cyphomandra

Everything else I read in June and didn’t blog.

Odd One Out, Lissa Evans
Bryony and Roses, TJ Kingfisher
The Guggenheim Mystery, Robin Stevens
Proper English, KJ Charles
Spindrift, Amy Rae Durreson
Piece of You, Eileen Merriman
A Brief History of Montmaray, Michelle Cooper
Loving a Warrior, Melanie Hansen
Any Old Diamonds, KJ Charles
Hitler, Shigeru Mizuki
Red Shift, Alan Garner (re-read)
Think of England, KJ Charles (re-read)

Odd One Out, Lissa Evans. I loved her Wed Wabbit and saw that she’d done adult novels, so pounced on one. It’s a fun, character-driven farce, and I liked it a lot (I see there is a reviewer in ALL CAPS on Amazon who thinks that the author is A LITTLE TOUCHED IN THE HEAD and will not be ORDERING ANY MORE OF HER BOOKS, which, fine, more for me). Netta Lee returns to her family home to (reluctantly) organise her indecisive mother and her odd brother; also arriving is Paul Gooding, a junior doctor in his first job with good intentions but lamentable results (his first task is to get a patient to provide her consent for surgery; she misunderstands what he means by an elective operation and cheerfully takes herself off home as she’d prefer another time), who is also hampered by a more senior doctor who is one of those infinitely cooler jovial types who manages to constantly make him look bad, as well as a very strange Canadian roommate. It is very good on character and unexpected connections, and there is a wonderful denouement involving a carton of Ribena and a stuck lift. The author was a junior doctor in Newcastle before leaving medicine for stand-up comedy, and the medical bits have have a low-key wry accuracy.

Bryony and Roses, TJ Kingfisher. I keep saying that I don’t want to listen to podcasts because I’d rather read prose, which is true, but I also have a couple of dental visits coming up and so decided to see how I felt about audiobooks. I got through my last dental visit listening to Zoe Chant’s Firefighter Griffin, which was great (although naturally a sex scene came up and I panicked that the dentist could overhear and stopped it), and in the car I listened to this, which is Ursula’s take on Beauty and the Beast, assuming that Beauty was in fact a gardener and the villain of the piece a vindictively spiky rose. I liked it a lot and it made me stick a few more plants in the front garden.

The Guggenheim Mystery, Robin Stevens. Robin wrote the sequel to Siobhan Dowd’s The London Eye Mystery from Dowd’s concept/notes after she died. It’s fine. I guessed how it was done (but not who); however, I don’t think the New York setting actually worked for me. I am however thrilled to see that the latest Wells & Wong mystery is out.

Proper English, KJ Charles. Lesbian prequel to her m/m Think of England, in which Pat Merton, English women’s shooting champion, visits her old friend Jimmy at his family’s country house - and finds herself falling for the fiancée that Jimmy himself appears to be abandoning, Fenella, a curvy, frilly, apparently frivolous woman with hidden depths. Eventually the least pleasant house guest gets murdered, and Pat and Fen have to solve the crime. I liked this a lot and Pat & Fen themselves are great. But - the murder is fairly late in the piece and not all that well developed, and also takes the place of the Dark Night of the Soul romance trope bit that Romancing the Beat goes on about, so once Pat and Fen hook up there’s a massive loss of tension in the relationship that the murder investigation attempts to cover up, not all that successfully (I re-read Think of England after this, which is so much better at handling all the different lines of tension). And I realise this is a niche interest, but if you’re going to call a book Proper English, I would have liked better and more detailed breakfasts. Still. Lots of fun.

Spindrift, Amy Rae Durreson. Siôn moves to a seaside village to recuperate after a suicide attempt, and is visited by a ghost - and then meets Mattie, very much alive, who looks just like the spectre. Nicely told putting-yourself-back together book, although I wasn’t entirely convinced by the discovery of the ghost’s story or the “unexpected” twist. Would read another by the author.

Pieces of You, Eileen Merriman. YA; 15 year old Rebecca moves from Dunedin to Auckland and is sexually assaulted at a party; she has kept this a secret and is not dealing well with it, and as the book opens she’s cutting herself as a coping mechanism. However, a developing relationship with Cory, the boy next door, might be her chance to heal; but Cory has his own problems…

This was my least favourite of Merriman’s three YAs (I have recently finished her adult novel, which I liked even less). It would have worked much better for me if she hadn’t given Cory a ridiculously angsty back story and an is it suicide or an accident fake-out ending. Rebecca I liked, actually, and I wish she’d been in a better book.

A Brief History of Montmaray, Michelle Cooper. Sophie Fitzosborne lives on the tiny island kingdom of Montmaray with her eccentric - and royal - family, but it’s 1936 and war is coming. Very much in the style of I Capture the Castle, but with more war; got stronger as it went along, and I’m looking forward to the next two. I came across her via her blogging of Antonia Forest’s Marlows books.

Loving a Warrior, Melanie Hansen. Matt Knytych is determined to make it through the intense six months of entry into navy SEAL training, no matter what - which includes not getting distracted by Shane Hovland, a former marine whose friendly relaxed attitude belies his own determination. This is 80% SEAL training and about 20% m/m, which is a nice change from the Annabeth Alberts I read earlier but also not exactly what I want in a romance. I did like the real sense of how highly trained and physical these guys were - in their downtime they run, play basketball etc, because they just have too much energy to stay still. The next one in the series is het and looks as though it has sexual assault in the military as a back story, which is a bold decision as a romance set-up and I have it on hold.

Any Old Diamonds, KJ Charles. It took me a while to pinpoint the origins of the title, but eventually my subconscious presented me with Kermit singing, “Any Old Iron”, and then I was stuck with it for the rest of the book. Alexander Pyne-ffoulkes has a grudge against his father, who abandoned his children for his new wife, resulting in the death of Alex’s sister; Alex hires the Lilywhite Boys, conmen and criminals, to get revenge, and ends up falling for Jerry, their amoral and commanding leader. It’s twisty and it has some very nice moments, but it didn’t compel me the way some of her others have. I did like seeing Susan Lazarus (from the Sins of the City trilogy) again, though.

Hitler, Shigeru Mizuki. Manga biography of Hitler. I didn’t actually know that much about his past (or about his relationship with his niece, who he was obsessed with and who may or may not have committed suicide), and what I found most upsetting was the way Hitler was so close to being a total failure at everything - and then wasn’t. The manga works well. I don’t ever feel sympathy for him, and the art doesn’t make things shiny and imperial. What I really want to read is Mizuki’s Showa, though; will see if I can track it down.

Ashlin and Olivia, Aster Glenn Gray. Endearing second-chance (sort of) f/f romance, in which Olivia, at age 12, develops a passionate and exclusive friendship with the newly arrived Ashlin; a friendship that fractures, not so much over a misunderstanding, but over a failure for each to consider the totality of the other person. Seven years later they meet again in Florence, in winter, with a week to get to know each other again, to analyse the past - and, possibly, find a future together. I liked this a lot and it does some very deft things with memory (the magnolia); I could have happily kept reading about them.

And some re-reads:

Red Shift, Alan Garner I now find this book decipherable, but every time I read it my baffled childhood self is there in the pages, fighting with the text in an attempt to understand it in a way I’d never had to do with anything I’d read before then (I would have been 9 or so, and sought this one out because I’d loved Weirdstone of Brisingamen and I’d surreptitiously watched the TV adaptation of Red Shift while my parents were watching it - my bedroom in that house was a converted sunroom off the living room via a glass door, so handy for peeping through the curtains after my supposed bedtime).

Think of England, KJ Charles. Country house mystery with a background of international intrigue. I do like this one a lot. Both leads and the relationship dynamics work really well for me - uptight moral war veteran and louche Jewish poet, working together to save their country.