery
Comments: This is a very interesting art history-mystery novel. The author is an expert art collector and former fine art gallery owner. The art history discussion and how the provenance (or attribution) of a piece of art is established is fascinating. The book cover art is by Spanish Baroque artist Diego Rodríguez de Silva y Velázquez of the early 17th century. This is a contemporary book with an art history mystery at its base, which is fascinating. Overall, I wished the writing could've been better—debut book published by a vanity press that needed substantive editing—but it had good bones. I look forward to reading her next book.

Speechless by Lindsey Lanza
Category: Contemporary Romance
Comments: Selfishness sounds the death knell for a character because they are in it for themselves. When it is the heroine, the reader is expected to empathize with her despite her selfishness, and I cannot. This book started off brilliantly enough. She is a writer who found herself suddenly divorced. She has always felt left behind by the people in her life, and the resulting insecurity and low self-esteem coupled with crippling endometriosis, is sucking the joy out of her life. She survives her chronic illness through the love of her service dog and the glorious music of one composer. When her best friend from college asks her to move to LA to live with her, she jumps at the chance. And guess who is her seatmate? None other than the composer, who is extremely gorgeous and is afflicted with crippling social anxiety. They are so wonderful to and for each other in the first sections of the book. It all sounds good so far, but then it goes pear shaped. He pours all his love into her and gives her anything that she might possibly need, materially and emotionally. And she blows hot and cold constantly and takes and takes. The worst is after they make love, and it is amazing, she simply runs out of his house and disappears for two days. Yes, she has some emotional stuff to work on, but why doesn't she talk to him?? Instead, she goes to her friend's house and drowns her sorrows in drink and binge-watching for two days without a thought for him even though she knows his feelings are very much engaged. In the meantime, he has been frantic with worry wondering if she had an accident, where she was, etc. When she swans back, she is nowhere near as contrite as she should've been. This is unforgivable.

Rich in Your Love by Pippa Grant
Category: Contemporary Romance
Comments: The premise of this story is a common one in contemporary romance. To wit: Highly accomplished big city girl comes to small town and meets local man doing small town things and decides to throw in her lot with his. How that comes about is where the story is. This plot has been done remarkably well this year by a few authors already—that is why this book had to stand out, but, in fact, it stays mired in its trappings. It is trying to be chick-lot/rom-com, but the levity required for that (with its matching gravitas) is entirely missing. What comes across instead are ill-thought-out plot details that are summarily put down by the author and don’t make logical sense. Of course, romance is chockful of bonkers plots but those plots are coherent within the context of their stories. They make sense. This one doesn’t because the pieces don’t cohere into a whole. The biggest example of this is the heroine, who is the main POV character. The author tells you again and again how amazing she is, but the person on the page is an immature person whose left hand doesn’t quite know what her right hand is doing.

Courtiers: The Hidden Power Behind the Crown by Valentine Low
Category: Nonfiction
Comments: I was intrigued by the title and curious about the behind-the-scenes tea. There was that, of course, and detailed explanations of how things work. It was interesting, but it was also boring and repetitive. I also felt manipulated at times, like I was supposed to buy in to his agenda that I found more about out when I read about him the web. However, it is a book royalists will enjoy—in small doses.

[Some of these books are eARCs from NetGalley and the others are either borrowed from the public library or I've bought them.]

Happy New Year 2023

noreply@blogger.com (Keira Soleore) — Sun, 01 Jan 2023 14:00:00 +0000

Wishing everyone a joyous, peaceful, and healthy new year. May it bring you what you most wish for and may you be happy through it all.

Review: In the Shadow of a Queen by Heather B. Moore

noreply@blogger.com (Keira Soleore) — Mon, 10 Oct 2022 04:00:00 +0000

Moore truly knows how to set the stage on which her tale of historical fiction, based on true people and events, unfolds. Her deep research and skillful storytelling immerse you into the Victorian era and life in Queen Victoria's household.

The story is about Princess Louise, the sixth of Victoria's nine children. The story starts out when she is a shy twelve-year-old understood only by her eldest brother, Bertie, the Prince of Wales. She is the typical middle child, oft forgotten and expected to be uncomplainingly dutiful. She is a creative who enjoys sketching and painting, but her true passion is sculpture. She longs to express herself in art and in politics, but she is perpetually cowed by her domineering, strong-willed mother.

This story is as much about Louise as it is about Victoria and their private family life before and especially in the aftermath of Victoria’s beloved husband, Prince Albert's untimely death. Recounted in a sequential fashion from when Louise was twelve to twenty-three, much of the story involves the severe restrictions placed on her and her siblings' lives by Victoria’s overwhelmingly exacting mourning. She is such a feared tyrant that marriage is the only way for her daughters to escape her oppressive presence.

When she marries, Louise is very lucky to have a loving husband who gives her all the freedom to be who she wants to be. Her flourishing in her marriage after all the repressions of her austere childhood is superbly shown by Moore.

Through the story and the extensive front and back matter of a family tree, detailed chapter notes, foreword and afterword, and so on, you truly get an in-depth look at Victoria and Louise's personalities, court life, British and European politics, and how the Victorian society was crafted.

[Note: Louise's art is on display in the UK even now and her notable contributions to society are a matter of public record.]

[Also Note: I received a print ARC from the publisher.]

Summer Reading Notes

noreply@blogger.com (Keira Soleore) — Thu, 15 Sep 2022 03:44:00 +0000

I have sorely neglected this blog, so instead of getting a post every two months, you're getting a giant four-month one. Lots of romance. Lots. As many of you know, I suffer from chronic pain, and the pain is getting worse. So lots of romance reading in an effort to soothe and sweep me away.

Bloomsbury Girls by Natalie Jenner
Category: Historical Fiction
Comments: Jenner follows upon the success of her hugely popular Jane Austen Society with the 1950s London-based story, Bloomsbury Girls, about three shopgirls, a century-old bookshop, and much feuding between the male staff and the female staff to take ownership of the shop. The servant girl, Evie Stone, from Jane Austen Society is now all grown up with a degree from Cambridge and a fondness for giving visibility to forgotten women writers. She has found her home among the rare books of Bloomsbury Books & Maps. The story is about the lives of the three shop girls and the men they love. Jenner is a superb writer—keenly observant and alive to emotional nuance. [My Review]

News To Me: Adventures of an Accidental Journalist by Laurie Hertzel
Category: Nonfiction Memoir
Comments: This was my second read of this book, and it was just as fascinating as the first time around. Hertzel writes with an earnestness and deprecation, which makes her spare prose and great sense of storytelling so compelling to read. It is the story of her first job, which was at the main newspaper in Duluth, MN. I was fascinated by all the details of the goings-on in a big, busy newsroom. I enjoy memoirs where people talk in detail about their jobs. This book is a treasure.

Ewaso Village: Poems and Stories from Laikipia County, Kenya by Chip Duncan
Category: Nonfiction, Fiction, Poetry
Comments: One of the best books of the summer for me. Something very different from what I usually review. Photojournalist and documentary filmmaker Chip Duncan’s sensitive book focuses on the Kenyan Maasai community of Ewaso village, capturing them through photographs, history, stories, and poems. Duncan first visited Ewaso village in 2012 and was welcomed into its society. Since then, he has returned annually, drawn by the community’s kindness, generosity of spirit, and easy acceptance of him. This book conveys his deep care and respect for the community and their culture. Recording both events and conversations, the book captures moments in the lives, families, traditions, and rituals of the Maasai people. [My Review]

Every Leaf a Hallelujah by Ben Okri, illustrated by Diana Ejaita
Category: Children's Fiction
Comments: This is a fantastic book by Booker Prize-winning and hugely influential Nigerian-British author, Ben Okri. This is his first book for children, and the talented artist's illustrations greatly enhance the reading experience. This book is meant for children who will inherit the climate crisis and for those of us who care about the environment. If you are a tree hugger, this book is for you. The story features an array of extraordinary Nigerian trees, each with its own personality and voice. The great baobab is the chief tree, and he takes us on a journey around the world to see what happens when we don't listen to nature. Forests are vanishing, climate is changing, and yet, no one is listening. Gorgeous book.

I Am Able to Shine by Korey Watari, illustrated by Mike Wu
Category: Children's Picture Book
Comments: Inspired by her experience growing up Japanese American, debut picture book author Korey Watari has teamed up with her husband, Pixar artist and creator of the Ellie series, Mike Wu, to create I Am Able to Shine, the joyful story of Keiko, a young Japanese American girl with a big heart and big dreams. Every night, young Keiko wishes to her paper crane, “I wish to change the world and shine.” And yet, everywhere she goes she feels invisible. The book is about how Keiko overcomes adversity to seize the future she wants. She does this by being true to herself and in so doing achieves her dreams. [My Review]

Goodnight Ganesha by Nadia Salomon, illustrated by Poonam Mistry
Category: Children's Picture Book
Comments: With rhymes patterned on Margaret Wise Brown’s Goodnight Moon, this is a picture book that celebrates the beloved nightly rituals of two children visiting their grandparents’ home in India. The artwork in this book is outstanding. Delicate filigree work reminiscent of the art and architecture of ancient India fills every page with color. Despite the pieces being predominantly hand-drawn, you would need to take a magnifying glass to see all the minute details. A book worth savoring. [My Review]

Revenge: Meghan, Harry, and the War Between the Windsors by Tom Bower
Category: Nonfiction
Comments: Gossipy book. I was so curious what it was all about and why it made such a huge splash in the UK. And I don't know what to believe anymore. It is very detailed, and he has clearly done a ton of research and talked to a ton of people. But it is also very biased and one-sided.

Honey & Spice by Bolu Babalola
Category: Contemporary Romance
Comments: This is one of my best romances of the year. A brilliant and wildly creative young woman with sharp corners and sharper tongue discovers the softer side of life through the love of a kind young man in this dazzling debut romance. It is set at a small university in England and features two Nigerian-British protagonists. On the surface, it is a typical enemies-to-lovers college romance, but it is Babalola's distincctive voice and writing style that elevates it to memorable. [My Review]

Thank You For Listening by Julia Whelan
Category: Contemporary Romance
Comments: The author draws on her experience narrating audiobooks in this poignant and charming novel about two famous audiobook performers who fall in love during their dual narration of a romance novel. Much of the novel is epistolary, through anonymous emails and text messages. I love such books where protagonists fall in love with each other's personality even before they set eyes on each other. [My Review]

To Catch a Raven by Beverly Jenkins
Category: Historical Romance
Comments: In the last book of her highly popular Women Who Dare series, Jenkins tells a complex, nuanced story of a courageous, enterprising woman from New Orleans who lives by her wits and a wealthy, philanthropic tailor from Boston. I have really liked all the books in this series. [My Review]

Wedding Bells at Villa Limoncello by Daisy James
Category: Contemporary Romance
Comments: This is a warmhearted, small-town, slow burn story, which is a love letter to Italy that starts off the U.S. debut of Daisy James’ Tuscan Dreams series. This is a continuity series, where the protagnoists' happy-for-now story continues in the next two books. They meet when he runs her Vespa off the road with his Spider.

Rules of Engagement by Stacey Abrams writing as Selena Montgomery
Category: Contemporary Romantic Suspense
Comments: This is a reissue of the second-chance romantic suspense novel about two brilliant minds recruited from graduate school by a shadowy extragovernmental intelligence agency to lead a peripatetic lifestyle around the globe. It is a tightly-paced thriller with a tender romance set in the fictitious Mediterranean island of Jafir, whose culture is the confluence of the Middle East and Africa. Abrams a fabulous writer and really knows how to write romantic suspense. Definitely worth a look.

Drunk on Love by Jasmine Guillory
Category: Contemporary Romance
Comments: This is Guillory's best book so far. The story is set among the verdant vineyards of Napa Valley, where she immerses you in the nitty-gritty of the wine business. The heroine is the rare black co-owner of a vineyard, and the hero is a tech whiz whose burned out on the intense pressure and racism of Silicon Valley. They meet over a one-night-stand, and lo and behold, the next day, he walks in as her new employee. Eek! [My Review]

On Rotation by Shirlene Obuobi
Category: Contemporary Romance
Comments: I totally geeked out over all the medical school details in this story by a Ghanaian-American cardiologist. The heroine is Ghanaian-American and the hero is Caucasian. In addition, he is not a lawyer, doctor, or engineer, but gasp! an artist. He’s also got “wasteman” practically tattooed across his forehead. A no-no to the heroine's family. But in reality, he is really a sweetheart. Excellent characterization of two dissimilar people who grow and learn to appreciate how the other one clicks. Obuobi is a writer to watch. This was her debut book.

In a New York Minute by Kate Spencer
Category: Contemporary Romance
Comments: What a fun paean to New York City! Spencer loves the city, and it shows. The story opens with the heroine getting fired from her interior design startup and worried about how she was now going to subsist in the hideously expensive city. The hero is this uptight wealthy heir to a business with his bespoke suits. The hero is kind and wonderful. She is sassy and artsy. Chalk and cheese. They meet on the subway, when the back of her dress gets caught in the doors and rips straight down her back. He jumps in to the rescue with his suit jacket. Their whole interaction is caught on a stealth video that becomes a hashtag viral sensation. Someone finds their identity, and they are thrown together again and again. A quick, light read.

The Lost Letter by Mimi Matthews
Category: Historical Romance
Comments: Having greatly enjoyed Matthews' recent books, I decided to check out her earliest romance, and it is a delightful Victorian in the traditional style. It's a second-chance, Beauty & the Beast, governess & peer of the realm romance elevated by Matthews wonderful prose, superb research, and immersive period feel. In their youth, they met in London's ballrooms, he, an officer in the army and she, a young miss. They were in love but hadn't quite acknowledged it to the other. Suddenly, he is called away to India. While they both write to each other, neither gets the other's letters, and they feel that they have been betrayed and abandoned by the other. In the meantime, her worthless gamester father dies, leaving her in penury, so she has to make a living as a governess in a merchant's home in London's insalubrious environs. He returns badly injured and is hiberating on his estate, when his desperate sister finds her and blackmails and cajoles her into paying a visit. Like I said, not an unusual story, but Matthews really knows how to map the emotional terrain of her characters. Definitely worth a read.

Field Rules by Carla Luna
Category: Contemporary Romance
Comments: I totally took a chance on this author, never having read her or heard about her and despite seeing the low ratings on her other three books. But she's an archeologist and this story is set on a dig in Cyprus, so I thought at least there would be much geekery to be had. And it sure does. I thoroughly enjoyed the story and the characters. It deserves a much higher rating than only 20 five stars on AMZ. She's an archelogy PhD student who buries her head in academia after one disastrous dig in her undergrad with her fellow student, who was her lover and whom she promptly ghosts. However, now at this stage in her academic career, she needs to earn some street creds, so she decides to take a chance on a dig, only to discover that her ex is the expert on the dig. He abandoned grad school and became a "shovel bum," someone who lives a roving life traveling from dig to dig bringing in his field experience in exchange for money. Great backstory for him and great characterization for him. She needed a little bit more. Good overall story.

Her Fake Date Until Midnight by Eve Pendle
Category: Contemporary Romance
Comments: [I received an eARC from the author.] I have read and enjoyed a couple of Pendle's historical romances, so took a chance on this contemporary, and it was lots of fun. She has an entertaining British contemporary voice. He is a citified billionaire. She's a small town, almost broke veteranian working in her ex's father's clinic. Her ex is getting married, and her boss wants her to go. How can she without a plus one? The hero is a harried workaholic billionaire who has been charged by his sister to take a mental health break by rusticating at a manor house in the country. Lo and behold, a pregnant dog ends up unconscious on his doorstep, and he has no clue what to do. First things first, he takes the dog to the local vet, and asks (demands) that she take charge of the dog. They make a trade: he attends the wedding as her plus one and she will help him find the owner. Many hijinks ensue. Pendle keeps a light hand on the emotions and a tight rein on the plot, allowing the characters to shine without getting bogged down by over-the-top emotional excess that plague many billionaire romances. Definitely an author to check out.

Once Upon a Bride by Jenny Holiday
Category: Contemporary Romance Novella
Comments: Having enjoyed other of Holidays books, I chose this one. But it was less successful than some others of this type: he's the successful, wealthy, repressed, man of the world; she's the down-on-her-luck, creative, free spirit. Beneath that stern exterior, he's a sweetheart. Beneath her bubbly exterior, she is hiding childhood emotional scars. He is her employer because he hired her to do the interior decoration at his firm. They do everything but avoid any intimacy till the very hour the job is done. Holiday has a light, banter-filled hand, but somehow, neither the characterization nor the plot really take off. It is a competent story from a good writer, but that's it.

Below Zero by Ali Hazelwood
Category: Contemporary Romance Novella
Comments: My first Ali Hazelwood story, and I totally get why her debut book Love Hypothesis has 4.6 stars from 45k+ readers on Amazon. She is a superb writer and tells an entertaining, fast-paced story of nerdy NASA engineers and scientists geeking out over code and Mars rovers and engaging in great derring-do in the brutal wilds of Svalbard, Norway. The heroine is prickly and thinks very poorly of herself. She believes men are only interested in hookups with her and would be turned off if they got to know her. He thinks she is fabulous and falls in love with her at their first meeting. He is a total cinnamon roll, kind and sweet and earnest. I loved all the tech in the book—you get the feeling that Hazelwood has really researched it all in great, authentic detail. And who does not have stars (ha!) in their eyes over NASA?

Love on the Brain by Ali Hazelwood
Category: Contemporary Romance
Comments: Another story set in the rarefied atmosphere of NIH and NASA. I totally geeked out about all the details of a neuroengineering research project that adds performance enhancement technology through neurostimulation to astronauts’ helmets. Light espionage, some derring-do, and an unexpected villain are just some of the delights. [My Review]

The Love Hypothesis by Ali Hazelwood
Category: Contemporary Romance
Comments: Hazelwood's books are about people in STEM, academia, and research, which I absolutely love, and she has the chops to pull it off. In addition to romance, she is the writer of peer-reviewed articles about brain science. Pulling off a strong power imbalance relationship between her protagonists as a debut book takes courage, and Hazelwood has it in spades. The heroine is a graduate student in the same department as the hero who is a professor. He is not her advisor nor is he on her PhD thesis committee, but it is still a power imbalance situation. With clever and yet seamless plot and character maneuvering, Hazelwood employs a cracking pace, witty banter, and fully accessible complex people to make it easy for the reader to take the leap and believe that this is a healthy, solid relationship. Highly recommended.

Under One Roof by Ali Hazelwood
Category: Contemporary Romance Novella
Comments: When I first read the premise, I rolled my eyes. Such a trite contemporary romance plot, but I decided to give it a try, because it's a Hazelwood. And I'm glad I did. This is a tender STEMinist novella. They've both been left a house in DC by someone they both love: her mentor and his aunt. But she didn't warn them about it beforehand. So now they are yoked together and are as different as can be in temperament and job. She's an environmental engineer at the EPA and he is a big oil lawyer. And...boy, do the sparks fly. Lovely character work as before, and despite it having to move along quickly since it is a novella, the relationship story does not feel shortchanged.

Stuck with You by Ali Hazelwood
Category: Contemporary Romance Novella
Comments: This is the weakest of all of Hazelwood's books. Because I read them all in one go, I started noticing author "tells," and how this story rehashes much of the characterization of her other books even down to how the hero and heroine look and behave and speak. If you space her books out, one a year, you may very likely not notice this. Which is to say that in a year or two, I'll be drawn to her new book once again.

The Make-Up Test by Jenny L. Howe
Category: Contemporary Romance Novella
Comments: Competence porn is real! Both the characters are great students, and the academic discussion scenes are wonderful. The hero and heroine meet at Brown, where she's a sophomore and he's a senior. The fat rep for her is superb as is the characterization of the hero who is far from the romance novel hero norm. What Howe brings to the table is that the only thing that matters is that they each find the other very attractive. They spend a good few months together, but then he betrays her and dumps her. Surpise, surpise! When she lands in graduate school, guess who is also a first year in the same department and vying to be the advisee of the same famed professor? He ruined her life in undergrad; is he now going to do the same to her grad school and future academic aspirations? Good examination of the people they were in undergrad versus the people they have grown up to be now. Good growth opportunity for both people, which is what I look for, but as is more and more en vogue in contemporary roms these days, the hero has more work to do.

Before I Do by Sophie Cousens
Category: Contemporary Romance Novella
Comments: This book is quite unusual in that every chapter is in a different time, before and after, the main event, which is the disastrous wedding of the hero and the heroine. I loved the way Cousens executes this multi-timeline approach. The story is mainly from the heroine's POV and is set in England. She is someone who flitted about different majors (courses) at university and finally dropped out. She does odd jobs here and there to scrape together a living. While she feels stuck several years behind her friends who have steady jobs, house mortgages, marriages, etc.—;i.e., the usual trappings of life of people in their twenties and thirties—;she is not very motivated to try to change her life. She is suffering from trauma and that leads her to live a risky, careless life. The hero is sweet, kind, responsible, loving, and upstanding. Just the best, and he loves her unconditionally. I did not like the heroine's attitude to life and how she simply takes from everyone around her, including her fiancé. He does all the work, and yet he is shown to be grateful to her just for her presence in his life. The author tries to give the heroine a character update towards the end of the book, but it was too little, too late for me.

The One That Got Away by Zee Monodee
Category: Contemporary Romance
Comments: This was a DNF, which was a huge pity. It's by Love Africa Press, and I try to read their books as and when I can. I was so excited by the premise: A second-chance multicultural romance set in Mauritius and based on Mauritius cultural and societal norms. It started out very promising but quickly went awry because of the poor writing. While it is in dual POVs, the heroine's is primary, and I found her very inconsistent. The author tells us over and over again how talented she is and what an important job she has, but instead of a successful, mature woman in her thirties, we get a thirty-plus-going-on-twenty with all the immature reactions and actions inherent therein. I persisted for a while because I still retained hopes of the story coming together after a rough start, but had to eventually nope out.

The Decoy Girlfriend by Lillie Vale
Category: Contemporary Romance Novella
Comments: This was a DNF as well. I had heard the buzz about Vale's first book, so I was eager to try this one out, and it was disappointing in multiple ways. The author wanted to write in first person present, but you have to construct the story differently as opposed to writing it in first person past. Vale couldn't pull it off, so there were constant tense changes, which got tiresome. The heroine is very shallow and gives very little as opposed to all that everyone around her, especially the hero, gives her. The hero is a true cinnamon roll, despite being extremely hot and a famous actor. Her only claim to fame is a bestseller she wrote in her late teens. She is not making any progress with her second book and is unemployed because, well, she is writing (or at least pretending to be), but everyone around her is bending over backwards to pretend that she is a "real wrier." There is plenty of preaching from her to the hero of how a writer thinks, all of which makes him admire her. The premise is that she is the doppelgänger of a famous Hollywood golden girl, and she gets lots of perks, including free jewelry, from pretending to be her...till she gets caught. Then her doppelgänger has her really pretend to be her, which involves being closely involved with her showmance boyfriend, who doesn't feel a thing for the star but falls instantly in lust and love with our writer.

[Some of these books are eARCs from NetGalley and the others are either borrowed from the public library or I've bought them.]

Review: Bloomsbury Girls by Natalie Jenner

noreply@blogger.com (Keira Soleore) — Tue, 28 Jun 2022 00:02:00 +0000

Jenner follows upon the success of her hugely popular Jane Austen Society (2020) with the 1950s London-based story, Bloomsbury Girls, about three shopgirls, a century-old bookshop, and much feuding between the male staff and the female staff to take ownership of the shop.

The servant girl, Evie Stone, from Jane Austen Society is now all grown up with a degree from Cambridge and has found her home among the rare books of Bloomsbury Books & Maps. Jenner says that Evie Stone is the only character inspired by real life: her own mother, who had to leave school at age fourteen, and her own daughter, who does eighteenth-century research for a university professor and his team.

Illustrious women of the publishing world, such as Daphne Du Maurier, Ellen Doubleday, George Orwell’s widow Sonia Blair, Peggy Guggenheim, and others make cameo appearances at the bookshop and at literary salons around London, setting the stage on which the three female employees, Grace Perkins, Vivien Lowry, and Evie Stone, build their dreams and careers.

Vivien Lowry is vivacious, self-confident, and very much single. She still mourns the loss of her aristocratic fiancé who was killed in action during World War II. She is reluctantly in charge of the cash register though her goal is to be Head of Fiction and replace some of the stuffy male-only titles with books by women. She is in a love-hate relationship with Alec McDonough, the current Head of Fiction.

Grace Perkins has worked at the shop the longest. She prefers keeping her head down at her bookkeeping and secretarial job in the backrooms of the shop. Her two sons are her joy. But her marriage is suffocating under her husband’s increasingly worsening mental health. Grace is always dutiful, but there are times when she wishes she could run away. Her only respite is Lord Baskin, the aristocratic owner of the shop who spends time with her and makes her laugh.

Evelyn “Evie” Stone is the shop’s newest and youngest employee who was hired based on her being in the first class of female students from Cambridge who were permitted to earn a degree. In her naïveté, Evie was denied an academic position in favor of her less accomplished male rival. She is determined to make a success of her secret project in London, which is to print notable works by women writers that have been lost to obscurity. The shop’s shy scientist in charge of the Science and Naturalism Department, Ashwin “Ash” Ramaswamy, opens her shy, innocent eyes to Indian culture and British racism. And to attraction.

As we saw in Jane Austen Society, and especially heightened in Bloomsbury Girls, Jenner skillfully imbues her characters with so much personality, you cannot help getting enmeshed in their vivid lives unfolding on the page. In both books, Jenner explores friendships and a coming together for a common cause; in other words, a life of meaning and purpose. Women in postwar London were not allowed to exhibit ambition and a career-focus, but that is exactly what the women in the story pursue. Stealth and much derring-do in the sale of a precious forgotten three-volume manuscript add color and drama to the narrative.

Bloomsbury Girls solidly situates Jenner as a writer of unforgettable and delightful historical fiction. If you are enamored with books and bookshops, then Jenner, who was an independent bookstore owner in Oakville, Ontario, is the perfect person to introduce Bloomsbury Books & Maps to you.

[Please note: The unabridged audiobook has been narrated by the esteemed British actress Juliet Stevenson, who has narrated many period audiobooks. No one does characters as distinctly and well as her.]

April & May Reading Notes

noreply@blogger.com (Keira Soleore) — Fri, 27 May 2022 17:48:00 +0000

I didn't have very many books in April, so I thought to combine my April and May reading notes into one post. But holy cow! I read so many in May that this has turned out to be one long post. I did try to make every mini review as small as possible while still conveying a sense of the story. In some places, I have links to the full reviews. In many others, I couldn't link because the reviews are behind a paywall or they are supposed to be annonymous.

The Complete Maus: A Survivor's Tale by Art Spiegelman
Category: Graphic Novel
Comments: A banned book that I read for a book club. We are moms from our old school who've continued to meet every month over Zoom. We read anti-oppression books by authors of every diversity featuring their thoughts and ideas on their diversity. Our goal is to emerge from the discussions with more clarity, respect, and insight into the issues facing those marginalized from the dominant groups in America.

This graphic novel is the author's Polish father's Holocaust survivor story of his experiences as faithfully written down by his son, an American. The Jewish people are depicted as mice and the Nazis as cats. The book was a visceral shock because it is a real story and all in dialogue narration. There isn't any distance of formal nonfiction prose, and while the narrator is even keel, that makes his truths all the more horrifying. The author does not give the reader any breaks and demands that you keep up with the intensity of the story.

Love in Color: Mythical Tales from Around the World Retold by Bolu Babalola
Category: Literary Fiction Short Stories
Comments: This debut collection by Nigerian-British author Babalola has thirteen short folktales and myths with romantic elements of people largely from African legends focusing on Black empowerment. There are also story retellings from Greece and China. I adored this book and Babalola's writing and imaginative storytelling. In "Nefertiti," the Egyptian queen is a vigilante protecting women from patriarchal violence and oppression. In "Orin," both the protagonists are on terrible dates when they meet, and their easy conversation is a balm to their bruised spirits. "Ọṣun" is a Yoruba new adult love triangle tale, "Naleli" is a Lesothoian YA friends-to-lovers tale, and "Siya" is another warrior fantasy. Here is an example of Babalola's writing, which is why I adore this collection.

In those swim meets, she focused on the sound of the water smacking against her skin like a hand against the taut hide of a talking drum. Her swimming became a dance to a rhythm she was creating with the water. With each hip switch a hand sliced through the water till she was no longer just a body among bodies within a false aquatic body, tiled and sterile. No, she was the body, the only body, vibrant and heavy breathing. By the time the music stopped, she was over the finish line, alone. All they saw was an excellent athlete; only she knew that she was a dancer.

Book Lovers by Emily Henry
Category: Contemporary Romance
Comments: This spring has seen quite a few contemporary romance titles set in the publishing world. This one is about a literary agent shown as a "shark," and an editor who turned down her star client's previous book. They meet in a small town where her client has based her novels. He now wants to acquire her client's next book and they have to work together with the high maintenance author. I thoroughly enjoyed this book and loved Henry's writing style and characterization. [My Review]

A Scot is Not Enough by Gina Conkle
Category: Historical Romance
Comments: It was surprising how much I liked this book. In this sharp, brilliant Georgian romance, a Scottish Jacobite forever changes the trajectory of an upright English barrister’s life. It is a tale of political adversaries who are beguiled with each other in spite of everything pulling them apart. The mystery of the sgian-dubh adds intrigue, but it is Conkle’s prose and character work that make this romance so compelling. [My Review]

Good Morning, Love by Ashley Coleman
Category: Contemporary Romance
Comments: This is more women's fiction and the heroine's journey than romance though the happy-for-now ending is convincing. I learned so much by reading this book. It brims with authentic details of how music records are produced, how artists are discovered, and the life of a megastar from music industry professional Ashley M. Coleman. The hero is an R&B artist who has made it to the big leagues. The heroine works with artists at a creative agency, and in her spare time, she moonlights as a songwriter. She hopes to make it big in the industry. They meet because her boss is his publicist.

All Fired Up by Dylan Newton
Category: Contemporary Romance
Comments: I really liked this book. The heroine is a publicist at a publisher and frenetically juggles important authors. To-do lists are her superpower and her kryptonite. She moonlights as a ballet teacher. But stress is causing her insomnia and panic attacks, so she takes a leave of abscence and moves to her grandmother's small town to relax and help her grandmother. The hero is an ex-Marine, who now embodies a laidback surfer dude vibe. He really woos her with all his sweetness and patience. (CW: eating disorder, PTSD, survivor's guilt). [My Review]

The Accidental Pinup by Danielle Jackson
Category: Contemporary Romance
Comments: This is a fun, flirty look at the modeling and photography of lingerie. The protagonists are rival photographers competing for the same assignments. However, as a Black female photographer, she finds herself losing out to him repeatedly. She wants to photograph a national ad campaign so when she finds herself demoted to modeling with him being the photographer, it is the last straw...and the start of their relationship. There is a lot of groveling involved in the end.

From the Jump by Lacie Waldon
Category: Contemporary Romance
Comments: The coolest thing about this book is that part of it is set on a South African safari. I chose the book based on that and also because I had simiarly chosen her previous book, which was set on the Galápagos islands. This is a friends-to-lovers story of a traumatized heroine and a sweetheart of a hero, who also had a difficult childhood. She betrays his trust and there is much atonement for her in the end, and how their relationship survives is the heart of the story. (CW: unsheltered youth)

Lucie Yi is Not a Romantic by Lauren Ho
Category: Contemporary Romance
Comments: Frank talk about monthly cycles, IVF, and money are part of an unconventional co-parenting agreement in Malaysian author Ho’s sensitive portrayal of two people’s deep desire to be parents, but not being able to go the usual route of love and children with a committed partner. The story is set in Singapore and deals with a happy-for-now story of romance between the protagonists, temptation from her ex, and Singaporean society's disapprobation of a child out of wedlock. Ho skillfully applies humor to heighten and soften heartbreaking truths. [My Review]

For Butter or Worse by Erin La Rosa
Category: Contemporary Romance
Comments: This is an enemies-to-lovers story of a celebrity chef and the owner of a chain of family restaurants who are acrimonious co-hosts of a television cooking show. A flame-out is followed by unexpected, but well-publicized, almost snogging. Oops! Now, they are required to fake date to save their reputations. Under the breezy premise is a story of low self-esteem, mental health challenges, financial worries, and rediscovering who they are and who they want to be. Well done! (CW: panic attacks)

The Knight's Tempting Ally by Ella Matthews
Category: Medieval Romance
Comments: How I love a well-researched, well-executed medieval romance. This is a good example of that. She is the plain middle daughter with beuatiful sisters who has been repeatedly told that she is unmarriageable. In her teens, she was falsely beguiled by a man whom she thought loved her and wanted to marry her, so gave him her virginity, only to have him laugh at her and spurn her. She has convinced herself that she is destined to the nunnery. A good medieval usually has heavy politics as does this one. He is one of the King's Knights and has sworn to protect him and his reign. His childhood was tragic and he is "married" to his knight brothers. They meet at the king's court where there are rumblings over war with France. Thanks to Wendy Crutcher for recommending this.

Stirring up Love by Chandra Blumberg
Category: Contemporary Romance
Comments: I really admired the hero for seeking therapy to help him cope with his anxiety-riddled childhood of homelessnes and foster homes. He is still living in temporary housing and working every hour he can get as a chef, but he has big dreams. He wants to open a culinary school for those people society would sooner forget so they have a chance at a better future. She has grown up thinking she was always second-best but she works hard and has big dreams. She wants her small town to become a retail and entertainment hub. She is prickly and caring; he is kind and sweet—a wonderful enemies-to-lovers relationship. (CW: unsheltered youth, foster homes)

A Country Escape by Katie Fforde
Category: Contemporary Romance
Comments: Having grown up reading farm books by Enid Blyton, I jumped at the chance to read a romance set in the English farming countryside. The best thing about the book is how a newbie chef from London develops as a farmer managing hereditary livestock and selling the milk. She has innovative ways to make the broken down farm profitable through supper clubs and learning to make cheese to sell. She is on probation for a year. If she can make a go of the farm, then her elderly relative will let her inherit it. Of course, there is a dastardly villain relative who also wants the farm, and he comes in twirling his mustache. Then there is the wonderfully kind neighbor who is so easy on the eyes but with whom she is supposed to be at daggers drawn, according to her elderly relative. Instead, she is as drawn to him as he is to her. Fforde is talented in detailing her setting. You feel like you are on that farm with the heroine facing the challenges and experiencing the joys. If you're someone who enjoys the English countryside, this is a story not to be missed.

From Chai to Laddoos, From Bindis to Saris, From Dances to Epics, Here are Five South Asian Tales
Category: Children's Picture Books
[My Reviews]
—Ganesha's Sweet Tooth by Sanjay Patel & Emily Haynes, illustrated by Sanjay Patel
—Chaiwala! by Priti Birla Maheshwari, illustrated by Ashley Barron
—A Sari for Ammi by Mamta Nainy, illustrated by Sandhya Prabhat
—Dancing in Thatha's Footsteps by Srividya Venkat, illustrated by Kavita Ramchandran
—Bindu's Bindis by Supriya Kelkar, illustrated by Parvati Pillai

Five Picture Books to Celebrate Eid with Your Children
Category: Children's Picture Books
[My Reviews]
—One Wish: Fatima al-Fihri and the World's Oldest Univeristy by M.O. Yuksel, illustrated by Mariam Quraishi
—Crescent Moons and Pointed Minarets: A Muslim Book of Shapes by Hena Khan, illustrated by Mehrdokht Amini
—One Sun and Countless Stars: A Muslim Book of Numbers by Hena Khan, illustrated by Mehrdokht Amini
—My Name is Bana by Bana Alabed, illustrated by Nez Riaz
—Beautifully Me by Nabel Noor, illustrated by Nabi H. Ali

March Reading Notes

noreply@blogger.com (Keira Soleore) — Wed, 06 Apr 2022 03:35:00 +0000

I am VERY excited to report that I have been accepted to study philosophy at the University of Oxford through their Department of Continuing Education. It's a four-year-long certificate program with most of the courses done online and one on campus (so cool!). The application process was rigorous and highly competitive. I agonized over the two essays I had to write, and I sweated through my socks and shirt during the Zoom interview for which I had practiced and practiced. So the acceptance was amazing. Many, many thanks to the three people who wrote me references and to my family for their advice and help in making my dream from when I was seventeen a reality decades later.

Had a lovely conversation with Stephan Lee on the world of K-Pop and his two books, K-Pop Confidential and K-Pop Revolution. Adriana Herrera is always a pleasure to talk to about her work, particularly, her newest, Caribbean Heiress in Paris.

Portrait of a Thief by Grace D. Li
Category: General Fiction
Comments: This was my favorite book this month. Museums all over the western world proudly showcase priceless art stolen from other countries through war and conquest, a side benefit of colonialism and imperialism. Many of those countries want their art and cultural identity back, but museums refuse to part with the pieces. Portrait of a Thief is based on the true story of Chinese art that has gone missing from western museums. The book is in response to the question: Who’s stealing the art? In this book, Stanford medical student and debut novelist, Grace D. Li, spins an intricate heist story juxtaposed with a pitch-perfect depiction of the complex nature of immigrant identity. [My Review]

By the Book by Jasmine Guillory
Category: Contemporary Romance
Comments: A starred review from me for Booklist. This winter and spring has seen multiple romance novels set in the publishing world like this one. What could a people-pleasing editorial assistant, one of very few African Americans working for this publishing house who is still living with her parents, have in common with a rich bad boy known for bar fights, fast cars, and dating supermodels? [My Review]

Kingscastle by Sophia Holloway
Category: Traditional Regency Romance
Comments: When I first set sight on the cover of Kingscastle, I knew I had to read it. I was pleased to see that the story lived up to the promise of Lee Avison’s cover design. Much in the same style as the Traditional Regency novels of the 1980s, Kingscastle is a quiet, character-driven story set in the countryside, complete with an imposing castle, a local vicar, a small village, torrents of rain, and a harridan of a beldame. I was tickled pink to discover that Holloway had given the hero the title “Athelney,” which is the name of the village that is best known for once being the fortress hiding place of my favorite king Alfred the Great. Holloway also writes medieval murder mysteries, and I wonder if she is just as fascinated with King Alfred as I am. [My Review]

Sari, Not Sari by Sonya Singh
Category: Contemporary Romance
Comments: Set in the world of Bollywood dancing, mehndi, and matchmaking aunties, this is a debut novel by Sonya Singh, a former entertainment reporter turned PR expert. This is a story of an Indian American woman who wasn't brought up steeped in her culture and finds that she is really missing that part of her identity. In a bid to regain that aspect of herself, she conspires with her client to attend his family's wedding while helping him break up with his girlfriend through her relationship breakup company.

Rules for Engaging the Earl by Janna MacGregor
Category: Historical Romance
Comments: This is a story of childhood lovers being offered a second chance. As teens, both the hero and heroine were in love with each other, but he is tempted by the war office's appeal to his patriotism. Badly injured and scarred, he returns from the war a changed man, wary, distrustful, and convinced he will not make a good husband, father, or friend. She made a bad first marriage, and is now widowed with a baby daughter to raise. She asks her old friend to marry her trusting in his integrity and honor and is determined to be a supportive wife to him and make her second marriage a success. She believes that beneath the crusty exterior lies that generous-hearted boy she used to know and sets her heart on peeling back the layers to find him.

A Song Begins by Mary Burchell
Category: Vintage Contemporary Romance
Comments: I read this book as part of the Saturday Book Club read for this month. We had a controversial discussion with Burchell working very well for some readers and not at all for others. I read these vintage contemporary books as historical romance, so the social mores and culture makes sense. This is one of those rare books that gets the music world right. As a choral singer, I delighted in all the music details of the heroine who is plucked from an obscure English village by a world famous conductor who invests his time and effort in training her, while also paying for her housing and food and further study with another teacher in London. It is a patriarchical book that starts out with a huge power imbalance. To me, the power starts to balance out towards the end with the promise that the process will continue in their marriage. I enjoy Burchell's writing.

Under the Stars of Paris by Mary Burchell
Category: Vintage Contemporary Romance
Comments: After finishing the above book, I got into a conversation about Burchell that led to this book, and I was immediately tempted to re-read it. It, too, has the same power imbalance of wealthy, careworn, successful man and ingegue young woman. This is set in the fashion world, and like the above book is very well researched. Fans of Project Runway will appreciate the story. She is plucked out of a Parisian street by a fashion house as a stand-in for their injured top model. She instinctively know how to walk and carry off the clothes and makes a success as a model. He is the creative director of the fashion house and she becomes his creation. There's a secondary love interest who would make a plausible partner, but she is only interested in the seemingly unttainable hero.

Akbar and Birbal by Amita Sarin
Category: Children's Nonfiction & Fiction
Comments: I loved this book. Set in 16th century India, the stories are a mixture of real historical tales and fables of Akbar, the Mughal Emperor of India, and his trusted advisor, Birbal. Akbar was known as a benevolent ruler, bright and kind. Birbal was known as a brilliant, savvy vizier. The author has organized her book with a historical story followed by 1-3 fables based on that story. In each story, either citizens approach Akbar with problems or Akbar himself comes up with problems that Birbal is required to solve, which he does in witty, clever ways.

Shahrzad & the Angry King by Nahid Kazemi
Category: Children's Picture Book
Comments: This is another marvelous book in the pantheon of great books by celebrated family-owned publisher, Enchanted Lion Books. Drawing on her Persian heritage and expertise in visual art, Nahid Kazemi spins a magical story of her homeland. Storytelling is the backbone of our civilization, and throughout the ages, it has always been a powerful method of enacting societal change. Who does not know of Scheherazade and her one thousand and one stories to beguile her husband and stop him from executing her and fall in love with her? Her stories, such as Aladdin’s Lamp, Sinbad the Sailor, Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, and others live on to this day. In Shahrzad & the Angry King, Kazemi brings Scheherazade to life in the guise of a young girl named Shahrzad who loves to collect stories from the world around her. Her goal is to really understand people at a deep level. [My Review]

Kenny's Window by Maurice Sendak
Category: Children's Book
Comments: A standout line from the book: "A wish is halfway to wherever you want to go." Beautiful! My copy is a first printing from my library from 1956 and it has been barely read. Sendak's Where the Wild Things Are is stupendously popular, so I assumed that people would be scouring his backlist and forelist and everything would've gone back for multiple printings. So it is curious that this book from 1956 is still pristine. Looks like a hidden gem. The story is about a boy who wakes up from a dream remembering everything including seven philosophical questions he has to find answers to. He answers them in his own vastly creative ways with small parables. Do read philosopher Maria Popova's wonderful review of the book. She says everything that I might ever want to say better.

The Great Philosophers: The Lives and Ideas of History's Greatest Thinkers by Stephen Law
Category: Nonfiction
Comments: Superb book that explains the major philosophical ideas of the western world distilled into small bites. It links back and forth between ideas as contemporary and later philosophers dispute established theories. Each piece has a bio of a philosopher and explains the basic theories along with examples. Very thorough treatment for understanding by lay people. It has Buddhism and Confucianism in the beginning, but that is a bit of a pretense to be international, because there aren't other non-western philosophers later on. Discounting those two first entries, it is an excellent resource for an armchair philosopher.

February Reading Notes

noreply@blogger.com (Keira Soleore) — Thu, 10 Mar 2022 21:28:00 +0000

It is already the 10th of the month, I am just now putting out my reading notes for last month. Where has the time vanished?

Dating Dr. Dil by Nisha Sharma
Category:Contemporary Romance
Comments: A starred review for Booklist. This is a fun, engaging, Taming of the Shrew-inspired rom-com about American Desi culture. She is a prickly lawyer living with his increasingly distant family and waiting for true love. He is a cardiologist who wants an arranged marriage because falling in love is stressful for the heart. They have a huge blowout fight on his talk show. How to rehabilitate their reputations and manage their family's expectations? [My Review]

By Any Other Name by Lauren Kate
Category:Contemporary Romance
Comments: Stories set in the publishing world are really popular this spring. This is set in NYC and brings the city to life, which was fun. The heroine's been promoted to editorial director and the star author of their publishing company now falls under her care. Only problem is that the author is way past the due date for her manuscript. The author is a real diva and a cipher—no one has ever met her. When our heroine meets her in person, she is shocked that she is a he. Legions of fans would be upset when, if, this were to get out. So what to, whether to, tell them? How to unblock his creativity and get him to finish his book? Some of the questions this book grapples with. This story has the most romantic proposal I have ever read. (My review in the Feb 15 issue of Booklist.)

Someone to Cherish by Mary Balogh
Category: Regency Romance
Comments: A lovely, quiet story by Balogh of two lonely souls finding in the other their reason for living. Lydia is recently widowed. Her former husband was a vicar, more devoted to his parish than his wife, and her life with him had been one of duty and loneliness. She is enamored with her new-found freedom and is loath to give it up to any man by marrying him. But she wonders about the intimate side of marriage. She wants to take a lover to discover for herself whether it is all that it is cracked up to be. Harry lost his earldom due to his father's bigamy and joined up to fight Napoléon. After being badly wounded, he has now become a gentleman farmer. He now seeks solitude by habit. Like many of Balogh's self-possessed heroines, Lydia takes charge of her destiny. She propositions Harry with an affair...as a balm against loneliness for both. I really liked Harry, his kindness, his thoughtfulness to everyone around him, but especially Lydia. She is like parched soil and soaks up his gentleness. I enjoyed seeing the rest of the Westmorland clan gathering around implicitly demonstrating to Lydia how strong the women are and how equal they are in their marriages.

The Burn Zone by Annabeth Albert
Category: Contemporary Romance
Comments: This is a high-octane book in terms of heat and action set in rural Oregon. The two men are a few years apart. One is a seasoned veteran smoke jumper and the younger one is a new recruit. Jacob's older brother was Linc's best friend and team member, and he has had a crush on Linc for years. Both men have had eyes for each other, but Jacob's family's homophobia had kept them both in the closet. This is a sort of an enemies-to-lovers story because Linc wants to keep Jacob safe, even from himself, at first. But then they fall into the classic romance trope of "let's have a brief affair to get it out of our systems." The story does a bit too much navel gazing with one of the "obstacles" keeping them apart being the age gap—ten years. No biggie, but this story makes it a biggie. The other source of tension is Linc's desire to keep his sexual identity a secret from people at work and others in his life. The author does an OK job of having Linc deal with this, though his blowing hot and cold goes on a tad too long.

Wild Rain by Beverly Jenkins
Category: Historical Romance
Comments: A low angst romance between a traumatized woman and a cinnamon roll hero who's a reporter coming into town to do a story on her brother. Spring is a denim-wearing, horse-riding rancher and Garrett is a bookish, formerly enslaved journalist. They meet in a blizzard where she saves his life. He doesn't fall off his horse, but he does fall in love with her. Jenkins does small town, low angst romances really well. Spring is the star of this Women Who Dare series. She's a straight shooter who brooks no nonsense, who hangs out in saloons and is not missish of her sexuality. The roles the two protagonists adopt are true to form. He is the more giving, more accepting person. She takes and usurps. He meets her more than halfway and does the heavy lifting in their relationship. She comes across as standoffish and even selfish at times. However, Jenkins does a superb job of showing Spring rising up to the challenge of her past and coming to terms with it and growing through that process. I really enjoyed this story.

The Wife He Needs by Brenda Jackson
Category: Contemporary Romance
Comments: This is the first book of her Westmoreland Legacy: The Outlaws series. I have read two of her other books, and this is similarly a book of grand gestures, high heat, and big emotions. It is a showy book that is not in my style. I love that Regan is the corporate pilot. She is tasked with getting the billionaire head honcho, Garth, on a two-week getaway to Spain with his date. The date is a no-show. But the trip still stands. Regan is the stand-in. Despite ten years having passed since his first wife died, Garth remains unconvinced that he can fall in love again. But his kids need a mother. What was to be a marriage of convenience is now getting mixed up with a lot of angst, heat, and feelings. She, on the other hand, has always had a soft spot for him, and their affair only convinces her the rightness of him being in her life. The twist in the tail is expected but well done. This is a fast-paced story like Jackson's other books.

Pride & Prejudice by Jane Austen
Category:LitFic Audio
Comments:I was so excited when I heard that the divine Juliet Stevenson had finally narrated P & P. The minute I heard, I went up to Audible and re-upped my membership, bought the title, and promptly canceled my membership. Stevenson has done other Austen works, so I've always been puzzled why she hadn't done P & P. Whatever reason, I am glad she has finally narrated it. To call, Stevenson's reading a "narration," is doing it disservice. She "performs" it like a play, taking on very different and specific character voices based on their personalities. She clearly has read the book backwards and forwards and understands the story and the characters at a very deep level. I have read the book and watched the adaptations many times, yet, I discovered a few more details here that I had never noticed before, thanks to Stevenson. Highly recommended.

Threshold by Angela J. Reynolds
Category: Children's Middle Grade Fiction
Comments: Set along the coastline in Cape Breton, Threshold is a gorgeous meditation on the magic of friendship, if one only has the courage to reach for it. This friendship is the turning point in the life of a dreamy twelve-year-old girl, who is spending a lonely summer over at her aunt's house by the ocean, agonizing over her younger brother's health. "Will he die?" is a question that haunts her. But she has no one her age to share her worries with, until she meets someone who understands her perfectly. Threshold, a tale of friendship, family, and great derring-do, is a highly addictive read. Its compelling and engrossing nature is enhanced by the lyrical beauty of Reynolds’ prose. Highly recommended. [My Review]

–Alex's Good Fortune by Benson Shum
–Friends are Friends, Forever by Dane Liu, illustrated by Lynn Scurfield
–The Runaway Wok by Ying Chang Compestine, illustrated by Sebastià Serra
–New Year by Mei Zihan, illustrated by Qin Leng, translated by Yan Yan
Category: Children's Picture Books
Comments: The joyous celebration of the Lunar New Year, observed in different countries throughout Asia, as a multiday holiday, is the most important time of the year for families to get together. The origins of the Lunar New Year festival are thousands of years old and are steeped in legends. These days, typical festivities, include religious ceremonies honoring ancestors, spring cleaning of houses, dances, parades, fireworks, special foods and red envelopes with money for children for good luck. In some parts of Asia, the celebration concludes with the Lantern Festival. These books will help your kids ring in the Year of the Tiger! [My Reviews]

Review: Threshold by Angela J. Reynolds

noreply@blogger.com (Keira Soleore) — Sun, 20 Feb 2022 00:01:00 +0000

Set along the coastline in Cape Breton, Threshold is a gorgeous meditation on the magic of friendship, if one only has the courage to reach for it. This friendship is the turning point in the life of a dreamy twelve-year-old girl, who is spending a lonely summer over at her aunt's house by the ocean, agonizing over her younger brother's health. "Will he die?" is a question that haunts her. But she has no one her age to share her worries with, until she meets someone who understands her perfectly.

The beaches are dear to debut author Angela J. Reynolds' heart, and that love gives the novel a luminous quality. Like the gentle waves lapping the shore, the book has a soft beginning as Terra luxuriates in the endless summer stretching out before her, even as she keeps her worries bottled up. She allows the ocean and the beach to disarm her and soothe her. Swimming, collecting sea glass and pearlescent shells, and simply walking, her toes curling in the sand, is how she means to spend her days.

She finds her interest snagged by the sea caves where she can hear the waves crashing at high tide but accessible at low tide. She is stunned to notice that one of the seals sunning themselves on the rocks has unusual blue eyes, and that the seal is trying to communicate with her. What can this possibly mean?

A few weeks into her vacation, she’s woken up one night with eerie singing. “The song wasn’t loud, but it felt as though it was in her head, not out on the beach, a dreamlike sound the color of starlight.” Compelled to rise from her bed and head to the seashore, her feet take her to the rocks above the sea cave where she sees a beautiful mermaid with unusual blue eyes all aglow in the moonlight. And so begins an unlikely friendship that nevertheless is deeply meaningful for both girls. Minne, the mermaid, introduces her to the world of the Murgelt in the depths of the sea where Terra feels at home.

Terra’s aunt’s girlfriend owns a museum celebrating Acadian history. On her first visit to the museum, Terra is drawn to a tarnished hand mirror with strange markings. She is stunned to hear the same humming that she associates with Mergelt singing. A glance through some ancient texts and repeated conversations with her Mergelt friends convinces her that La Lune Mirroir is deeply meaningful to the Mergelt. What Terra decides to do next is an exciting discovery I leave to you.

Threshold is a children's middle grade novel that is a welcome departure from the high-octane novels that dominate the market. No less propulsive, it is a tale replete with the emotions of a young girl on the cusp of her teen years. Most mermaid stories involve the sea creatures entering the human realm. The action in Reynolds’ highly original story has humans surviving deep in the ocean. The means of breathing and communicating underwater and unraveling the social hierarchies and cultural priorities occupy Terra’s waking hours to the exclusion of all else.

Reynolds’ innate understanding of the pre-teen mind allows her to show how Terra grows through this experience from a cautious little girl into a courageous, self-confident young girl able to negotiate complex situations with ease. Likewise, her ability to communicate with peers and adults, human and Mergelt, brims with mature conviction.

Threshold, a tale of friendship, family, and great derring-do, is a highly addictive read. Its compelling and engrossing nature is enhanced by the lyrical beauty of Reynolds’ prose. Highly recommended.

------
[The beautiful cover art is by the talented illustrator Lauren Soloy, whose picture books are some of my favorites. The book will be available in June 2022 from Moose House Publications of Nova Scotia, Canada.

Please Note: Angela is a friend of mine. We met online when both of us took classes on medieval manuscripts. She, then, joined me in writing Morning Pages. Her book grew out of those Pages. This is the first time I read it.]

January Reading Notes

noreply@blogger.com (Keira Soleore) — Tue, 01 Feb 2022 01:27:00 +0000

Today is the last day of the first month of the year, and it feels like just yesterday, I was writing my New Year's Day post. This month has simply vanished. There was a lot of busyness involved every single day and some days felt like they were a week long; yet, the month has gone by with an unnoticed rapidity. I moved yet again, and there was a lot of packing and unpacking involved. There are less than ten (feels like a victory) packed boxes to go through and then I will be done. I hope there are no more moves in the forseeable future.

The Siren of Sussex by Mimi Matthews
Category: Victorian Romance
Comments: I highly recommend this book. It is one of the best historical romances I have read in a long time. At twenty-three, Evelyn Maltravers has just arrived in London from the Sussex countryside for her first season. Evelyn is determined to snag a wealthy aristocratic husband to pave the way for the successful futures of her younger sisters. Her passions are horses and fashion, and she intends to harness both in her bid to cut a dash in London society. Ahmad Malik is a dressmaker, currently working out of a gentleman’s tailoring shop making bespoke riding habits for the ladies of the demimonde. He dreams of opening his own ladies’ dress shop, designing unique gowns to fit each lady’s body and personality. Evelyn and Ahmad meet when she arrives at his shop to commission a riding habit. [My Review]

The Roughest Draft by Emily Wibberley & Austin Siegemund-Broka
Category: Contemporary Romance
Comments: This is a haunting meditation on the psychological perils of success. It is a romance novel by two coauthors who married for love, who’re now writing a romance about coauthors who fall in love while they’re writing a love story. New Yorkers Katrina Freeling and Nathan Van Huysen have history. They used to be very successful co-authors who had a falling out. But now, they're back together to write one final book on their publishing contract, and they realize that they are not only phenomenal co-authors but even more phenomenal life partners. [My Review]

Weather Girl by Rachel Lynn Solomon
Category: Contemporary Romance
Comments: A lovely story that does Jewish, neurodiverse, and fat rep well. It also sensitively handles managing depression through meds and therapy. Ari Abrams is a TV meteorologist. Russell Barringer is a TV sports journalist and a teen parent of a now preteen. The two bond over matchmaking for their bosses because their verbal warfare is causing stress in the workplace for everyone. While I liked Solomon's debut Ex Talk more, this is a wonderful story.

Kamila Knows Best by Farah Heron
Category: Contemporary Romance
Comments: I loved Heron's first book, Accidentally Engaged, last year, and I loved this book. I enjoy her voice and her storytelling style. Set in the same cosmopolitan Toronto setting as her first book and Uzma Jallluddin's and Jackie Lau's books, this is a childhood friends to lovers story. Kamila Hussain is a staid accountant by day and a vivacious party planner by night. And clueless that sharp-dressing Rohan Nasser is in love with her. They have history. He is the CEO in her and his fathers' company, and her father trusts him while indulges her, i.e., doesn't take her seriously. She wants to be respected. And Rohan shows her how to get what she wants.

Ramón and Julieta by Alana Quintana Albertson
Category: Contemporary Romance
Comments: This was an unusual book for me, and I loved it for that. Set in San Diego and dealing with the unique and complex San Diegan Latinx culture, this deals with one character being fully embedded in the culture, and another coming to terms with his roots, after being on the outside for long. The unusual part of the book for me was the deep immersion in the culture. In the Latinx books I have read before, the authors have sparingly included cultural details. This book does a deep dive—without the culture, there is no story. I loved that! And the stakes for the hero are very high, his very identity. In his youth, Ramón Montez’s father stole a recipe for a taco from a señorita and built a nationwide chain. Ramón lives a luxurious lifestyle. The recipe was Julieta Campos' mamá's, and they are barely ekeing out a living. Julieta wants to continue to run her highly successful, small tacqueria, but Ramón wants to convert it into his flagship chain restaurant.

Lease on Love by Falon Ballard
Category: Contemporary Romance
Comments: This is a roommates-to-lovers, opposites-attract debut rom-com. I enjoyed Ballard's wit and writing, and I am looking forward to her next book. Sadie Green works in stodgy finance but dreams of opening a highly creative florist business. One day, sharp words later, she's out on her ear. After confusing a roommate-finding app with a dating app, she ends up with a room in a beautiful Brooklyn brownstone at an unbelievably low rent. Jack Thomas is very wealthy and very alone. He is shy and she is larger-than-life. She's like a whirlwind in his life and gets him out of his shell and painting again. He, in turn, makes her feel worthy and valued and respected.

Reputation by Lex Croucher
Category: Contemporary Romance
Comments: This was a difficult book. The publicity for the book is falsely advertising that it is Bridgerton-esque or like Jane Austen. Yes, it is set in the Regency, but any and all connections to Julia Quinn’s and Jane Austen’s work or other current histrom are non-existent. There is a love interest, but it is not a romance; it is more women’s fiction with a romantic subplot. This is not the usual rom-com as the publicity would lead you to believe. While there is some witty banter and some LOL moments, I feel British sense of humor is rather different from American. The story is rather dark with drug and alcohol abuse, death, emotionally abusive families, rape, sexual assault, slut-shaming, toxic friendships, racism, and violence. While none of these in the singular or plural is cause for my disfavor, all of it together is too much to balance with the love sub-plot. As far as the writing goes, it is well written, astute, and assured and does not read like a debut book. And I loved the diverse cast of characters in terms of race, gender, and sexuality. Yes, the book is popular on GoodReads, but it was not for me.

Caroline's Waterloo by Betty Neels
Category: Vintage Contemporary Romance
Comments: There was a period of a few months in 2020 when I read many Betty Neels and Mary Burchells. This was my first Neels since then, I think, other than one exception. It came across highly recommended by @NYSuri from our Saturday Twitter Book Club. It is classic Neels with a middle class British nurse heroine and a very wealthy Dutch doctor (surgeon?). This book is set in The Netherlands. Caroline does not think anyone would ever want to marry her since she isn't pretty or especially clever. She gets injured in a biking accident and ends up staying at the mansion of the aloof, arrogant Professor Radinck Thoe van Erckelens for a few days. Out of the blue, he proposes to her, telling her that he needs a hostess. He is not looking to fall in love. He has A Past(!) and so wants to settle for comfort this time around. She has fallen in love with him so accepts his proposal and agrees to not impose on him in any way. But, in her heart of hearts, she is scheming for his love. There is one dramatic scene towards the end that is quintessential Neels, and our heroine brings the hero to heel...imposingly and arrogantly.

Review: The Siren of Sussex by Mimi Matthews

noreply@blogger.com (Keira Soleore) — Mon, 10 Jan 2022 13:00:00 +0000

Mimi Matthews is an excellent raconteuse. I was rivetted by her prose, held spellbound by the story she was telling. The Siren of Sussex is so beautifully realized—the characters, the setting, the language, all combine to tell a complex tale. Like the smooth gait of an Andalusian horse, there is superb kinetic pacing to the story that ebbs and flows with the emotions and motions of the heroine.

At twenty-three, Evelyn Maltravers has just arrived in London from the Sussex countryside for her first season. Unlike her older sister who scandalously ran away with a baronet’s heir to live abroad unmarried, Evelyn is determined to snag a wealthy aristocratic husband to pave the way for the successful futures of her younger sisters. Orphaned at a young age, she and her sisters were brought up by a spinster aunt. She feels fortunate that her eccentric, Victorian spiritualist uncle is willing to sponsor her. Her passions are horses and fashion, and she intends to harness both in her bid to cut a dash in London society.

Ahmad Malik is a dressmaker, currently working out of a gentleman’s tailoring shop making bespoke riding habits for the ladies of the demimonde. He dreams of opening his own ladies’ dress shop, designing unique gowns to fit each lady’s body and personality. Perfection in tailoring and minimalism in embellishments is his trademark, which he hopes to bring into fashion in London society.

Evelyn and Ahmad meet when she arrives at his shop to commission a riding habit. As they work together on her clothes, he is proud how his clothes make her beauty visible to all, and he is proud that she thinks his clothes are beautiful and magical and can transform a person into something extraordinary. She, in turn, is proud that he has made her beautiful and is proud to showcase his designs to Society. She is never shy to drop a word here and there to bring him new business.

As an Anglo-Indian, Ahmad was brought up on the outskirts of British colonial life in India. He was not raised as a Muslim but was brought up on a watered-down, hastily cobbled together version of Christianity, with which he has never known what to do. As a child of a white British soldier and an Indian woman, he was not accepted in Indian society, nor in British society, to which he was reluctantly brought as a teen. Matthews depicts Ahmad’s struggle for identity and sense of self with great care.

Learning to love someone is looking at them the right way. This is not learning to love by acting a certain way. It is simply by looking at them a certain way. Evelyn always sees Ahmad as her equal. She sees his race and learns about his humble life and only sees him as a man she is attracted to, a man to admire—her equal in every way. It never occurs to her to see him otherwise. On the other hand, Lady Heatherton, an upper crust white woman looks at Ahmad and sees a “native” man who is beneath her, who is only good for an intimate encounter and to make her gowns—someone to be used.

This is Ahmad’s reality in London life. He is used to being used. But instead of allowing this to beat him down and keep him mired in the squalor of the East End, he rises above it by sheer dint of integrity, hard work, and desperate courage to become a dressmaker to women of the ton. He isn’t afraid of having to work hard for a living and doesn’t think it is lowly to be employed. He is seduced by beautiful fabrics and elegant tailoring, not soft living. He loves Evelyn, not for her comfortable living style, but for her acknowledgment of him as an equal in every way and for her bravery in loving him back despite his background.

LL Cool J has said, "You can't let your past hold your future hostage." Evelyn is determined to rise above her genteel, white British country upbringing to become a modern Victorian woman who is building a life with an Anglo-Indian tradesman in racist, colonial Britain. How she goes about making it possible for them to marry while securing the futures of her sisters, I will leave it for you to discover. Evelyn’s growth over the novel is her building awareness that the journey between who you once were and who you are now becoming is where the dance of life really takes place.

bell hooks has said, “Love is the necessary foundation enabling us to survive the warts, the hardships, the sickness, and the dying with our spirits intact. It is love that allows us to survive whole.” It is this forever love that Evelyn believes in. As the story moves along, she convinces Ahmad that what his life was or wasn’t, isn’t important; he is always he—her beloved, and her love is not just a verb—it is her looking into his soul.

An accomplished horsewoman herself, Matthews instinctively knows that the human relationship with the horse is the critical difference between merely riding a horse and being at one with the horse. Where Society is focused on their riding clothes and riding crops, Evelyn is focused on her seat, her leg, and her gentle but strong hands to instinctively know how to guide Hephaestus, her Andalusian stallion. Scenes where Hephaestus features are nearly poetic in their beauty.

Matthews does not shy away from depicting an accurate picture of British racism and colonialism, which had a "tendency to dehumanize, demonize, exoticize, or infantilize Indians [and Anglo-Indians]," as Matthews says in her Author's Note. Most historical romances gloss over these uncomfortable details, but Matthews confronts them head-on, and in so doing, tells a complex and authentic historical tale.

I highly, highly recommend The Siren of Sussex. It is one of the best historical romances I have read in a long time.

Happy New Year

noreply@blogger.com (Keira Soleore) — Sat, 01 Jan 2022 16:35:00 +0000

Today is the dawn of a whole new year. May this be the year we achieve herd immunity through vaccination and can heave a sigh of relief and say the pandemic is at an end. Every year I write these new year's posts, I lay out lofty goals and exhortations. This year, my goals are simple and yet more profound: focus on health and achieve a measure of peace and joy. To that end, I have begun going for daily walks and investing in nutrition through more fruits and vegetables and less processed foods. I have begun a meditation practice. And I have also signed up for a program that requires you to work with a psychologist exploring indentity: Who Am I? I have been writing daily notebook pages by hand and journaling daily on LiveJournal for years. What I write in the journal and the notebook differ; one is more structured, the other, more freewheeling. This work with the psychologist is a more in-depth look into what makes me tick and how can I tick differently in some areas. The past many years have been one of passivity for me, where things happened to me and I drowned in them. I hope this year, I will be an instrument of change. I can't wait for the days to unfold and see what I bring to the table.

"Be Like a Tree: May we face the coming year with the steady serenity of a tree—that supreme lover of light, always reaching both higher and deeper, rooted in a network of kinship and ringed by a more patient view of time." —Maria Popova

November & December Reading Notes

noreply@blogger.com (Keira Soleore) — Tue, 28 Dec 2021 00:33:00 +0000

I realized a week before Diwali, the Indian festival of lights, that Diwali was next week and I had a children's picture book on Diwali. I hurriedly emailed my editor and asked that if I could have the review to her by that evening, would she pretty please cherry on top print it in the newspaper next week? She was immensely kind and said she would squeeze it on to the paper. And she did!

I am really enjoying doing author interviews. Here are the ones for November and December: interview with Sarah MacLean and interview with Cat Sebastian. I also interviewed a picture book author, Rajani LaRocca, Lucy Parker, and Marguerite Kaye earlier this year. In the new year, I plan to interview a prominent Asian American author, which will be challenging because I'll be stepping out of my realm of expertise with that piece into the world of K-pop!

HERE is the list of my best romance novels for this year.

On to the reviews for November and December...

Love at First Spite by Anna E. Collins
Category: Contemporary Romance
Comments: This is a debut fast-paced novel set in Seattle. The opening scene has an unforgettable image of the heroine in a paintball-splattered white wedding gown. She's just been dumped, weeks before the wedding. But instead of wallowing in grief, she decides on detailed revenge against her ex. She buys a plot of land next to her ex's house and plans on ruining his peace and view by building a monstrosity, peopled with loud people. Only the stick-up-his-backside architect at her firm agrees to design her this house. There are plenty of laughs in this book and some outlandish doings in the heroine's "hastily decided upon but refined upon at leisure" plan. [CW: Meniere’s disease, an inner-ear disorder]

The Fastest Way to Fall by Denise Williams
Category: Contemporary Romance
Comments: This a story of someone falling in love with a person who helps them feel strong and want to be stronger. This is not a story about weight loss or a paradigm shift to find love, but about learning to love who you are. He is the CEO of FitMe Fitness, a hugely popular, individualized, body positive lifestyle app. Through its clever matching algorithm, FitMe teams up each client with a professional coach who helps them meet their goals. She is a curvy woman whose goals are to jump out of a plane and to look and feel good naked. She refuses to allow being fat to define her. She teams up with a coworker to write immensely popular, dueling blog posts for the lifestyle magazine she works for about the entire fitness experience with two competing apps, FitMe and HottrYou. [CW: eating disorder, fatphobia, one instance of disordered eating and over-exercising putting someone in the hospital]. [My review is here.]

Someone Perfect by Mary Balogh
Category: Regency Romance
Comments: This is Balogh’s last novel in her fabulous Westcott series. The story is about two people, coming from very disparate backgrounds, who connect at an unanticipated and deeply emotional level. It is a master class in trust and fairness and honesty. How do you trust uninhibitedly, even in the face of opposing, seemingly true, facts? What does it mean to continually strive to bring light and joy to the other’s soul? Heart-to-heart, frank conversations is how their relationship develops, even when he proposes to her, and she refuses, and then he warns her he is planning to propose to her again. Their relationship is bracketed by the two proposals. [My review is here.]

Somewhere Above It All by Holli Fawcett Clayton
Category: Contemporary Romance Adventure
Comments: This is a debut book on grief and the indomitable courage it takes to come to terms with it. Even scaling Tanzania’s 19,341-foot treacherous Mount Kilimanjaro feels easier for the heroine. Writing with an assured hand, the author charts the emotional landscape as well as physical landscape with deep sensitivity and poignant detail. Ravaged by grief at the death of her dream of married life by the suicide of her opioid-addicted husband, the heroine is determined to put herself first after many years of despair. She is resolute in doing something that she could’ve never imagined herself doing—a grueling climb up to the oxygen-deprived Roof of Africa, Kilimanjaro. He is lead counsel for a pharmaceutical company and a rugged outdoorsman. He is grieving the suicide of his beloved older brother, who was also his best friend. Challenging the mountain is a way for him to get a grip on his grief. Leaving the past behind isn't easy for either of them. Yet, the mountain brings them closer together. This is not strictly a romance, more a heroine's journey, but the romance is a huge sub-plot. [My review is here.]

Once Upon a Winter's Eve by Tessa Dare
Category: Regency Romance
Comments: Dare's Spindle Cove series is touted by fans as her best, so I decided to dip my toes into Dare's writing with this novella. Her writing style is reminiscent of the old Julia Quinn novels: frothy, fun, with modern sensibilities, requiring large dollops of suspension of disbelief, but ultimately, satisfying and entertaining. Like Quinn, Dare quickly became very popular with readers, and now is a huge name in romance. Her Twitter presence has also garnered her more fans. I remember when she was a fledgling aspiring author. We were on the same Eloisa James message board and participated in a writing contest by Avon, possibly, the only contest they did. Many of today's current authors participated in that contest and were on that message board, including Courtney Milan, Jackie Barbosa, Manda Collins, Elyssa Patrick, and so many more. Many known readers and bloggers were also there. I don't know where Eloisa James found the time to manage her teaching career, her book career, and a message board, not to mention house and family. She did have some help from an author's assistant and a research assistant, but still, she made her presence felt on the board, and she was generous with her advice. I loved that board.

Spindle Cove is a place for bluestockings, spinsters, and those women with unusual interests. The heroine in this book is a talented linguist, speaking six languages fluently with the knowledge of others. She had been thwarted in love by her childhood friend who'd made love to her and departed England's shores with a curt note and no further communication. Now at the Christmas Ball a stranger crashes at her feet speaking a Celtic language that only she can decipher. As the night wears on, she realizes that he is a spy and her long, lost lover. What is she to do? Aid him or turn him in?

Royally Ever After: The Jilting of Lord Rothwick by Loretta Chase
Category: Regency Romance
Comments: As with all Chases, the minute you start her book, you sink into familiar Regency milieu of cultural and societal norms as established in the traditional Regencies. This short story is an oldie but a real goodie. He has been refused by her. For him, it is destitution with the baggage of his father's debts, the estate, and all the dependents upon his shoulders. For her, it is the heartache of loss of love. She loves him; she assumes he doesn't love her; but he does love her. The story takes place in the course of a day. The backstory is that they met when he decided that she was rich enough to tow him back from River Tick, so he started paying serious court to her, in the process defeating all her other suitors to win her hand. In the process, they both fall in love with each other, but each is certain their feelings are not returned. The story in the present is how they discover their feelings. Beautifully written!

The Earl Who Sees Her Beauty by Marguerite Kaye
Category: Historical Romance
Comments: Another author whose books feel true to the historical feel of the traditional Regencies I enjoy. And this one is beautifully written like the Chase above. She was heavily scarred as a young child diagonally across her back and diagonally across one cheek from forehead to mouth. She is considered an abomination by one and all, and she lurks in the shadows, covering her face with her hair and wearing a wide-brimmed bonnet and, sometimes, even a veil. She is mechanically brilliant and built a number of improvements in the former earl's house. The new earl wants nothing to do with the earldom; in fact, he wants to divest himself of all his responsibilities, sell everything, and donate the monies. When he spies her, he is struck by her beauty and she, by his. He truly always only sees her and the scars as part of her, not as obscuring a nondescript face, but as part of who she is. He accepts her wholly. The backstory to the earl is set in Greece and unusual. Impeccable research by Kaye and superlative writing. [I have to say that my fulsome praise is not coerced by my friendship with her by any way, but there you have the information anyway.]

Two Houses by Suleena Bibra
Category: Contemporary Romance
Comments: Bibra’s debut is an immensely fun enemies-to-lovers story of two auctioneers at rival art auction houses in New York. One of the best books of this month. My full review is on Booklist.

Christmas in Rose Bend by Naima Simone
Category: Contemporary Romance
Comments: In this book, prolific author Simone returns to the small, charming Massachusetts town of Rose Bend, the close-knit Dennison family, and their Kinsale Inn. A little less hyperbole, fewer pop culture references, and deeper emotional analysis would’ve made for a more powerful book. My full review is on Booklist.

Lizzie & Dante by Mary Bly AKA Eloisa James
Category: Mainstream Fiction
Comments: Like the kiss of a butterfly’s wings on a flower, Mary Bly has written this book with such tenderness. So much of the story mirrors Bly’s lived experience as a Shakespearean professor at Fordham University in New York, marrying an Italian man, and suffering the pain and indignity and fear of cancer. [CW: disordered eating, cancer, dying, death, funeral] This is not a romance, despite the title, but the novel has a large romance sub-plot. This novel is about Lizzie deciding how to live given her diagnosis of terminal cancer. Should she give up? Should she try one more round of experimental treatment? Should she do it for the men in her life? For herself? This book is all about asking deep, searching questions and discovering for herself who she wants to be. A beautiful, beautiful book. [My review is here.]

The Night Watchman by Louise Erdrich
Category: Literary Fiction
Comments: This is the best book I read this year. It won a Pulitzer prize, and I can see why. Erdrich brings her Native American heritage to bear in crafting a story where no detail is spurious, no emotion extraneous. It is based on an Indian (Erdrich uses this word) reservation and the driving force is the white government's desire to evict the residents and bring settlers in. The poverty on the reservation is horrifying and the lives lived are so desperate and so out-of-step with the rest of American culture and society. And yet, the beauty and dignity in the Native American culture and beliefs are not to be found elsewhere in the larger America.

According to this WaPo review: "Erdrich read a cache of letters written in the middle of the 20th century by her grandfather Patrick Gourneau. He had been chairman of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Advisory Committee during the tribe’s modern-day fight for survival. The threat at that time was legal but as potentially disastrous as earlier assaults: In 1953, the U.S. House passed a resolution declaring that a number of tribes should be rapidly “freed from Federal supervision.” Beneath that glorious promise of emancipation lurked the government’s true plan: the unilateral abrogation of treaties, the wholesale termination of tribes’ rights and the abandonment of Native Americans already impoverished by centuries of genocidal policies. Reminded of that dark era and her grandfather's heroic role in saving the Turtle Mountain Reservation in North Dakota, Erdrich knew she had found the inspiration for her next book."

Mangoes, Mischief, and Tales of Friendship by Chitra Soundar, illustrated by Uma Krishnaswamy
Category: Children's Chapter Book
Comments: Replete with humor and drama, this book is a collection of short stories reminiscent of stories of the 16th century Mughal Emperor Akbar and his advisor and confidant Birbal. The protagonists are two 10-year-old mischievous and precocious boys who courageously use their intellect to solve tricky problems in the king's court. The book is divided into two previously published smaller books: A Dollop of Ghee and a Pot of Wisdom and A Jar of Pickles and a Pinch of Justice. Each book has four stories of the boys' adventures in meting out justice and reprimands when the king is busy tending to other matters of his kingdom. [My review is here.]

Binny's Diwali by Thrity Umrigar, illustrated by Nidhi Chanani
Category: Children's Picture Book
Comments: Bright fairy lights, warm oil lamps, colorful powder designs, new clothes, sparkling jewelry, delicious sweets, savory snacks, and firecrackers...all make the season of Diwali a joyous occasion. While the multiday festival has Hindu religious notes, it is also a secular cultural celebration in which Indians of all faiths participate. Diwali, known as the Festival of Lights, celebrates the victory of good over evil, of hope over darkness. It is a reminder to observants to be good, kind, and brave. There are many legends associated with Diwali with roots deep into Indian mythology of thousands of years ago. Binny’s Diwali celebrates an Indian American girl’s desire to share her culture with her classmates, none of whom know about this festival. [My review is here.]

Category: Children's Picture & Board Books
Comments: A comfortable chair. A warm fire. Hot chocolate. Cuddles. And the perfect book. Here are stories perfect for cozy reading over the holidays. [My reviews are here.]
Sheepish (Wolf Under Cover) by Helen Yoon
The Smile Shop by Satoshi Kitamura
If I Were a Tree by Andrea Zimmerman, illustrated by Jing Jing Tsong
David Jumps In by Alan Woo, illustrated by Katty Maurey
From Maybe to Forever: An Adoption Story by M.L. Gold and N.V. Fong, illustrated by Jess Hong
The Little One by Kiyo Tanaka, translated by David Boyd
Baby Raccoon illustrated by Yu-Hsuan Huan
Baby Fox illustrated by Yu-Hsuan Huan
Paper Peek: Animals by Chihiro Takeuchi
I Can Be Anything: Guessing Game Book by Shinsuke Yoshitake

Review: Lizzie & Dante by Mary Bly

noreply@blogger.com (Keira Soleore) — Mon, 13 Dec 2021 02:10:00 +0000

Like the kiss of a butterfly’s wings on a flower, Mary Bly has written Lizzie & Dante with such tenderness. So much of the story mirrors Bly’s lived experience as a Shakespearean professor at Fordham University in New York, marrying an Italian man, and suffering the pain and indignity and fear of cancer. And yet, the heroine emerges from this story a fully formed person in her own right.

Lizzie Delford is on the island of Elba in Italy living at the ultra-fancy Hotel Bonaparte (naturally!) with her best friend, Grey Thuston, and his lover, Hollywood megastar Rohan Das. Lizzie has stage three, incurable cancer and has been invited by Rohan on a luxurious vacation that she could’ve never afforded. In the midst of all her pain and pills, Lizzie enjoys the pampering, the beach, and the warmth of the sun on her skin. And she feels alive like she has not for a very long time. Bly has done an extraordinary job of showing Lizzie’s relationship with her illness. How the fear of pain and the irrevocable slide into further and further deterioration of quality of life are causing her to refuse experimental treatment and to give in to death waiting in the shadows. She exists in the liminal space between living and dying, a stasis of waiting. And yet, she is charmed by a man, voraciously attracted to him, uninhibitedly making love to him, falling in love with him—all life-affirming actions.

Dante Moretti is the father of a twelve-year-old girl. He is also a world celebrity chef whose private life is shrouded in mystery in the wider world. On the island of Elba, everyone knows Dante and his nondescript restaurant where one eats what one is served and dinner reservations, for even the wealthiest yacht owners, are many months out. Lizzie is unimpressed with Dante’s creations, though everyone with a pulse extolls their virtues. He is charmed by her refusal to kowtow to his talents. For a chef who refuses to make substitutions to his dishes, he makes a hamburger for her at her very first meal—his plebian American.

Unlike what the title implies, this is not a romance novel with a happy ever after—this is the heroine’s journey—but the romance between Lizzie and Dante is a large part of the story and the novel hums with the joy of their love. Right from the beginning when they meet on the beach, Lizzie and Dante exist on the verge of being in love. It takes tremendous courage for anyone to love someone, and especially for Lizzie to love Dante. As Lizzie says, “Pity is a terrible reason to start a relationship” and so she does not share her illness and its prognosis with him...until he eventually guesses. For her, there is no “falling in love”—love is an act of valor. You choose it by saying, here is someone I want to share a pillow with and smile across a candlelit dinner table with for all my days. For as Hannah Arendt has said, “Fearlessness is what love seeks.”

Lizzie and Grey met in their teens at their last foster mother’s house, and they have been an item ever since. Their love is intense and soul-binding. For a while, Lizzie thought they would even marry. But the evening when she thought he would propose, he came out to her as being gay. She was utterly devastated. And ran away from him to Europe for further studies. Grey, in turn, was devastated thinking she was rejecting his being gay and hence threw him away. He had thought they would continue as before, and nothing would change.

With great finesse, Bly lays out the complexity of Lizzie’s and Grey’s relationship and how, on Elba, it is compounded by Rohan’s presence in his life and Dante’s presence in her life. Lizzie and Grey are ex-lovers and love each other and yet are not in love with each other. There is a difference that Bly makes you appreciate—this is her skill in writing romances as Eloisa James coming to play. Grey argues that sex is not a definer of love and that his love for Lizzie is purer and all the more valuable than his for Rohan or Dante’s for her. He is fighting for her life and she, by refusing further treatment, was rejecting him all over again. She was not fighting for him.

The issue of further treatment is a complex conundrum for Lizzie. Part of her wants to reject it out of fear of having her hopes repeatedly dashed and out of fear of continued pain. Part of her wants to undergo it because of her love for Grey and Dante. It’s her decision. They don’t get to coerce her to do it. But should she do it for them? Does she owe them? These questions tease at her conscience all throughout the book. It is only when she decides to do it for herself that the decision feels right. As Lizzie says to Grey, “I’ll fight. I will do it all. Everything. And if...if it doesn’t work, it won’t be because I didn’t try to stay here. I promise.”

Lyrically spare and thematically lush, Lizzie & Dante is a sprawling yet intimate tale, rich in detail and images. Bringing her own rich life to the page, Bly has crafted a fictional story that stands on its own. Nobody could better understand Lizzie than Bly—her despair, her laughter, her singing, her very appreciation and sheer gratitude in being alive. There is a wise Shintō saying: “To be fully alive is to have an aesthetic perception of life because a major part of the world's goodness lies in its often unspeakable beauty.”

[Content Warnings: disordered eating, cancer, dying, death, funeral]

My Best Romance Novels of 2021

noreply@blogger.com (Keira Soleore) — Sun, 05 Dec 2021 22:17:00 +0000

Here are my best romance novels of 2021 (in alphabetical order by the authors' last names):

The Brightest Star in Paris by Diana Biller
This book was a wow book for me. In this gorgeously written romance, Diana Biller provides a fascinating view into the psychological makeup of two haunted lovers, where one is literally haunted. Yes, there are ghosts in this book. This is a stunning novel of tender emotions amid harsh circumstances. The romance is set in 1878 France, seven years after the horrific events of the siege of Paris and the Paris Commune. It’s an unusual setting for a romance, full of great strife and turmoil, and Biller provides readers with a fabulous immersion into that place and time. The heroine is a prima ballerina with the Paris Opera Ballet. The hero and heroine met 12 years ago in a whirlwind summer romance, but she broke it off. Now he is back and determined to rekindle their romance, yet she sends him away again. He realizes that he has to let her go so she can decide if they are meant to be together. This book is very much her journey from living a rigid life of conformity and denial into one of acceptance and courage and in charge of her happiness. (Review here.)

The Gentle Art of Fortune Hunting by KJ Charles
KJ Charles continues to write book after book of near perfection. She is a courageous writer who doesn’t shy away from morally ambiguous characters, where a protagonist can hold positive and negative traits in balance; sometimes one takes precedence over the other. The end is always positively sound while still retaining some of the ambiguity. Sir John Hartlebury “Hart” is a baronet, a prosaic member of the Upper Ten Thousand with a good-sized property, and also a tradesman efficiently managing his sister’s brewery. He is a large man with a large voice, who cannot be bothered to temper his views or mind his manners when in company. He retains an avuncular interest in the future of his niece, wanting her to acquire some town bronze, while safeguarding her fortune from the hands of fortune hunters. Robin Loxleigh is a gazetted fortune hunter. He and his sister, Marianne, make no bones about them being down on their luck and from a small village in Nottinghamshire, here in London to make advantageous marriages. They charmingly cozen everyone into thinking them to be harmless, so Society casts a benign eye over their machinations. Robin and Hart meet when Robin inveigles himself into the notice of Hart’s niece, and Hart is instantly suspicious of him. (Review here.)

Accidentally Engaged by Farah Heron
There is food and friendship, vulnerability and defenselessness, affection and aloofness, birth family and found family, betrayal and the requisite expiation. And above all, there is love and laughter. Heron draws on her own Indian Tanzanian Canadian Muslim heritage to authentically write about her culture in the dishes where the Gujarati Indian food has an East African twist, in the occasional comments about what is allowed or disallowed in Islam, in the Canadian-ness of the heroine’s outlook to life, in the longing the hero has for the beauty of Dar es Salaam and the spices of Zanzibar. Reena works in finance, a field she despises. It is a field she chose in defiance of her parents’ wishes to work in their real estate business. She wants to be independent. Nadim has come to Toronto from Dar es Salaam via a graduate degree from the London School of Economics. A big stumbling block for Reena is that Nadim works for her dad and is the chosen one "from the Muslim Bachelors 'R' Us warehouse" for her hand in marriage by both sets of parents. (Review here.)

The Sweetest Remedy by Jane Igharo
This is a lovely women’s fiction tale set in Nigeria. The country comes alive from Igharo's personal experience as a Nigerian-Canadian author. Hannah is biracial and writes for an online magazine. She is very close to her loving Caucasian American mother. Her wealthy entrepreneur father abandoned them when he returned to his family in Nigeria when Hannah was little. Lawrence runs one of her father’s companies in Nigeria. By the terms of her father’s will, Hannah is invited to Nigeria for his funeral. The heart of the story is of Hannah stepping away from constantly feeling unwanted by her father, to forgive him, and to allow his family to embrace her as one of their own. She lost her father, but gained a family.

Hana Khan Carries On by Uzma Jalaluddin
A touch of a hand. Warmth. A cupping of the face. Tenderness. Glances and long looks. Mesmerizing. There is a wealth of meaning in small, small things. Relationships are spun out of romanticism like this, infused with the weight of regard and understanding and care. Such is the beauty Jalaluddin brings to to this book. Hana is a young first-generation immigrant woman, living in the Golden Crescent region of Toronto. She dreams of working in radio, telling stories of people and how they live in the world. To make that dream a reality, she interns at a radio station, while honing her skills on a secret podcast with a deeply loyal following. The Golden Crescent is made up of first- and second-generation family-owned stores, such as Hana’s family’s Three Sisters Biryani Poutine restaurant, a halal fixture in the area. Aydin is a newcomer to the Golden Crescent, brash and wealthy. He is a first-generation immigrant as well and comes from faraway Vancouver. He has come to open his own halal restaurant and is determined to put Three Sisters out of business. To Hana, even if Aydin’s restaurant were to fail, he would always have his father’s wealth and contacts to fall back upon, but if her mother’s restaurant were to fail, her family would be bereft, their very survival at stake. (Review here.)

Tokyo Ever After by Emiko Jean
Awash in tenderness, with limitless care, Emiko Jean leads with her heart. This YA contemporary romance is a story that is American and Japanese and neither and both. Like the delicate sakura, the protagonists’ love is essential to them, the very air they breathe; whether like the blossoms it will be impermanent or endure is for the future to know. This is the story of Izumi Tanaka becoming... A senior at Mount Shasta High School in California, Izumi often feels like an outsider in the place of her birth. As a single child of a single parent, she has often felt lonely, but her questions about her father have gotten instantly shut down. Naturally, she has wondered if he even knows she was born; would he accept her if he knew she existed; does he care—these are questions that circle her mind obsessively. A chance glance at a book reveals a name, expert Googling later there is a contact, a letter is sent...and highly polished Japanese officials show up in her kitchen with its cracked yellow linoleum floor. Her Imperial Highness Princess Izumi, they call her. She’s the illegitimate daughter of the Crown Prince of Japan and he wants her to visit him at his residence, Tōgū Palace, in Tokyo. Izumi shows up at Narita airport in leggings and a faded sweatshirt and is greeted by Akio Kobayashi, a gorgeous Imperial Guard with a stick up his backside. (Review here.)

One Last Stop by Casey McQuiston
How do you romance someone on your subway commute? Especially when, she is lost in time and trapped on a train? And especially, especially when you want to help her return to her time in the 1970s? One Last Stop is a new adult, queer, magical realism spin on Kate & Leopold. Life circumstances have made Caucasian American August Landry a cynic. She arrives in New York with her entire life in a few boxes. She moves into an apartment with people who are wildly different from each other. And yet, they meld together in one close, wisecracking family. August meets Asian American Jane Su, in her ripped jeans and leather jacket, on the Q train. From the first, August is entranced and hopes she can meet Jane again and again. And she does...until she realizes that Jane is actually a time traveler from the 1970s stuck on the Q train. The book cover is fabulous and has such tiny-tiny details from the story. (Review here.)

Reckless by Selena Montgomery AKA Stacey Abrams
This was my first book by Stacey Abrams. I keep meaning to read her hugely popular mystery, but I have been a bit leery whether the book is popular because of the contents of the book or Abrams' name. However, this book has convinced me that she is an excellent writer. I am hoping Avon plans on publishing other of her Selena books. Reckless has a mystery as well as the romance, and both are very well paced. The heroine is a high profile celebrity defense attorney in Atlanta and he is a small-town sherriff in a small town in Georgia, who moved there from Chicago and finds that the small town suits him better. This small town is also where the heroine grew up, and moving back here to defend a client has her questioning her high-stress job in the big city. (Review here.)

First Love, Take Two by Sajni Patel
The story is set in the same circle of friends as Patel's debut book, The Trouble with Hating You. An Indian American woman fell in love with a Black American man back in college, but pleasing her parents and his father's disdain caused her to repudiate him. He was devastated. Now they're back in touch and sharing an apartment and just as much in love. Will they fight their parents for their right to love each other or will they continue to let their parents dictate who they should be with?

Honey Girl by Morgan Rogers
Nearly fifty years ago, Joni Mitchell sang, “we are stardust” and Carl Sagan famously said that we are made of “star stuff.” The protagonist in this book by Morgan Rogers is indeed the child of the cosmos. The universe conspired to make her. And inspired her to dream of becoming an astronomer.Grace Porter has a newly minted doctorate in astronomy from Portland. Eleven years of dogged hard work and weekends and summers sacrificed to research and achieving new and newer heights in her pursuit of perfection have left her burnt out. Job search has been heartbreaking as she realizes that the field of her dreams is rejecting her Black heritage. In a bid to shore her spirits up, Grace goes off to Las Vegas with her dearest friends. And there, one night, she meets a girl with stars in her eyes and roses in her cheeks; they get drunk; they get married; and they buy a lock together with matching keys and rings. After a night together, the girl leaves behind a love note to her Honey Girl with a calling card and a photo. Yuki Yamamoto is a Japanese American child of immigrant parents living in NYC. She is a medieval history major who waitresses for her living needs and assuages her lonely soul and those of others in a late night radio show called Are You There? (Review here.)

Peter Cabot Gets Lost by Cat Sebastian
An m/m story set in the 1960s, unfolds over the course of a cross-country journey by car from Boston to LA. Peter is the son of a super wealthy Massachussetts family of politicians, with his father running for president. All his life, he has been considered the family's disappointment. He never measures up to their drive and ambition; and they don't yet know that he is gay. Throughout his four years of college, he has lusted after his classmate Caleb, the one who has it all together. Or so it seems. Caleb comes from poverty and through dint of scholarships and sheer hard work has made it through an Ivy League university. Now, he has landed a prestigious job at LA Times as a journalist. But he just has to get there, and he has very little money left, and his ride skipped out on him, and he is stuck...and in tears. Spying Caleb on the side of the road, Peter jumps to his aid and offers to drive him to LA—mentally consigning his father's campaign to the flames. His family thinks very low of him, and he just plans on pleasing himself from now on. Peter is all laconic charm, bending over backwards to please. Caleb is grumpy, prickly, and has a chip on his shoulder about money and paying his share. The heart of the story is how they grow together and become more of themselves through the belief and support of the other in them. They each believe that the other is wonderful in every which way. And a journey that was supposed to take days becomes a life-long committment. Tender and fierce, this book is what romance is all about.

Love, Chai, and Other Four-Letter Words by Annika Sharma
Tender, attentive, thoughtful...this book is what true romance is all about. Kiran Mathur is a Type-A biomedical engineer who moved to Duke from India and on to New York City. Nash Hawthorne is a child and adolescent hospital psychologist from Nashville. They connect over chai, philosophy, and the vibrant city around them. This is the first South Asian multicultural book I have read where one set of parents is based in India, so the clash is between conservative Indian Indian values and Southern Caucasian American values as opposed to Indian American and Caucasian American values in nothern cities, which are easier to meld. Sharma's work is pitch perfect here as she has her protagonists walking the tightrope between what their hearts desire and what their cultures demand of them. (Review here.)

The Ex Talk by Rachel Lynn Solomon
An excellent enemies-to-lovers book. Shay Goldstein is Caucasian Jewish American and a producer at a public radio station in Seattle. She secretly yearns to be a host of her own show, but in ten years of taking crap from her sexist boss, she hasn’t made much progress in that direction. Dominic Yun is Korean American and has a degree in journalism from Northwestern University. He is intent on making his mark in serious journalism. Inexplicably, he chooses to do so at a radio station despite his fear of public speaking, because he sees that as a springboard to journalism greatness. Shay and Dominic’s animosity towards each other fuels great banter between them. (Review here.)

The Fastest Way to Fall by Denise Williams
This book delves deep into the psyche of a woman struggling with body image and sense of self. It is not a story about weight loss, but about learning to love who you are and about falling in love with someone who helps you feel strong. Britta Colby is a curvy Black woman whose goals are to jump out of a plane and to look and feel good naked. Britta refuses to allow being fat to define her. And yet, rejection from a crush about her looks causes her to doubt herself and wonder if she’s good enough. Wes Lawson is the CEO of FitMe Fitness, a hugely popular, individualized, body positive lifestyle app. Through its clever matching algorithm, FitMe teams up each client with a professional coach who helps them meet their goals. FitMe’s cardinal rule is that neither the client nor the coach should know each other outside the confines of the text-based coaching experience of the app. However, early on, when Britta’s emotionally miscalculated crash dieting and over-exercising cause her to put out a frantic call for help, Wes breaks confidentiality to rush her to the hospital. (Review here.)

September & October Reading Notes

noreply@blogger.com (Keira Soleore) — Fri, 29 Oct 2021 17:20:00 +0000

There are different types of editors. Some let your words stand for themselves, some pick and choose here and there and polish it up but leave most of it alone allowing your voice to shine through, some ask questions to force you to think deeper and more critically, and then there are others, who take your words and rewrite the piece in their own words while retaining some of your phrases and ideas/information. I was used to the first, am really appreciating the second and the third because they make me a better writer, and am bemused at the fourth because the end result doesn't sound like me; not my voice, not my style. Writing for different outlets is making me aware of such different editing styles.

Reckless by Selena Montgomery AKA Stacey Abrams
Category: Contemporary Romanctic Suspense
Comments: [A Starred Review for Booklist.] This was my first book by Stacey Abrams. I keep meaning to read her hugely popular mystery, but I have been a bit leery whether the book is popular because of the contents of the book or Abrams' name. However, this book has convinced me that she is an excellent writer. I am hoping Avon plans on publishing other of her Selena books. Reckless has a mystery as well as the romance, and both are very well paced. The heroine is a high profile celebrity defense attorney in Atlanta and he is a small-town sherriff in a small town in Georgia, who moved there from Chicago and finds that the small town suits him better. This small town is also where the heroine grew up, and moving back here to defend a client has her questioning her high-stress job in the big city. [My review is here.]

Love, Chai, and Other Four-Letter Words by Annika Sharma
Category: Contemporary Romance
Comments: [A Starred Review for Booklist—it was on the cover of the Sept 15 issue and also a Review of the Day!] A strong cultural clash between a woman from India and a white man from Tenessee set in NYC and New Delhi. This is the first South Asian multicultural book I have read where one set of parents is based in India, so the clash is between conservative Indian Indian values and Southern Caucasian American values as opposed to Indian American and Caucasian American values in nothern cities, which are easier to meld. Sharma's work is pitch perfect here as she has her protagonists walking the tightrope between what their hearts desire and what their cultures demand of them. [My review is here.]

The Brightest Star in Paris by Diana Biller
Category: Contemporary Paranormal Romance
Comments: This book was a wow book for me. My first Biller, and I plan to pick up her first. In this gorgeously written romance, Diana Biller provides a fascinating view into the psychological makeup of two haunted lovers, where one is literally haunted. Yes, there are ghosts in this book. This is a stunning novel of tender emotions amid harsh circumstances. The romance is set in 1878 France, seven years after the horrific events of the siege of Paris and the Paris Commune. It’s an unusual setting for a romance, full of great strife and turmoil, and Biller provides readers with a fabulous immersion into that place and time. The heroine is a prima ballerina with the Paris Opera Ballet. The hero and heroine met 12 years ago in a whirlwind summer romance, but she broke it off. Now he is back and determined to rekindle their romance, yet she sends him away again. He realizes that he has to let her go so she can decide if they are meant to be together. This book is very much her journey from living a rigid life of conformity and denial into one of acceptance and courage and in charge of her happiness. [My review is here.]

Battle Royal by Lucy Parker
The Royals Next Door by Karina Halle
Category: Contemporary Romance
Comments: [This was a double review for BookPage.] In Battle Royal, the pastry chef heroine and the princess bond over her wedding cake. In The Royals Next Door, the school teacher heroine befriends the royal duchess, whose character is greatly influenced by Meghan Markle, as a neighbor. Both pairs of women quickly become bosom bows. Both books are enemies-to-lovers romance stories. Parker's hero is a competing pastry chef, whereas Halle's hero is the royal couple's chief bodyguard. There is much angst between the couples and much tenderness from the heroes. All four characters have had traumatic pasts that are sensitively portrayed. I really enjoyed both stories. Be prepared for a new direction in Parker's style from her London Celebrities books. [My review is here.]

Meet Me in London by Georgia Toffolo
Category: Contemporary Romance
Comments: [Reviewed for Booklist.] Toffolo, known as Toff, is a big British TV personality. This book was previously published in the UK and is Toffolo's debut book for the US market. It was very well-received in the UK. Set in London, it's a heartwarming story about love between a barkeep, who moonlights as a fashion designer, and the reluctant heir to a billion-pound department store empire. This is a fake fiancée story where she serves as his conscience to pay his privilege forward and he serves as a deep, abiding support in her struggles with her inability to have children. An immersive London setting would've made this story better.

Never Fall for Your Fiancée by Virginia Heath
Category: Historical Romance
Comments: [Reviewed for Booklist.] Fans of Heath’s Harlequin Historicals will enjoy this first installment in her Merriwell Sisters series, a historical rom-com. This is possibly my first historical rom-com written in the modern style. Of course, it displays the deep period knowledge that Heath has. The heroine is a woodcut engraver and illustrator barely eking out a living for herself and her two sisters. Enter a nobleman thinking her perfect as her fake fiancée to bamboozle his mother and get her off his back about marrying.

Peter Cabot Gets Lost by Cat Sebastian
Category: Historical Romance
Comments: This short novel is a sequel to Sebastian's novella Tommy Cabot Was Here. This is an m/m story set in the 1960s and unfolds over the course of a cross-country journey by car from Boston to LA. Peter is the son of a super wealthy Massachussetts family of politicians, with his father running for president. All his life, he has been considered the family's disappointment. He never measures up to their drive and ambition; and they don't yet know that he is gay. Throughout his four years of college, he has lusted after his classmate Caleb, the one who has it all together. Or so it seems. Caleb comes from poverty and through dint of scholarships and sheer hard work has made it through an Ivy League university. Now, he has landed a prestigious job at LA Times as a journalist. But he just has to get there, and he has very little money left, and his ride skipped out on him, and he is stuck...and in tears. Spying Caleb on the side of the road, Peter jumps to his aid and offers to drive him to LA—mentally consigning his father's campaign to the flames. His family thinks very low of him, and he just plans on pleasing himself from now on. Peter is all laconic charm, bending over backwards to please. Caleb is grumpy, prickly, and has a chip on his shoulder about money and paying his share. The heart of the story is how they grow together and become more of themselves through the belief and support of the other in them. They each believe that the other is wonderful in every which way. And a journey that was supposed to take days becomes a life-long committment. Tender and fierce, this book is what romance is all about. Highly recommended!

Rescuing Lord Inglewood by Sally Britton
Category: Traditional Historical Romance
Comments: This was a Saturday Book Club read, and it wasn't very successful. I wonder whether "middling" books become "not great," because of the slow reading, the deep attention to detail, and the discussion with multiple people, thereby sundering the magic from the book. Maybe if I had read it all in one gulp, I would've enjoyed it more because I would've become caught up in it. The book started out well enough with our intrepid heroine rescuing the hero by bodily throwing herself over him to protect him from a falling statue. The hero tries to save her reputation, but circumstances, rumor, and innuendo means they have to marry. MOC!! My favorite trope...only when both the protagonists are mature. In this case, the hero decides to make the best of it. He is officious and a bit high-handed, for sure, but his heart is in the right place and his intentions are kind. She, on the other hand, is stuck in her childhood and makes the hero pay for his slights over and over again with immature and inexplicable behavior. It was understandble for a bit, but quickly became tiresome. I was #TeamHero.

The Lovely And Dangerous Launch Of Lucy Cavanagh by Stacy Peterson
Category: Contemporary Romance
Comments: [Reviewed for Foreword Reviews. Foreword Reviews magazine goes out librarians and booksellers and carries reviews of indie books.] I don't know how much I am allowed to say here about it, so I won't say much other than the book was a bit of a mess in terms of storyline, characters, plot, pacing, and writing craft. Pity. It started out strong with a heroine taking a courageous step in leaving her wealthy home in New York City and heading out on a perilous journey by herself to her aunt in San Francisco. It is a story set in 19th century Wild West Americana and is a tale of the heroine's journey, physical and emotional.

Beautiful World, Where Are You by Sally Rooney
Category: Literary Fiction
Comments: This was a chapter sample. I wanted to see what the brouhaha was all about because this book received 67 (!!) reviews in reputable outlets before two weeks post publication were out. An Observation: From reading LitHub and now this piece, I realize that tiny, particular details are so important these days. To me, they seem like persnickity details that probably don't matter; but there is "literary" value these days to detailing everything and juxtaposing non-coherent details one on top of the other. As far as this book goes: I enjoyed the writing. I am intrigued by the premise. And I have FOMO. It's on my list to read over the Holidays.

The Art of Stillness: Adventures in Going Nowhere by Pico Iyer
Category: Nonfiction
Comments: Pico Iyer is one of the greatest of writers and philosophers living today. (He'd be the first to disavow this approbation.) He has written countless articles, essays, reviews, books and so on, edging ever closer to philosophy. His book about His Holiness the Dalai Lama is one of my treasured books. So I was really curious about his thoughts on stillness—periodic pauses in one's life. From His Holiness, Leonard Cohen, Thoreau, and the masters at the temples in Kyoto, Iyer has come away with a deep and vast knowledge of self that is integrated in all that he is and does. His writing is the easiest way for outsiders to observe this. This book came from the TED Talk he gave on this subject a few years ago. It's a slim hardcover—only 70-odd pages—but it is packed with wisdom.

—The Unexpected Friend: A Rohingya Children’s Story by Raya Rahman, illustrated by Inshra Sakhawat Russell
—Sugar in Milk by Thirty Umrigar, illustrated by Khoa Le
Category: Children's Picture Books
Comments: Children suffer the most when people are displaced from their homes through natural means and/or human depredations and violence. Without their volition and against their wishes, they are uprooted from the safety and security of their homes and made to undergo harsh circumstances in faraway lands. And yet, their trauma and their stories often go untold. These two books seek to redress that disregard. [My reviews are here.]

—Where Three Oceans Meet by Rajani LaRocca, illustrated by Archana Sreenivasan
—Seven Golden Rings by Rajani LaRocca, illustrated by Archana Sreenivasan
—Bracelets for Bina’s Brothers by Rajani LaRocca, illustrated by Chaaya Prabhat
—The Secret Code Inside You: all about your DNA by Rajani LaRocca, illustrated by Steven Salerno
Category: Children's Picture Books
Comments: This year is a banner year for author Rajani LaRocca. She has two middle grade novels publishing as well as four picture books for children. I was highly curious how LaRocca does it all given her busy career as a doctor. All four of her picture books are Indian-themed and range from tales for the very young to older children. Her repertoire is large in terms of the stories she tells and the writing style. Her favorites are books where math and science are embedded into the stories. I cannot wait to see what she has in store next year. This is one author to watch. [My interview and reviews are here.]

My Summer Reading Notes (Long)

noreply@blogger.com (Keira Soleore) — Tue, 31 Aug 2021 15:55:00 +0000

I moved this summer. As a result, my time was not my own. Between all the culling, donating, packing, shipping, moving in, unpacking, and arranging my worldly goods, not to mention selling our house and renting a new one, I was exhausted from morning to night and had no energy to do any writing. I did do some reading and reviewing, as you can see below, but that was it. I stopped writing my Morning Pages and had only short updates for my journal. But now, I feel I have a better handle on things, so, hopefully, I will be able to return to writing Morning Pages and detailed journaling.

It is mindblowing to me how people move every few years. Perhaps, you acquire fewer things, only those you absolutely need and absolutely love, rather than so many things that look interesting in the moment but turn to crap long-term. I was in my old home for 21 years. I still remember how few things I brought into that home from my apartment. And I regret, how very many things I brought into my current home. Given that this house is much smaller, and despite the innumerable donations (and literal junking of things), right now, there are quite a few boxes in the garage. Luckily, the garage has storage. Given that I am renting right now, there are more moves in my near future. Woe! Perhaps I should donate boxes wholesale if I haven't opened them in this next year. But, oh, I loathe to part with my books—many of those boxes are of books. As it is, I reluctantly gave away hundreds before I moved, and that was wrenching. The only consolation was that out of the many boxes of books I donated, a close friend of mine got four.

In reviewing news... Frolic Media changed its direction at the end of June to mostly audio-video contribution as opposed to written. As a result, my 2.5-year-old review column Book of the Week went bye-bye. They had given me all the freedom in choosing the books I wanted to review, and I was allowed to develop my own style of reviewing. I'm incredibly grateful to them for believing in me and supporting me all these years. As a result of my departure from Frolic, in the midst of the move, I was frantically DM-ing people I know and cold-writing to editors. Luckily for me, American Library Association's Booklist, BookPage, Washington Independent Review of Books, and Foreword Reviews took me up on my promise to be able to write for them. I will, of course, continue to write for the Independent Examiner.

Interview with author Lucy Parker
Ever since Carina Press published Act Like It, I have been a fan of Lucy Parker’s books set in the theater world, and the her fans are legion. Parker pairs keen observations about modern London life with a quirky sense of humor and spicy language. Her latest published this month, Battle Royal, is the first in a new series centered around the monarchy.

Interview with author Marguerite Kaye
Her Heart for a Compass, which came out earlier this month, was the most anticipated royal historical novel of the year. Authored by Sarah, Duchess of York, in collaboration with Marguerite Kaye, the story is a fictional account of the life of the duchess’ great-great-great-aunt Lady Margaret Montagu Douglas Scott, who was a close acquaintance of Queen Victoria. The book is Ferguson’s first adult novel. The Scottish Kaye, however, is an award-winning romance author of more than 50 books.

The Layover by Lacie Waldon
Category:Contemporary Romance
Comments: On some level, this is a rom-com where two protagonists meet on a plane and discover that they have much in common with each other than they had previously thought. Spending time together with periods of intense self-revelatory explorations convinces them that they’re compatible on multiple levels. However, such a breezy précis does this introspective book a disservice. There is psychology at play in this story. It is a wonderful meditation on the conscious and subconscious mind, traumas of childhood, and the separation of the adult from the child. And Waldon does it all with the light hand of a rom-com. My review is here.

One Last Stop by Casey McQuiston
Category:Contemporary Romance
Comments: [CW: prejudice and violence against queer people, death, homophobia, anti-Asian hate crimes] How do you romance someone on your subway commute? Especially when, she is lost in time and trapped on a train? And especially, especially when you want to help her return to her time in the 1970s? One Last Stop is a new adult, queer, magical realism spin on Kate & Leopold. Life circumstances have made Caucasian American August Landry a cynic. She arrives in New York with her entire life in a few boxes. She moves into an apartment with people who are wildly different from each other. And yet, they meld together in one close, wisecracking family. August meets Asian American Jane Su, in her ripped jeans and leather jacket, on the Q train. From the first, August is entranced and hopes she can meet Jane again and again. And she does...until she realizes that Jane is actually a time traveler from the 1970s stuck on the Q train. The book cover is fabulous and has such tiny-tiny details from the story. My review is here.

First Love, Take Two by Sajni Patel
Category: Contemporary Romance
Comments: [CW: racism, colorism] This was my first review for Booklist. The story is set in the same circle of friends as Patel's debut book, The Trouble with Hating You. An Indian American woman fell in love with a Black man back in college, but pleasing her parents caused her to repudiate him. He was devastated. Now they're back in touch and just as much in love. Will they fight their parents for their right to love each other? Since my review was published for the magazine, I don't have a link to the full review.

The Sweetest Remedy by Jane Igharo
Category: Contemporary Women's Fiction
Comments: This was for Booklist as well, and I don't have a link to the full review. I loved Igharo's debut, Ties That Tether (review here), so i was eagerly looking forward to her next book. While the first book was more romance, this is more women's fiction with a strong romance sub-plot. The heroine is biracial and had been abandoned by her Nigerian father because he already had a family of his own in Nigeria. Upon his death, his will stipulates that she travel to Nigeria and meet up with his family. And she discovers a new family there and a new love. Igharo is Nigerian Canadian, and her Nigerian setting feels authentic and well-researched.

A Duke Worth Fighting For by Christina Britton
Category: Historical Romance
Comments: This is the last book in Britton's Isle of Synne series. It is a classic Beauty and the Beast tale, where the circumspect widow of a Waterloo veteran is challenged with aiding a battle-scarred, socially inept, virginal duke with his matrimonial prospects. Unknown to them, their meeting on the Isle of Synne has been engineered by a Machiavellian matchmaker, the dowager viscountess who is the widow’s grandmother. My review is here.

The Scoundrel's Daughter by Anne Gracie
Category: Historical Romance
Comments: This is an excellent start to The Brides of Bellaire Gardens series by Anne Gracie. The book does an excellent job of developing both of its romances equally, which is rare. Usually the secondary romance is tied up in a quick, neat bow. But here, Gracie gives sufficient page time to interleave the development of the two romances, while retaining the primacy of one. There's an abusive husband, handsy lords, army discipline and integrity, widowers, cute girls, cuter kitten, curricle race, a bold goose and a bolder goose girl, young love, old love, hard-to-get prickly women and patient loving men, and Gracie's lovely writing. My review is here.

Division Bells by Iona Datt Sharma
Category:Contemporary Romance
Comments:This book was fabulous! I read it on KJ Charles' recommendation, so I went in with the hope of a good read, and it did not disappoint. It is set among the politics of the British House of Lords and is a clash between a senior civil servant attached to a baroness "Minister" and her special advisor whose father is a peer of the realm and former member of the Lords. I loved, and wallowed, in all the political details of getting their alternative energy items attached to a bill through the committee and full vote in the House. There is a ton of politics, and I was surprised to find myself a political wonk. Their relationship starts out adversarial, moves to attentive, then sexual, then loving. And the progression is gradual and organic and the characters are memorable. The book may only be 80 pages, but the story is much larger than that. Sharma is a gifted writer, and I wish she would write more.

Special Interests by Emma Barry
Category: Contemporary Romance
Comments: I really wanted to like this book. I really like the author, and folks I know on Twitter really like this book. But I didn't. It is a debut book, and it shows. It needs more introspection and character growth from that introspection. For the most part, the heroine is static. Her inexplicable reactions to the hero swing wildly between being pissed at him and wanting to jump his bones and nothing in between. I understand wanting to show conflicting feelings in a character but the extremes didn't work for me. However, it was the hero who sank the ship for me. It is a case of opposites attract. She propotions him. Twice. Both times he turns her down with a "it is not you, it is me" line. She is humiliated but every time he gives her a crumb of attention, she comes to him. He's patronizing, self-absorbed, and not very nice to her in thoughts and comments. Other than his looks, I don't see what he has going for him. The political details, unlike the book above, are light—they do convey a sense of DC but not in the depth that would've made the story shine. I read Barry's mission statement about her books with interest. Special Interests follows that definition of the basic structure of all her stories accurately. I wonder how Barry can make book after book original give these guidelines. (This book needed a copyeditor. I am surprised Carina Press put out a book with elementary errors.)

Mr. Hotshot CEO by Jackie Lau
Category:Contemporary Romance
Comments:[CW: depression] I have read four of Lau's books, and the first one made it to one of my Best Books of the Year list. But upon reading this book, I realized that Lau has one story to tell, and she rehashes it in every book I have read. Yes, the meet-cutes may differ and some of the turning points or crises may as well, but the bones of the stories are the same. While this is an interesting exercise in how an author can craft seemingly news stories from a confining structure, I was disappointed with this book. What lifts the book up from mediocrity is Lau's depiction of the heroine's depression. Lau discusses it with a degree of authenticity and depth that speaks of personal experience. She is open about it on Twitter, so I never questioned her depiction of it as I read along. How the heroine handles the illness, her role in it, other people's roles in it, and how she relates to other people is where the story is. This can be very triggering for some readers, uplifting for some, and fascinating for some. It is handled sensitively.

Marian's Christmas Wish by Carla Kelly
Category:Historical Romance
Comments: I loved this book. Vintage Kelly is always a hit for me. It is a typical Christmas story where good things are wished for and succeed in occuring as part of the spirit of the season. However, the characters elevate the story from the ordinary to memorable. Marian's father, a squire, has just died from an ill-advised ride in the countryside after he had been drinking. As a result, Marian and her family are about to lose their family home. Given how eccentric Marian is, all hopes for a lucrative match to save their family rest on her beautiful sister. Trouble is, her sister is in love with a poor curate. Enter an earl with who has had an arid life and is charmed by Marian's madcap schemes and unconventional foibles. She entertains him and he rapidly falls for her; she takes a while to arrive at the conclusion that she has loving feelings for him and that he feels likewise for her. This is a delightful traditional Regency.

The Duke's Regret by Catherine Kullman
Category:Historical Romance
Comments: The Saturday Book Club finished discussing this book with a flourish. Lovely, quiet book of second chances for protagonists in their mid to late thirties. This author is such a find! I talked about this book in some detail in my May review roundup. The biggest discussion of our club centered around why and how does the duchess decide to move forward with her relationship with the duke after two decades of neglect by him? How much and how does he atone in order to move forward in their relationship? Has he done enough? Is she too forgiving? And what about his relationship with the children he has neglected? This is a novella, and while at times it felt a little more exploration would've been warranted, overall, the pacing and details were very well done. A book to definitely pick up.

A Comfortable Alliance by Catherine Kullman
Category:Historical Romance
Comments: Given how much I loved Kullman's book above, my anticipation was high for her latest book. So I was crestfallen when I was underwhelmed by it. Frankly, I was bored. There were no stakes in the book. They meet. They like each other. They have a good intimate life and get along very well outside of it. While their marriage was based on respect and tepid affection, they fall into deep affection and into love from the get-go. Their life together is good—each does their part to make their marriage and their external life work well. The only fly in the ointment is that she constantly compares him to her lost youthful love; she is convinced that what she felt then was love with a capital 'L,' and what she feels for her husband is only affection. And she ruminates on it on and on. The book keeps bowling along as though narrated by an omniscent narrator, and frankly, I was bored. No stakes, no story. And it has the unsexiest sex scene I have ever read. Kullman should stick with closed door.

An Embroidered Spoon by Jayne Davis
Category:Historical Romance
Comments:This is the third book of The Saturday Book Club read. The author was recommended by Willa. Alas! Our book club decided to abandon this one part way through. The story started out bold and interesting. There is a stuck-up, rich beauty banished to a small village in Wales to live with her supposedly poor spinster aunt as a punishment for not accepting eligible suitors that her father put forward. She is spoiled and mistakes the hero for a local yokel and treats him as such. He's a tradesman from the Borders who ventures up there to buy the goods necessary. He's a sharp businessman and is fluent in Welsh and English. So the book starts out strong, but the heroine's about face from imperious to easygoing, from uppercrust to aweshucks was too sudden. There was no story left partway through the book, and I felt like the author was pulling the characters along, rather than the story being organic to the characters.

Miss Lattimore's Letter by Suzanne Allain
Category: Historical Romance
Comments: I loved Allain's Mr. Malcolm's List (review here) last year. Filming is under way with screenplay by Allain and Sam Heughan as Mr. Malcolm. The day my review published, Heughan RT'd my review!!!!!, thus, making my day/week/month/year. Miss Lattimore's Letter is likewise excellent. Allain has a keen ear and eye for conveying an immersive Regency setting. The book has two interweaved romances—one is Miss Sophronia "Sophie" Lattimore's with Sir Edmund, and the other is her cousin Cecilia's. While the secondary romance does not overshadow the main one, it does get sufficient page time to not be a pat thing that Allain wraps up in a cute bow. Sophie is a matchmaker by happenstance. She spies two unhappy couples and pairs them up through an anonymous letter, which becomes public, thereby raising Sophie's status from an unwanted spinster relation to a young woman worthy of notice. She then proceeds, reluctantly, to aid other couples with their troubled relationships and finds she has a knack for it. The heart of the story is Sophie's jilted past informing on her present choice of Sir Edmund's laidback and cautious courtship and her old beau—who rejected her for a woman with money—actively and ardently pursuing her. Who will she choose? Allain has done a good job of making the choice equitable, and not one the obvious non-choice.

The Shaadi Set-Up by Lillie Vale
Category: Contemporary Romance
Comments: This is a second-chances romance with lovely prose and tender feelings. Rita runs a furniture refurbishing business that is getting noticed more and more. But she is also perennially cash-strapped. Her boyfriend, Neil, is handsome and successful and a mama's boy who talks big about settling down but will never ever oppose his mother's will. The Bollywood-style plot twist is that Rita's mom had been rejected by Neil's grandparents as a bride for Neil's father. Rita's mom is still miffed about it and would never, ever, over-her-dead-body consider Neil for Rita. Enter Rita's old fling whom she had loved, loved, loved from when she was fifteen till their senior year in college. He had loved her back just as much...till, he broke them up over his grades and parents and...Now, Milan is back, just as handsome and cocky as ever and rich and successful to boot and wants Rita back in his life in her professional capacity (as interior decorator and stager for his realtor business) and on personal terms as well. Rita is CONFLICTED! The word "shaadi" means "marriage" and comes from the fictional Indian American matrimonial/dating site MyShaadi.com where Rita, Neil, and Milan have profiles. Rita tries to wrangle hers and Neil's profiles so they can be matched as fated mates to be presented to her mom as fait accompli, but instead, she and Milan get matched up. Oops! While the beginning half is stellar, the other half gets bogged down by rehashing of Rita's old feelings and not enough development of their second-chance "new" relationship. I wanted to see what the grown-up Rita and Milan brought new to the table and not merely as a continuation of their "never fell out of love" relationship.

Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning by Cathy Park Hong
Category: Nonfiction Essays
Comments: As mentioned in these blogs before, I belong to an antiracism book club in one my kids' schools. We started reading this book last month because it was AAPI (Asian American Pacific Islander) month, and until then, we'd read books by Black Americans but hadn't branched out to other marginalized authors. From the premise of the book on Amazon and reviews of the book, I was excited to read it. However, I ended up being disappointed by the poor writing. The essays were incoherent. I am used to personal essays being tightly formatted with thoughts (ideas, theories, and annecdotes) laid out in orderly thoughts with an overarching theme and progression towards an understanding. These essays meandered all over the place and at the end I was not sure what the points were. In our group discussions, we were all befuddled and didn't know how to critique the book. We didn't want to be prejudiced against the essence of the book despite the writing and especially because it was so touted by respectable review outlets. However, I feel no such caution. Bad writing is bad writing because bad writing does not convey what the writer thinks they're conveying and confuses the reader.

May Reading Notes

noreply@blogger.com (Keira Soleore) — Thu, 27 May 2021 17:50:00 +0000

This month, I read more historical romance than contemporary, which is an unusual departure for me. It's becoming harder and harder to find new historicals that appeal to me. Also a departure for me, I read only two diverse books this month.

Forbidden by Jo Beverley
Category: Historical Romance
Comments: Our Saturday Book Club finished reading this book this month. Our first book, and I'm so glad I joined up with Janet Webb (@JanetETennessee), Willa (@Willaful), Growly (@GrowlyCub), and Joanne Smythe (@regency_gal) to read it. These smart ladies made me really think hard about the book: the characters, the plot, the motivations and goals of the characters, and the ramifications of their actions. Looking forward to reading other books with these ladies in the months ahead.

This is a story with high angst and a wonderful resolution; there is high drama and quiet moments. As I read this book, I was reminded again and again that Beverley was a master of her craft when she was writing this series.

The heroine's husband has died, allowing her to escape a degrading, terrifying marriage that she had been forced into. Her dissipated brothers are now trying to force her into another such marriage, so she flees the family home, leaving behind everything. When she sees a nobleman offering her a bit of kindness, she seizes on a future with him by initiating him into sex—her only bargaining chip for a better life. He is honorable and requests his aunt to house her. Freed from horrible pressures, she starts to grow up from the terrified fifteen-year-old she's ever been into a young woman who knows her own mind. However, when she finds out that she is with child, he is forced against his every wish into an honorable marriage of convenience with her. The story is about how they each grow up and grow together.

The Duke's Regret by Catherine Kullman
Category: Historical Romance
Comments: This is the second book read of the Saturday Book Club. For this read, @NYSuri joined us as well. Catherine Kullman is such a find! Thanks to GrowlyCub, we chose this one for our second club read, and I loved her writing from the first few pages. It is a small book, but the story is large and leisurely, with no spare words. It is a quiet book by modern standards with less plot and more character development, which I love. All the historical details are spot-on but Kullman sprinkles them in the narrative purposefully and with a light hand. We are almost to the end of this book, and I just love it. This was the third book in Kullman's series, and I hope we'll pick up the first book in the series at some point.

The Duke of Gracechurch was forced into a marriage of convenience at a very young age with a girl not even out of girlhood at sixteen. He bitterly resented having his domineering father forcing his hand and vowed to forsake his wife and cleave to his mistress for whom he has much affection. As a result, he returns to his country seat periodically for ducal duties and getting children on his wife. Other than uncomplainingly allowing him to visit her bed, his wife leads a parallel life growing up under the aegis of the duke's mother.

Seventeen years later and after the death of his mistress, the duke takes stock of his life and realizes that he has allowed his life to pass him by. He suddenly craves warmth and closeness with the family he has discarded and sets about making amends. As you can imagine, while his kids are welcoming, his wife is not. But he is willing to exert himself and offer conciliation at every turn to make reparations.

A Wager to Tempt the Runaway by Bronwyn Scott
Category: Historical Romance
Comments: Bronwyn Scott is a writer of great talent who is able to construct story settings that are an immersive experience for the reader, whether they are a country house kitchen by lamplight, a secret cove at moonlight, or a London ballroom in the unforgiving glare of hundreds of candles. And in these settings, she skillfully drops in fully realized characters who live their lives to the fullest.

Josefina Ricci is a reckless artist, all fire and beauty. She has given a deathbed promise to her father to travel the world and shape her own destiny through her art while not being beholden to patrons. She wants to be free of all the trappings of a sheltered young woman, so she leaves Venice in a headlong rush Westwards. When the story open, Josefina is in a sleepy coastal village in England, a fixture at an art school and committed to painting a portrait in order to meet her benefactress’ wild wager. But art does not provide the headiness that smuggling does. Josefina comes and goes in the night, headless of any danger to her person.

Owen Gann is an upright citizen of the village. He comes from a humble background, a man before he could finish growing up. First a smuggler, then an oysterman, he has risen up the ranks to owning a vast international empire shipping oysters. Through sheer dint of single-minded focus — a not-quite-deathbed promise to his mother to achieve success in life — he has earned wealth and repute in the world of men who receive him with mixed feeling over his antecedents. By day, he provides employment to the denizens of the village. By night, he keeps a watch over their smuggling activities, ever vigilant for customs excise officers. My review is here.

Tokyo Ever After by Emiko Jean
Category: Contemporary YA Romance
Comments: This is what romance is all about. This is why I read Romance. Awash in tenderness, with limitless care, Emiko Jean leads with her heart. Tokyo Ever After is a story that is American and Japanese and neither and both. Like the delicate sakura, the protagonists’ love is essential to them, the very air they breathe; whether like the blossoms it will be impermanent or endure is for the future to know.

This is the story of Izumi Tanaka becoming...

A senior at Mount Shasta High School, Izumi often feels like an outsider in the place of her birth. A minor minority, she makes friends with other minority girls, and together, they form an unshakeable bond against everything life throws at them. As a single child of a single parent, she has often felt lonely, but her questions about her father have gotten instantly shut down. Naturally, she has wondered if he even knows she was born; would he accept her if he knew she existed; does he care — these are questions that circle her mind obsessively. A chance glance at a book reveals a name, expert Googling later there is a contact, a letter is sent…and highly polished Japanese officials shows up in her kitchen with its cracked yellow linoleum floor. Her Imperial Highness Princess Izumi, they call her. She’s the illegitimate daughter of the Crown Prince of Japan and he wants her to visit him at his residence, Tōgū Palace, in Tokyo.

Izumi shows up at Narita airport in leggings and a faded sweatshirt and is greeted by Akio Kobayashi, a gorgeous Imperial Guard with a stick up his backside. For ten hours, he had watched her binge-watch television and not read her critical information binder. Not quite the impression she had hoped to make. My review is here.

Book of Love by Erin Satie
Category: Historical Romance
Comments: I greatly enjoyed Erin Satie’s Bed of Flowers, the first book in her Sweetness and Light series, so I was eagerly anticipating Book of Love, the second book in the series. Satie’s stories are always unusual historical novels, and that is exactly their appeal for me. I approach her books without knowing anything about them, confident that she will sweep me away into a story of great worldbuilding and out-of-the-ordinary characters.

Cordelia Kelly was raised as a boy intellectually. But when she attains womanhood, her parents expect her to be obedient and to toe the conventional line and marry where they please. She repeatedly refuses and ends up having a dramatic falling out with her parents, especially, her beloved father. She hares off to London to fend for herself. Such courage in those times. She lands on her feet, rooming with an intrepid female writer and working on freelance bookbinding jobs. She has succeeded in commercializing her art and hobby—what she loves is putting a roof over her head. And yet, she is haunted by the prospect of poverty every waking moment.

Alistair Chandos, the Duke of Stroud, is loyal to a fault. He is the friend you want in your corner. He makes life fun and helps unstintingly when necessary. Whenever a friend needs a favor, he spares no effort. He also loves to play pranks. He thinks the only way his peers see him is as a jokester — that he has no value other than amusing them. He thinks others don’t think highly of his intelligence and so he has convinced himself thoroughly that he is lacking in the brains department, a bit touched in the upperworks. He is also certain that the reason others pay him any attention is because of his exalted title and great wealth.

Book of Love is a story of a man who has a low opinion of himself and a gem of a woman who values him highly. It is through her belief in him that he starts to believe in himself. My review is here.

Catch a Falling Duke by Eve Pendle
Category: Historical Romance
Comments:This book was a disappointment. The premise looked interesting. A duke is terribly shocked over antecedents of his patrimony—their direct involvement in slavery. He decides to chuck it all by breaking the entail and using the monites for reparations. The heroine is a farmer—not the usual, a woman with noble relations come down in the world, but a bonafide farmer. They casually meet at a roadside inn and decide to share their bodies for one night...which leads to two, three, four...and he proposes. She refuses. Their stations in life is too vast for her to bridge. Interesting premise, no? The problem was the execution of the two storylines.

I consulted with Isobel Carr, who is teaching a class on entails. Breaking an entail requires far more effort and has far more strings attached to it than merely doing the leaglese and donating the monies. I would've liked to have seen the duke actively, and in-depth, working on the process of converting the fee tail to a fee simple. He also has a duty to his tenants and to the vast number of dependants, the annuities and jointures he owes, among other financial encumbrances and responsibilities. In addition, his goal of making reparations is not shown in the great detail it should've been. This is the most interesting aspect of his character—the making of him from a wild man-about-town to a responsible, dependable man. In fact, this is the best part of the story, and it is hand-waved over.

The story has the duke completely become a not-duke by choosing to live at the farm like a farmhand, milking cows and forking hay. He completely divorces himself from his old life in town with nary a thought to its loss. I have seen enough of these kinds of stories to know their appeal to American readers—a man giving up his life for the love of a woman. However, I find characters who totally give up their former lives to become entirely new people unbelievable. To me, this person at some point in their life, after the bloom is off the romance rose, is going to regret the loss of that former person they used to be. In this duke's case, perhaps not the profligacy of that life, but definitely town and friends and the ton.

Towards the end of the story the heroine and the duke decide that they want to turn their farm into a co-op so that they can ensure that it cannot be inherited (and potentially destroyed) by one single person. So they involve everyone currently working the farm to join in. While the resulting discussion was interesting—and something not seen in a historical novel—it received far more page time than the duke's entail. That was of far more import to the story because that is his story. Their joint co-op discussion could've been off-page or make a cameo appearance in the epilogue.

While this book did not work for me, I hasten to add that I have enjoyed this author's books before. So, despite this disappointment, I will choose to read one of her books again.

Totally Engaged by Mina V. Esguerra
Category: Contemporary Romance
Comments: This book is set in modern-day Manila in the Philippines. I have read two of Esguerra's books before, and one made it to my Best Books of the year list, so I had high hopes of this one. But it was a disappointment. The story is very much of the author pulling the characters along through tried and true tropes and well-trodden genre paths to the foregone conclusion. Of writing, Stacey Abrams has said, "If there are no stakes, then there are no payoffs." This story has no stakes. And ultimately, this romance story is not romantic. There is sex, but not much of a romance. I know I am being harsh here but I was disappointed by a story that felt lackluster and like it was hastily put together.

She is a 41-year-old, who has a fashion design startup and works out of her family home. She has converted the former garage into a studio home that she rents out. Her childhood friend asks a favor to put up her 39-year-old brother for a few weeks while he finds his feet in his new job at this up and coming company. He is looking for a place where he can walk to work because he works insane hours. Enter the interfering mother, sisters, and her close friends. And suddenly, they are fake engaged, chastely share a bed one night, and start sharing their bodies. The sleeping together leads to the relationship. The interference of the relatives was cute at first, and I usually love to see characters and their families, but this went on and on.

Also, I didn't buy the heroine's sort-of amicable relationship with her mom and her desire to please her mom. The only part of the story that I found fascinating was the US immigration story. US immigration wait times are notoriously long, and what happened to the heroine is a true story. The heroine's parents applied for permanent residentship when she was very young. However, by the time their green card came through, she was over 21. She had aged out of the petition. So her family (father, mother, and sisters) went to the US, while leaving her behind in charge of the detritus of their lives and also the large family home. And from the US, the mother keeps on harping on her lack of husband and arranges failed setups. Frankly, I cannot ever imagine this leading to a meaningful relationship between the two.

April Reading Notes

noreply@blogger.com (Keira Soleore) — Thu, 29 Apr 2021 18:58:00 +0000

Some people like to write long individual review posts and some do shorter reviews for a monthly round-up. Both types of posts have their pros and cons. Some people feel that not much analysis is possible in these round-ups, which is true. However,there is blog post fatigue associated with multiple reviews a month. My blog is already miniscule; with multiple posts, it will get further diluted in terms of people reading it.

Given the number of ARCs I read, from which text quotations are disallowed, that style of reviewing has fallen out of my reviewing style. For most of the books reviewed for publication, I do have links to longer reviews where I do more analysis and only put the bare bones of the plot here. For books that I don't review for publication, I do bigger reviews to support why I liked or did not like the books. I do realize that this means longer monthly posts, which could lead to skiming and online reading fatigue and thus skipping, but this style of blogging is what I am most comfortable with at this moment in time.

Hana Khan Carries On by Uzma Jalaluddin
Category: Contemporary Romance
Comments: I read Jalaluddin’s début book Ayesha At Last with such joy two years ago, and I have been waiting ever since for her second book. To her new book, Jalaluddin brings a maturity and keener eye to emotional nuance. Rich with cultural texture, replete with social nuance, and brimming with humor, it is a delight from the first word to the last. Her talent is in allowing her characters to recount their own stories, whether they are the main characters or the secondary ones. No one gets short shrift in the attention she pays to creating whole, complex people. Jalaluddin’s signature style is in her social commentary on the lives led by Indian Canadian Muslims, the immigrants and the first generations. She had started this conversation with the reader in Ayesha At Last, and she continues on that conversation in Hana Khan Carries On.

This is a book that you need to spend some time immersed in. Jalaluddin’s lyrical prose brings to life a story in subtle shades of meaning and expression as the characters share with you their deepest secrets and dreams. Long-buried family secrets and hate-motivated attacks add to the complexity of the narrative. The book can be read is multiple ways: as Hana’s life journey, as Aydin’s character growth, as romantic love between the protagonists, as being Muslim in Canada, and so on. In this review, I have chosen a few of those strands that make up the narrative. You will have to read the book to discover them all. I cannot express how much Jalaluddin’s books please me; I hope they bring you joy as well. My review is here.

Twice Shy by Sarah Hogle
Category: Contemporary Romance
Comments: [CW: mental illness, anxiety, social anxiety] Hogle has won me over with her back-to-back lovely stories. I would recommend both of her books, You Deserve Each Other and Twice Shy.

Maybell Parrish is restless and unhappy in a dead-end job, constantly thwarted in succeeding in it by her coworker. Still, it’s a step-up, in her mind, from her former housekeeping job at the indoor waterpark, so she works d. She’s a killer baker, and constantly daydreams of a life as a baker with her online friend as a future spouse. So when she finds out that she has inherited her great-aunt, Violet’s, mansion, Falling Stars, in the Smoky Mountains of Tennessee, she dumps her job and walks away. While she had hoped, she would go out with a bang, her meek, people-pleasing nature only allows her to ghost her employer.

Wesley Koehler is a decidedly grumpy, decidedly reclusive groundskeeper of Violet’s estate. While she lived, he had persistently offered to care for her mansion and make it habitable. But the old lady had an indomitable nature and was adamant that nothing should be changed, and all he could do was offer her a place to stay in his small cottage. So when she passes away and he finds out that he has inherited Violet’s mansion, he immediately sets about planning what he will do to fix the mansion that has good bones and only needs thoughtful renovation. He also wants to build an animal sanctuary.

Plot twist! Maybell and Wesley are not the sole inheritors of Violet’s estate. Rather, they are co-owners. My review is here.

Second First Impressions by Sally Thorne
Category: Contemporary Romance
Comments: I have found Sally Thorne’s stories always entertaining and well-paced to hold my interest from beginning to end. I find her a versatile writer. She has written three entirely different books in: The Hating Game, 99 Percent Mine, and now, Second First Impressions. The voice, the style of writing, the choice of words, the type of people, the very narrative—they are all different and unique to the stories she is telling. I know she has received hate for books 2 & 3 by readers who just wanted her to reiterate The Hating Game over and over again.

Ruthie Midona is someone who does not like surprises. She had been bullied as a child and unloved by her family. As a result, she is at pains to always be in control of herself, because when your life is out of control, all you can control is yourself. She is the acting manager of a luxury retirement community, where everything is just as it should be. She is dedicated to her job of caring for the quirky and opinionated denizens of the Providence Villa. Her boss is out for the nonce, and she is in charge.

Teddy Prescott fits the stereotype of a spoilt rich man who doesn’t like to bestir himself for anything involving work. He wants life to be easy and in constant motion, or at least that is what he projects to everyone. In reality, he dreams of owning a tattoo parlor, but he has to first convince his demanding father. Ruthie and Teddy meet when he shows up at the villa expecting to be in charge. My review is here.

The Soulmate Equation by Christina Lauren
Category: Historical Romance
Comments: Jessica “Jess” Davis’ has three people in her life whom she loves with every fiber of her being: her daughter and her grandparents. She is a freelance statistician working constantly to stay afloat as she financially supports her loving grandparents and largely-absent mother every once in a while, runs a house, and struggles to provide her daughter with the comforts, activities, and school involvement she believes every child should have.

When Jess loses a big client because she refuses to compromise her ethics in fudging data, she is forced to become a barista at her favorite coffee shop. For months on end, she was at the front of the counter, now she is behind it. Her humiliation is complete when the person she surreptitiously admires for his gorgeousness but thinks is surly and taciturn comes to order his customary drink and leaves her a big tip.

Dr. River Peña is that grumpy tipper and also a highly regarded biotechnology researcher, who has focused his research on a DNA-based matchmaking app. Along with his mentor, he has founded a company, which he would soon like to take to IPO, based on the research he completely believes in. My review is here.

Waiting for the Flood by Alexis Hall
Category: Historical Romance
Comments: What a stunning story! This was my first Alexis Hall story, and I now get his fame. The writing is...chef's kiss—delicate, unusually perceptive, and imaginative, in emotions and also in the usage of language. Gosh, if you've not read Hall, I'd urge you to give him a try. Do note that this is a slow story and reads like a short novel, despite being only 96 pages long. To me, this is its strength. You can luxuriate in the feelings of the protagonists to the fullest without feeling rushed or feeling like the story is moving to an outline.

Edwin is a book restorer. At the Bodleian in Oxford and at home, he restores all kinds of books that have suffered untold damage. He lives alone in a big house which he used to co-own with his then boyfriend of ten years. The ending of that relationship has been devastating for Edwin. As it is his stuttering has always been the cause of his low self-esteerm, this loss further erodes his self-confidence.

Due to heavy rains, the river close to his house floods his street and his house. It brings Adam, a city engineer, into his life. You would think that a hearty broad-shouldered man wouldn't be in tune with his emotions. But that is not true at all. In Hall's skilled hands, both men come to life in their individual ways and learn to share their sorrows and joys with each other. While is clear in his intentions and feelings, Edwin has to learn to trust and let Adam into his life.

Again, I sound like Hall's publicist, but this is a book worth savoring.

Again by Kathleen Gilles Seidel
Category: Vintage Contemporary Romance
Comments: [CW: "Indians," "blacks," racism] There was no reason to include these words or the racism that goes with them. They add nothing to the story other than to attempt to show that the heroine grew up poor and lived on the wrong side of the tracks and how her father sent her to the right side for school. Other than this racist backstory, there is no more racism in the book, because the book is only populated with white characters. This is a book written in 1995, so not that long ago, and I can't imagine how the writer was so racist even then.

If you are able to set the racism aside, this is a fabulous story. I would give it an 'A.' It is a gentle story of uncommon actions and reactions, large and small. What could've been clichéd is not because of the little twists and turns in the story that keep you guessing. What is very sweet about the story is that the hero acknowledges to himself and to the heroine that he is in love with her before the halfway mark. The rest of the book is of him waiting patiently for her to love him, then giving up in despair, and then her bringing him back into being alive by her love.

The setting is a daytime soap studio in Brooklyn. It's a scrappy, low-budget half-hour soap set in the Regency. The network execs were reluctant to part with even the small amount of money they did for it, but surprising everyone, the show took off and drew in rating higher than any of the hour-long soaps. It was a case of the engine who could. This was all because of Jenny cotton, the head writer. It all came from her head and she spent countless hours seven days a week working and reworking the stories, sometimes, making changes even the day of the taping. Luckly, her directors and producer were adept at finding good, professional actors who could adapt and act.

Alec Cameron is a well-known daytime soap actor. Since his childhood when he took care of his sister who died of leukemia, he is used to being the responsible person in the cast. If there was a crisis, he would step in and help fix things. However, right from the begining, his respect for Jenny's brilliance has him stepping aside to let her take the lead. He is fascinated with her right from the begining even though she is living with her boyfriend of fourteen years. Of course, he makes no moves on her other than to tell her that he in love with her. It is only when her boyfriend cheats on her and marries someone else that Alec makes clear that he is interested in marriage and only marriage with Jenny. But Jenny does not love him.

I really liked that Seidel does not have Jenny wallowing in her betrayal. She grieves, she plots some mild revenge, she works through her emotions, and she emerges stronger and more optimistic than before. Wonderful characterization there. Then Alec thinks she would fall in love with him. But there is no such automatic, clichéd response from Jenny. And this is the heart of the story, how she gets to love—at first, it was only the show she loved, now she could love Alec and the show.

After All These Years by Kathleen Gilles Seidel
Category: Vintage Contemporary Romance
Comments: Even though the above book is the fourth book in the series and this is the first, I read Again first, fell in love with it, and went looking for more of Seidel's work. And while this was not as great as Again, it was still good. However, it is a different book, more a story of a family than a straightforward romance, even though it does follow some of the genre conventions about building a central love story to a HEA climax. However, a fair bit of the second half of the book is in the POV of the teen son of the heroine, which has nothing much to do with the romance and much to do with his own growth. It does go towards the character reformation of the hero, but given that it is from the boy's POV, it's about his growth arc as well.

Three children, two boys and a girl, were born days apart and lived in nearby houses in the South Dakota countryside outside a small town. The three families were close, supposedly, and despite tragedy robbing the kids of some of their parents, the kids grew up happy and wild and incredibly close to one another. Curry, Tom, and Huck made a blood bond to always stay true to each other and always tell each other the truth. As they grow up, first Tom dates Curry, but he is too intense with her, and she gravitates naturally to the sunny-tempered Huck and they marry at 18 and have a child. Tom and Huck are all fired up to join Vietnam, and only Tom returns home, not to South Dakota and only to marry someone else. He doesn't see Curry for 16 years.

That they love each other is a given. But can they build a life together? Curry is rooted into the South Dakota soil for generations. Tom is a footloose historic homes restorer of some repute who travels constantly, job to job. Curry built a flourishing paint business in town, raised a boy, and took care of her grandmother, who raised her, and her mother-in-law. Tom was an absentee husband and an absentee father to his daughter, whom he loves but rarely sees. Curry is building a life for herself for the future when her chick wiill fly the nest and she will have nothing to do. So she is going to college to earn a degree to teach history in school.Tom wants to continue his aimless life forever.

The story of the book is in the emotional growth of both characters, but especially Tom. What I loved this story is that Seidel does not make Tom renounce his work and live in the small town. Most small town stories are where the folks from the big city always give up their life there completely to move to the small town and remake their life from ground-up. It is a rare book that allows me to believe in future happiness for that person. In this book, both characters give a little and take a little and share a lot. Perfect HEA!

The Heiress Hunt by Joanne Shupe
Category: Historical Romance
Comments: This book is in a voice and style unlike Shupe's former books. The author has had help with this book, and I wonder if that has affected how the story was written and how it reads. It is disappointing. And...I had really been looking forward to it.

Maddie Webster is a high society girl in 1895 New York City. Used to attention and adulation all her life, Maddie is a strong, confident young woman. She convince her parents not to expect her to marry in her first season, but to give her three seasons or so to indulge in her love of tennis. Now, she's become a national championship player and is at the height of her sports career. However, she knows, that despite her parents indulging her wish for a few years, her only job is to get married. So she sets her cap at the biggest prize of the season, the British Duke of Lockwood, and he is slowly warming up to her. While he hasn't proposed, a proposal is imminent.

Into this lovely situation steps her old, beloved friend, who'd abandoned her in her first season and rushed away to Paris for three years. She had been heartbroken that he had completely broken away from their friendship.

Harrison Archer has been in love with Maddie for years. But one night, he overhears her confiding to her friend about him. Stung, he runs away to Paris, and throws himself into amassing a fortune and living a hedonistic life. He is fond of his delightful mistress, but parts with her when he decides to return to NYC when his father dies. His family had abused him as a child, always treating him as a worthless second son, so now, he is back to bankrupt them and ruin their standing in society. Oh, and now that he is back, he is determined to marry the love of his life, Maddie.

This entire characterization of Harrison is strange. Instead of rushing off to Paris, he could've had a clarifying conversation with his closest friend in the world, Maddie. For all that he claims to love her and her being his best friend, he does not even trust her enough to have one mature conversation. Of course, in that case, the book would've never been. Upon his return, he could've had that conversation, and yet, he never does. He could've have returned at any point in the three years he was gone if he was so much in love with her, but he never does. But now that he is back to wreak revenge, as a side benefit, he is going to pursue Maddie and win her. And while the romantic shenanigans are going on, the revenge plot is put on hold. Towards the end of the book, their relationship hits a stumbling block, and they decide to separate for a bit, and immediately, Harrison gets in touch with his mistress. Right.

At no point did Maddie think to talk to Harrison before he left or after he returns or send letters asking him why he had left so precipitously. Does she not want to solve the obstacle in the friendship with her best friend? She just accepts his abandonment. And then despite his having abandoned her and lived a hedonistic life, the minute she sets eyes on him upon his return, her previous friendship morphs into romantic interest. It's like a switch was thrown; there was no build-up to the new feelings. Maddie's behavior in the breakup of their relationship—the requisite clichéd black moment of the book—is immature at best. I think this was a major peeve of mine: the protagonists' immaturity and inability to have an adult conversation with each other.

March Reading Notes

noreply@blogger.com (Keira Soleore) — Thu, 01 Apr 2021 22:29:00 +0000

I am continuing apace with my exploration of audio books. As mentioned earlier, listening in the car works best for me. Sitting in a chair to listen, inevitably puts me to sleep. Before I started listening to books, I had no idea how vital a narrator is to how interesting a book is. The writer's skill matters of course but the performer's is just as important.

Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson
Category: Nonfiction
Comments: This book has been a fascinating read thus far. I am in two book clubs for the same book, and depending on the composition of the book group, different aspects of the readings have been highlighted. For me, comparing and contrasting the caste system in the US with the caste system in India has been an interesting exercise. People forget how much privilege they have until they have to grapple with something like this, and realize that so much of what goes on right in front of your nose, you are compeltely impervious to and do not notice its effect on others. I have listened to the author talk in a couple of talks. Brilliant thinker and brilliant book. It should required reading for all incoming college freshman.

Honey Girl by Morgan Rogers
Category: Contemporary Romance
Comments: [CW: self harm, anxiety] Grace Porter has a newly minted doctorate in astronomy from Portland. Eleven years of dogged hard work and weekends and summers sacrificed to research and achieving new and newer heights in her pursuit of perfection have left her burnt out. Job search has been heartbreaking as she realizes that the field of her dreams is rejecting her Black heritage. Whereas her father, the Colonel, has pushed and prodded her and expected perfection from her emotionally and academically, her mother only wants her to be happy and fulfilled in whatever she chooses to pursue.

Grace wishes she could disappear in the orange groves of her childhood home in Florida. Problems don’t disappear even if you choose to hide, but taking a break is definitely called for every once in a while, before you splinter into tiny particles and get scattered among the stars. In a bid to shore her spirits up, Grace goes off to Las Vegas with her dearest friends. And there, one night, she meets a girl with stars in her eyes and roses in her cheeks; they get drunk; they get married; and they buy a lock together with matching keys and rings. After a night together, the girl leaves behind a love note to her Honey Girl with a calling card and a photo.

Yuki Yamamoto is a Japanese American child of immigrant parents living in NYC. She is a medieval history major who waitresses for her living needs and assuages her lonely soul and those of others in a late night radio show called Are You There? My review is here.

Careless Whispers by Synithia Williams
Category: Contemporary Romance
Comments: [CW: miscarriage, wealthy tobacco company] Parenting has such an impact on how a child grows up into the adult the world sees. One child in this story was brought up to be tough as all heck and giving no way to any softness, and the other child was brought up in a loving family where all feelings were allowed to have free rein. Both adults are driven to succeed, but for one adult, there is never any other way of life, whereas the other one has realized that a fast-paced life is not all that it is cracked up to be.

Elaina Robidoux was trained from birth to one day assume control of Robidoux Tobacco and Robidoux Holdings. From leading boardroom meetings of directors to orchestrating her politician brother’s events, from being a socialite to a ruthless businesswoman, Elaina does it all. Growing up, she had been starved of love and acceptance by her parents, and in her adulthood, she finds herself seeking connections that ultimately fail to give her the love she is attempting to find. As a result, she considers herself unlovable and incapable of loving, pathetic and lonely. She is tired of being strong all the time, but being strong is all she knows.

Alex Tyson has joined his large family in Jackson Falls in a bid to slow down his life. His pedal-to-the-metal way of life leads to him having a heart attack at a very young age. It serves as a wake-up call that his life in New York City is killing him. So he packs everything up and heads south to Jackson Falls to become head of research and development at Robidoux Holdings. Unfortunately for him, he proceeds to clash with Elaina on a regular basis. My review is here.

The Gentle Art of Fortune Hunting by KJ Charles
Category: Historical Romance
Comments: [CW: Previously enslaved character and mention of enslavement. References to emotional and financial abuse of spouses and children.] KJ Charles continues to write book after book of near perfection. Every time I think, she can’t get better, she does.

Sir John Hartlebury “Hart” is a baronet, a prosaic member of the Upper Ten Thousand with a good-sized property, and also a tradesman efficiently managing his sister’s brewery. He is a large man with a large voice, who cannot be bothered to temper his views or mind his manners when in company. He retains an avuncular interest in the future of his niece, wanting her to acquire some town bronze, while safeguarding her fortune from the hands of fortune hunters.

Robin Loxleigh is a gazetted fortune hunter. He and his sister, Marianne, make no bones about them being down on their luck and from a small village in Nottinghamshire, here in London to make advantageous marriages. They charmingly cozen everyone into thinking them to be harmless, so Society casts a benign eye over their machinations.

Robin and Hart meet when Robin inveigles himself into the notice of Hart’s niece. Hart is instantly suspicious of Robin’s background and motives and sets detectives into digging up dirt on him. In town, he keeps an eagle eye on him and his doings. Deciding to corner Robin into a tight spot, Hart destroys him over a game of piquet to the tune of four thousand odd pounds. The next day, Robin arrives at Hart’s house penitent and defiant over his inability to pay. He leaves with an unholy bargain: his body for a month in exchange for forgiveness of his debt. That entire scene of negotiation is a master class in the subtle use of words juxtaposed with the shifting undercurrents of the unsaid. My review is here.

Cranford Elizabeth Gaskell, performed by Prunella Scales
Category: Literary Fiction
Comments: I abandoned this book partway through. I just couldn't stand the performer. There are many characters in this story and so much of the story is all in conversation, and Scales just isn't up to the heft of this book. I have read the book and watched the miniseries, so I am familiar with the story, and yet, I was bored by Scales' characterization and had a difficult time figuring out who was who. Scales has a bland voice for the omniscent narration and has a tendency to mumble toward the en of sentences. In addition, she did not have much animation and differentiation in the tone and color and style of voices for the different characters. All in all, a disappointing narration.

One thing that listening to the story as opposed to reading the book or watching the miniseries brought up for me was Gaskell's peculiarity, or perhaps it was in literature in the Victorian times, in how her characters' perceive death and their lack of sensibility or emotions surrounding it. There is some sadness, some shock, but life as usual moves on pretty quickly. People died, and ho hum. I found this true in North & South by Gaskell as well, and I find it off-putting. Perhaps there is extreme sensibility in the unsaid that I am supposed to get and am not. Perhaps this is an incorrect reading of Gaskell. Anyway. It didn't work for me.

Miss Benson's Beetle by Rachael Joyce, performed by Juliet Stevenson
Category: Historical Literary Fiction
Comments: What a decided pleasure to be listening to Juliet Stevenson read this book. I chose this book primarily because of her, and then also because the story reminded me of The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, which I loved. I am about a third of the way through and thanks to Stevenson am following along really well. Stevenson is a treasure.

A middle-aged woman decides to throw in the towel and leave the teaching job she hates and the modest circumspect life she is leading to travel halfway around the world to New Caledonia in this post WWII story. She is on the search of the elusive golden beatle that she's been fascinated with since she learned about it at her father's knee. Her dream has gotten tarnished over the years, but never abadoned. Now she drags it out, spiffs it up with spit and polish, throws all her money at it, and finds herself on a ship steaming away to New Caledonia with an improbable and suspicious assistant and a stalker with PTSD.

This book embodies the type of heroine with whom I have some difficulty. I saw her type in Lady Awakened by Cecilia Grant as well. These are taciturn, very emotionally subdued women, by circumstance, for whom we are supposed to feel sorry and have sympathy. In general, my interest is immediately peaked by the quiet ones, because they usually have much more going on for them, especially because it is not visible. However, the protagonists of both these books assume that the other protagonists have to give and give while they take and take. The little they do give is to be received with gratitude and be considered sufficient. This is the dynamic that both the authors set up for their protagonists. While both Joyce's and Grant's stories are marvelously written and the heroines are superbly drawn, I find that my sympathies are with the other protagonists, not the heroines. Those other protagonists deserve more from life than what the heroines are handing to them. Anyway. Despite these misgivings, I am going to continue on with the book to see where it leads.

Forbidden by Jo Beverley
Category: Historical Romance
Comments: I am now part of a new Twitter book club called The Saturday Book Club with @willaful, @janetetennessee, @regency_gal, @growlycub, and @emmelnie. Forbidden is our first book. We are JoBev fans, so this was an enthusiastic choice. You can tell the caliber of the writer JoBev was from the opening pages. This is a re-read for me, but it has been so long since I last read it, as part of a binge-read of all of JoBev's works, that I have forgotten most of the story other than hazy recollections. We've had two rousing discussions for chapters 1-6, and I look forward to discussing the rest of the book in April, three chapters a week.

The Bluestocking Duchess by Julia Justiss
Category: Regency Romance
Comments: This was a disappointing Justiss novel. Usually, I really like her work, but not this one. There was far too much navel-gazing and retreading of the same concerns throughout the novel without much forward movement. Another issue I had with the book was lack of sexual tension even though there was constant noticing of the facial charms of the other. The anticipation of a kiss or no kiss was used as sexual tension, but again a lack of forward motion there made the anticipation deflate for the reader. Here are the main issues concerning the protagonists.

She is an ancient Greek scholar but believes that no one knows of her expertise. She think she manages to even fool her father and brother despite actually doing a fair bit of the translation work. She is convinced that marriage would mean the end of her scholarship. So she is determined to be a spinster lady's companion. I was not sure how this would enable her to continue the work that "defines her." As a result, while she really wants to kiss the hero, she really does not want to marry him.

He has been newly elevated to a duke's heir. He really wants to kiss her but that would be dishonorable. Marrying her has never occurred to him because despite being attracted to her, his one brush with romance in the past has turned him off romance, even though it seemed like a rather innocuous experience to me. As a duke's heir, he is expected to marry well, and the daughter of the duke's librarian ain't cutting it. He wants to do his duty to the title and let the duke choose his bride but he really wants to kiss her.

Every time they think of wanting to kiss the other person, they retread the above. And frustratingly, I didn't get much of a look into their thoughts—how are they changing how they look at their lives and what they can to get what they want. Yes, of course, there's a HEA at the end of the book so there is forward progress in their relationship towards the end but they stay mired in these ruminations for far too long. Disappointing! I look forward to Justiss' next book because I really like her writing.

Dial 'A' for Aunties by Jesse Q. Sutanto
Category: Contemporary Romance
Comments: I had been looking forward to reading this book ever since I first read the back cover copy. The author's introduction/author's note at the beginning of the book solidified my impression that this was going to be a good book. I enjoyed the dual timelines between the heroine's college life and current life, both progressing along in the story, and I enjoyed the prologue setup, though it was entirely telling rather than showing. On to the story and what caused me to rate it two stars.

I was uncomfortable with how after graduating from college, Meddie breaks up with the love-of-her-life (and the hero of this story) Nathan. She has made up her mind that she cannot abandon her mother and aunts and move away from home. So when Nathan gets the job in NYC, she tells him that she has stopped loving him, all so he wouldn't sacrifice his NYC job for her. He is utterly shocked. It is one thing to be self-sacrificing, but quite another to lie like that and break his heart. Why did she not opt for an honest conversation where she lays out all the reasons she cannot move? Instead, she chooses to break up with him in the worst way possible. He had hoped to marry her. I thought she was very insensitive to his feelings and immature in how she handled the situation.

My belief in her immaturity was solidified by what happens with her ill-fated date with Jake.

Yes, Jake is totally behaving like a creep and a threat to her in the car, and she is justified in being scared by his behavior. But tasering him while he is driving fast is a surefire way to getting both of them badly hurt or killed. Luckily for her, despite the car wrapping around a tree, she is OK and her car is dented but OK, but Jake is so badly hurt that she thinks he is dead. I was then horrified that instead of using his phone to call 911; or walking to get help; or somehow maneuvering him out of the way on the roadside, driving to get help, and returning with the help, she stuffs him in the trunk of her car.

Then she drives home to her mother and lets her mother and aunts take care of her and the situation. She shows no maturity even at 26, no remorse, and no conscience. I read in horrified fascination as she, her mother, and her aunts all eat and joke and laugh while Jake lies unconscious or dead in the car trunk. Then they drive him over and put him in a cooler, which the next day, gets put on a boat to an island, and so on.

I know we are supposed to be laughing along with all these shenanigans, but my sympathies were all with Jake and none with Meddie. I kept on hoping Jake would wake up soon and go on home, chastened by what has happened to him. Instead, the horror kept going on. I had hoped so much from this book. The author paints a wonderful picture of her aunties at the beginning, and I had hoped they would do madcap stuff, which they did, except, I did not want them do to it with a "dead" body. That was just not funny.

(BTW for a 5'2" petite girl to lift a deadweight grown man, who outweighs her by a lot and is much taller than her, is impossible. So that whole thing of her moving him from the driver's seat into the trunk is completely unbelievable. I know we're supposed to suspend disbelief at this point, but it is a bridge too far for me. Implausible things I can take in stride, but this is impossible.)

February Reading Notes

noreply@blogger.com (Keira Soleore) — Fri, 26 Feb 2021 01:28:00 +0000

i can't believe two months of the new year have whizzed past. Life for me has been tranquil these past few days, and I am immensely grateful. Routine is great. Boring is good. It leaves me time to think, to write, to dream a bit. To hope.

North & South by Elizabeth Gaskell, performed by Juliet Stevenson
Category: Literary Fiction
Comments: As I was finishing up with this story, I found myself getting more and more impatient with Margaret. I was shocked how little she mourns the death of both her parents and her godfather. She is more disturbed by the lie she told Mr. Thornton and ruminates on it and castigates herself endlessly, instead of being grief-stricken over those deaths. Ultimately, despite all the good and caring work she did in Milton, I found that she was undeserving of Mr. Thornton's love because she is unfeeling.

People could read her character as someone who feels deeply but hides it well because she doesn't know how to express it. However, her thoughts rarely roam to those she has lost, which I would suppose would happen if she cared deeply for them. People could read that as her mind protecting her from deep sorrow by not allowing her to dwell on them. Other than worrying about the lie she told Mr. Thornton and his opinion of her character, I never saw her even think to herself that she held him in affection or even love. My reading could be the "wrong" reading of the work, but I stopped sympathizing with Margaret towards the end. She did not deserve Mr. Thornton.

Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell, performed by Prunella Scales
Category: Literary Fiction
Comments: Listening to Cranford narrated by Prunella Scales in the car these days. I am about half an hour into it, and while Scales is not bad, she just isn't as good as Juliet Stevenson. She gets rather lost on long sentences and tries to go fast and far on one breath and peters out.

The Ex Talk by Rachel Lynn Solomon
Category: Contemporary Romance
Comments: I loved this enemies-to-lovers book. It is such a breath of fresh air in that it infuses the enemies to lovers trope with tenderness and softness and wonder as a contrast to the initial animus.

Shay Goldstein is Caucasian Jewish American and a producer at a public radio station in Seattle. She secretly yearns to be a host of her own show, but in ten years of taking crap from her sexist boss, she hasn’t made much progress in that direction. She still cannot get over the death of her beloved father from whom she got her love of public radio. Now, her mother has moved on and found a new love, and suddenly, Shay finds herself planning for her mother’s wedding when her mother should’ve been planning for hers. Shay finds herself disheartened and living alone in an echoing house.

Dominic Yun is Korean American and has a degree in journalism from Northwestern University. He is intent on making his mark in serious journalism. Inexplicably, he chooses to do so at a radio station despite his fear of public speaking, because he sees that as a springboard to journalism greatness.

Shay and Dominic’s animosity towards each other fuels great banter between them. Everyone around the station enjoys their snarky comments and brush-offs. So when Shay suggests a new show to draw more listeners in, their boss immediately thinks of them working together. The show’s premise is that a couple who has had a flaming falling out gets together to banter on their show, and while doing so, brings in experts to offer relationship advice and explore all different facets and psychology of relationships.

But Shay and Dominic haven't had a romantic relationship much less had it break up. So now they have to get to know each other in order to lie about a broken relationship. Life quickly becomes complicated for them. My review is here.

Then There Was You by Mona Shroff
Category: Contemporary Romance
Comments: [CW: miscarriage, school shooting, death of child, mourning loss of child, racism]

Annika Mehta is a rebel according to her traditional Indian American parents. She does not go to medical school, nor does she get a fabulous, high-paying job. Instead, she is a kindergarten teacher. It is a job she loves and at which she is really good. But to her parents, she is not achieving success. They are forever trying to set her up with good Indian boys, but Annika has a way of slipping out of the wide matrimonial net they have cast. Her parents and the wider gossiping South Asian community are aghast when Annika gets engaged to a Caucasian man, gets pregnant by him, and then gets dumped by him. Luckily, according to them, she loses her baby. The most traumatic experience of her life evinces not much empathy from her community. Her parents love her but want her to move on and come back into the fold as a “good” Indian daughter who listens to the counsel of her parents. In addition to being a teacher, Annika moonlights at a bar.

Daniel Bliant is an ER nurse practitioner who is passionate about his job. Five years ago, he lost his precious daughter to a senseless tragedy where a gunman shot up her school — the very school at which Annika teaches. Daniel is inconsolable at his loss and cannot move on. When his wife suggests having a second child, he is incandescent with rage, and they divorce. He even cannot see his nephew, because the boy is the same age as his girl had been. He tries to repress all feelings by working every minute he can — all he wants to do is work and sleep and allow life to pass him by. In addition to being an ER nurse practitioner, Daniel moonlights as a helicopter medic.

Daniel meets her when she is unconscious in the hospital, but they officially meet at the bar. Both have so much pain they're carrying from their pasts. Shroff sensitively portrays Annika and Daniel’s soul-deep sense of bereavement at the loss of their children. How to then have them move on and move together into a romantic relationship is where Shroff's skill comes in. My review is here.

Make Up Break Up by Lily Menon
Category: Contemporary Romance
Comments: I have loved Sandhya Menon’s YA contemporary romance novels (When Dimple Met Rishi and From Twinkle, With Love), so I was curious how she would make the transition to adult contemporary romance under the pen name Lily Menon. With this book, Menon has a winner on her hands.

Annika Dev is the CEO of Make Up, an app to help estranged people find love again. Annika and her smart alec developer have worked hard to make their prototype. They are seeing excitement among beta testers, but have, as yet, failed to convince investors of the long-term success of their app. Their cash cushion has run out, and they are facing eviction soon. Annika has pinned her hopes on the EPIC conference, where she hopes to woo and impress investors about how vital her app is for how technology can be used in interpersonal spaces for success in romantic relationships. Her father wants her to become a doctor, but she knows with every particle of her being that she is a creative entrepreneur, and her future lies with Make Up.

Hudson Craft is the CEO of Break Up, an app that helps people break up relationships that have become stagnant or burdensome. Hudson and his team have made a huge splash on the startup scene and seen their app downloaded a million times. Hudson’s reputation is of an up-and-coming CEO who’s a visionary, a genius. Hudson is planning to pitch his app at the EPIC conference to woo and impress investors so he can take his app to another level. Hudson had always dreamed of becoming a sculptor, but he needs to make money so he can help his parents, so for now wealth is what he is pursuing. And he is satisfied with what he has achieved with Break Up.

Annika and Hudson have history together. At a conference in Vegas a few months ago, before either of their apps were anything but a dream, they had hooked up for a blissful weekend. They meet in the present when Annika realizes that Break Up has moved into the office next to hers and is competing neck-to-neck with Make Up. My review is here.

Accidentally Engaged by Farah Heron
Category: Contemporary Romance
Comments: I loved this book to pieces. I alternated between enthusiasm and delight as I read this book: enthused by the craftmanship of the characters and delighted by their story. There is food and friendship, vulnerability and defenselessness, affection and aloofness, birth family and found family, betrayal and the requisite expiation. And above all, there is love and laughter.

Heron draws on her own Indian Tanzanian Canadian Muslim heritage to write these wonderful characters full of heart and warmth. It is in the small, small details that you get to see this — in the dishes where the Gujarati Indian food has an East African twist, in the occasional comments about what is allowed or disallowed in Islam, in the Canadian-ness of the heroine’s outlook to life, in the longing the hero has for the beauty of Dar es Salaam and the spices of Zanzibar. Culture is not a mere backdrop to the book, but rather an intrinsic aspect of who these characters are; their story could not possibly be told by divorcing it from the culture.

Reena works in finance, a field she despises. It is a field she chose in defiance of her parents’ wishes to work in their real estate business. She wants to stand on her own two feet as far as possible. As it is, she is living in a low-rent apartment in a building her family owns, the last thing she wants to do is work for them and be completely owned by them. And yet, paradoxically, the career she chose is not one at which they would laugh. But in her heart of hearts, she wants to be a baker, a bread baker. She has already learned how to do it well, but she wants to attend an institute to learn how to be a better one.

Nadim has come to Toronto from Dar es Salaam via a graduate degree from the London School of Economics. He is blessed with a posh English accent and a well-developed body. He is easily seduced by bare feet and bread. But, and this is a big stumbling block for Reena, Nadim works for her dad and is the chosen one “from the Muslim Bachelors “R” Us warehouse” for her hand in marriage by both sets of parents. My review is here.

Love at First by Kate Claybourn
Category: Contemporary Romance
Comments: The authorial voice and writing style of Clayborn's Chance of a Lifetime series are very different from the deeply introspective Love Lettering (my review is here) and are different once again for the angst and humor of Love at First. Clayborn has the remarkable ability to adapt her writing to fit the story, rather than requiring the story to work around her craft. Having said that, I loved Love Lettering much more than this.

Nora DeAngelo Clarke is a freelance web designer, who loves her work. She grew up spending her summers with her Nonna (grandmother) in her small apartment building, and all the neighbors became her extended family. When her Nonna dies, Nora inherits the apartment and moves in and makes it her own. Her attachment to her Nonna transfers over to her attachment to the building and a desire to keep things exactly as they are in perpetuity.

Clayborn has paid a lot of attention to fully developing Nora’s “found family” of other apartment owners. They are quirky and sweet and crochety, each with their own motivations and insecurities, but all are united in their affection for Nora. They are always in Nora’s corner. And she cares of their wellbeing just as much as her Nonna did.

Will Sterling is an extremely busy emergency room doctor who has inherited his estranged (and reviled) uncle’s apartment. He can’t wait to unload the unit for its associations and also for its ugly interior, but there is a stipulation that he has to own it for one whole year. So he is working with an agent to renovate it and have it rented out.

And that is where he runs up against the building association president, Nora. She is adamant in her refusal to allow short-term renters because it will spoil the current ambience of long-term ownership and emotional investment on her part and the others living in the building. He will destroy the character of their sanctuary forever by having strangers trooping in and out at all hours of the day and night. My review is here.

January Reading Notes

noreply@blogger.com (Keira Soleore) — Fri, 05 Feb 2021 01:29:00 +0000

The image on the left is a Regency morning gown and is an 1813 print from Ackermann’s Repository of Arts. The image is copyrighted by author and collector extraordinaire Candice Hern. I will be using this image for some of my monthly reading notes this year.

Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson
Category: Nonfiction
Comments: This is an ongoing read for my book club. Last spring, we read So You Want to Talk About Race by Ijeoma Oluo. In the summer, we read Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You by Jason Reynolds and professor Ibram X. Kendi and Eloquent Rage: A Black Feminist Discovers Her Superpower by professor Brittany Cooper. This fall, we read How to Be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi. In the winter, we've started reading Caste. This book examines the caste systems of India, the Nazi Reich, and the US, comparing and contrasting how the caste system manifests itself differently given the history, culture, and philosophy of those three countries.

We read section one (first three chapters) of the book for this month. In our discussions, I realized how difficult it is for Caucasian Americans to see "caste." Caucasian Americans like to believe that we are all about upward mobility and movement between classes in our country. Pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps is what this country is about. But they fail to grasp how caste anchors people down where they are, sometimes, with no recourse to better things, or sometimes, requiring superhuman effort and a great deal of luck to be able to break free. For February, we are reading section two (chapters 4-9).

Unexpectedly Wed To The Officer by Jenni Fletcher
Category: Historical Romance
Comments: Set in Bath, this is a lovely quiet story between a shopkeeper and an officer of the navy who is the grandson of a duke. They meet in a dramatic fashion in the middle of the night when she breaks his nose and knocks him on his backside. Surely, they were meant to fall in love?

Henrietta Gardiner runs the biscuit shop that has been in the Fortini family for two generations. Her beauty has led her into tricky situations with unscrupulous men and suspicious women, so she is wary of men who compliment her. Her family life brings her great sorrow. Instead of devoting his life to his young sons after his wife’s death, he is devoting his life to drinking. As a result, she is doing two jobs: running the shop and caring for the children in the evenings. One day, she finds out that he has run away and left the boys in her care.

Sebastian Fortini has recently left the Royal Navy and returned to dry land after many years, only to find that his mother and sister have fallen into the embrace of the much-hated aristocracy. His sister is now a countess. His mother has returned to her uncle’s house where her mother, the dowager duchess, resides. All his life, Sebastian has hated his mother’s relations for disowning her after she ran away with a footman turned baker. And now, he is bemused that his mother has reclaimed her heritage and expects him to visit there. My review is here.

Happy Singles Day by Ann Marie Walker
Category: Contemporary Romance
Comments: How would you give a professional organizer an anti-vacation? Have her be housebound with the most disorganized person she has ever met. She is revolted and thinks he’s a slob. He is disgusted and thinks she’s uptight. But there is one thing on which both agree: the other is hot.

Paige Parker is a certified Professional Organizer. Everything in her life has a place and is in place. She is pleased to be single, living in a big city, and in charge of her flourishing business, Chaos Control. Everything is flawless, except… she hasn’t had a vacation in years. On the goading of her assistant, she books a room at the beach-side Copper Lantern Inn on Aurelia Island, a no-car island off the coast of North Carolina. It looks perfectly charming on the website and the best way to commemorate Happy Singles Day — she certainly doesn’t need a man to make her happy.

Lucas Croft is a single father in thrall to his four-year-old daughter and barely hanging on to his now-defunct, derelict inn. His wife and he had bought it together with such joy and hope for their future. And with her death, he can’t bear to relist it for guests. At the same time, bills have a tendency to come at regular intervals, and with managing his daughter and taking on odd jobs in carpentry, money is in short supply. Luckily, Lucas is blessed with a bossy, managing sister, who does what younger sisters do best: plague their brothers… and take care of them. Unbeknownst to him, she revives the listing for the B&B and books him a client. My review is here.

Shipped by Angie Hockman
Category: Contemporary Romance
Comments: Visiting the Galápagos islands has been a lifelong dream of mine, so when I spotted this book about the islands by an author who had been there, I jumped at the chance to read it. And it was such a rewarding experience. Hockman has done a fabulous job with Shipped. The book provides the reader a front row seat in experiencing the magic and wonder of the Galápagos as the protagonists explore the islands. And even as they discover the beauty, the beauty has an effect on them and their relationship. In some books, the setting is a backdrop; in this book, the setting is as much a character as the protagonists.

Henley Rose Evans is not one to make waves as a marketing manager at Seaquest Adventures, a global adventure cruise travel company based in Seattle. She works tirelessly, and bookings for Pacific cruises have done up every quarter since she joined the company. However, her ambition to make director before the age of thirty is being thwarted by a sexist boss. Henley also moonlights as a graduate student in business administration, and as if she isn’t busy enough, she skimps on sleep to work on her never-ending task list.

Graeme Crawford-Collins, AKA Graham Cracker in Henley’s head, is the social media manager at Seaquest and works remotely from Michigan. He joins in business meetings from his home over a tinny phone line. This is in pre-Zoom days. He has a tragic backstory that has made him unable to work in a high-powered job. His fear of public speaking and being uncomfortable in large groups further compounds his isolation. So even though the Seaquest job is a step-down for him, it suits him. My review is here.

Beginner's Luck by Kate Clayborn
Category: Contemporary Fiction
Comments: This is the first book of Clayborn's highly popular series Chance of a Lifetime. I am reading it three chapters every week for the Sunday Book Club on Twitter with Mary Lynne (@emmelnie), Kay (@miss_batesreads), Ros (@ros_clarke), Rohan (@rohanmaitzen), and Joanne (@regency_gal). We meet every Sunday at 2pm ET (7pm UK) for a rousing and rapid-fire discussion. So far, we've read two Cecilia Grant, one Lucy Parker, and one Balogh. We have established a good pace and enjoy each other's company.

This book builds slowly. Having read Clayborn's Love Lettering, I knew that was her style, and I enjoy it. It is like she draws the outline in the beginning chapters and slowly starts coloring it in. I love her voice: no hyperboles, no eye-rolling leaps of faith. Just good, engrossing storytelling. My issue with this book doesn't have anything to do with Clayborn's writing, which I love, but has to do with her protagonist Kit.

I find Kit unusually mealy-mouthed and self-effacing to the point of being tiresome and unbelievable. I find how she goes about her career very frustrating and unbelievable. Why all this self-sacrificing? I understand instability in her childhood, but I would’ve thought that she would seek more and more financial security and not less. And one can build a home anywhere. By her doggedly holding on to her home in this very town where the hero has a history of being a delinquent and ran away from is thoughtless at best and cruel at worst.

The only thing she reaches out and takes is sleeping with the hero, which goes from fabulous sexual tension and a single kiss to jumping between the sheets. It is too abrupt and involves a huge spike in trust without any build-up of scaffolding underneath. I wish contemporaries did a slow build-up to the sleeping together; they are always in such a rush to get their protagonists there.

North & South by Elizabeth Gaskell, performed by Juliet Stevenson
Category: Literary Fiction
Comments: I continue to be fascinated by the story through Stevenson's narration. I am not driving as much these days, and I only listen to the audiobook in the car, so the story is moving along slowly despite how gripping it is. I hope to be able to finish it next month. I have five hours left to go. I have another Stevenson book cued up for February.

Happy New Year 2021

noreply@blogger.com (Keira Soleore) — Fri, 01 Jan 2021 15:00:00 +0000

Yet another year has drawn to a close. This was a year of such turmoil for everyone the world over. Many people battled loneliness, despair, fear, hatred, and exhaustion. Doing any task felt like an endeavor, and people's resources—financial, mental, physical—were stretched thin. Some people thrived in solitude and discovered familial closeness and joy. Some, like me, suffered great heartbreak. My mantra for the past year was Samuel Beckett's quote: "I can’t go on. I’ll go on."

All we can say about 2020 is that we each got through the year to the best of our abilities. We survived. We managed. We coped.

And now, I look to the dawn of a new year with hope and with gratitude. I am here. I matter. And I'm going to set foot in the new year with intention. My words for this year are: Grace & Hope & Laughter, and I hope to shape the coming days with those in mind.

I did a fair bit of reading last year on solitude and resilience, and I'd like to carry these two quotes by philospher Maria Popova into the new year with me:

"Build pockets of stillness into your life. Seek out what magnifies your spirit."

"Be Like a Tree: May we face the coming year with the steady serenity of a tree—that supreme lover of light, always reaching both higher and deeper, rooted in a network of kinship and ringed by a more patient view of time."

Whatever may be your way of thinking of the new year, my wish for you, dear readers, is that it brings you happiness, because after all, what can be a better measure of success than happiness?