cyphomandra

I actually spent most of my free time this month playing Stardew Valley, a sweet move-to-a-small-town and run a farm sim that is in no way anything I would want to do in real life, and read very little, which was also helped by the fact that I didn’t really like anything I read. On the other hand, my farm is super productive and many of the townspeople are friendly.

The Juliet Code, Christine Wells. While I can sympathise with reading Between Silk and Cyanide and thinking, I want to write about this, I am less sympathetic to making it a romance between the not-quiet Leon Marks codebreaker and the not-quite Noor Inayat Khan radio operatives he trains, especially when it ends happily, and not at all sympathetic to making the leads neither Jewish nor Muslim.

Fence, volume 2. C.S. Pacat. I find this very pretty while not retaining much. I am still baffled by the logistics of the school - if it’s a specialist fencing academy, why are there so few fencers? - and not entirely convinced by the dynamic between the two leads, but it’s fun while I’m reading.

The Glass Ocean, Beatriz Williams, Lauren Willig, Karen White. Narrative switches between two women on the Lusitania on its final, fated cruise - a wealthy southern belle with a secretive industrialist husband and a steerage passenger forced to carry out a risky theft/forgery by her con artist sister - and a contemporary author descended from one of the ship’s stewards, who, struggling to come up with a new book concept, breaks a promise she made to her mother and opens a chest containing her ancestor’s rescued possessions - which sends her on a quest to find out what they mean. I really liked the beginning, where the author attends a rich, bored, book group, who have pirated copies of her story, and there’s some nice scene-setting on the ship, with that sense of inevitable doom approaching. None of the romances are particularly convincing, though, and I wanted more from the final resolution.

A Prince on Paper & Can’t Escape Love, Alyssa Cole (Reluctant Royals series). These do have fantastic covers. In A Prince on Paper, Nya, who tried to escape to New York from the shadow of her abusive father but never really fitted in there, accidentally shares a bed (on a private jet) with playboy (or is he?) Johan von Braustein, prince of Liechtienbourg; romance and a rather unconvincing action plot ensue. There are a lot of nice moments - Nya’s fondness for playing dating sims, the bit where Nya suggests that the Liechtienbourgers language is just a mash-up of French and German (true, plus misspellings) and Johan says that this is a terrible insult and a misunderstanding and she must never say this again - but there’s a lot going on and a lot of things feel unfinished.

Can’t Escape Love has nerdy popculture blogger Regina (who uses a wheelchair and is Portia from Duke by Default’s twin - I read this next month) is obsessed with the voice of live-streamer and escape room designer, Gustave Nguyen, which she uses to fall asleep to. When he deletes his archive Regina goes looking for him - conveniently, just after he’s been commissioned to design an escape room themed around an anime he’s never watched, that Regina is obsessed with. This is a sterling demonstration of failing to lean in, as per rachelmanija, as at no point is the escape room described nor does anyone get locked in one, and I was so irritated by this that I don’t remember much else.

I am currently staying at the Melbourne Hotel in Perth, which is confusing enough that I put "Perth Hotel, Melbourne" on all my arrival documentation and had to change it. Anyway. I have seen quokkas in the wild (so cute!) so this definitely must be Perth. I am also still hopeful that I might manage to catch up on at least books read this year...

Wintersong, S Jae-Jones
Peasprout Chen: Future Legend of Skate and Sword, Henry Lien
Bad Judgment, Sidney Bell
Bookworm, Lucy Mangan
Salt Magic, Skin Magic, Lee Welch
L’Appart, David Lebovitz
Sing for the Coming of the Longest Night, Katherine Fabian and Iona Datt
The Wolf at the Door, Charlie Adhara
The Epic Crush of Genie Lo, FC Yee
Object of Desire, Dal Maclean
Everything Changes, Annabeth Albert
Pretty Delicious Café, Danielle Hawkins
Dragon Pearl, Yoon Ha Lee
A Cut Above, Cara Malone
For Love of a Horse, Patricia Leitch
A Girl from Yamhill, Beverly Cleary
Passing Through, Jay Norcliffe
Bad Bachelors, Stefanie London
The War that Saved My Life, Kimberly Brubaker Bradley
The War I Finally Won, Kimberly Brubaker Bradley
Come What May, AM Arthur
The Poppy War, RF Kuang

This month my best reads were Lucy Mangan’s Bookworm, a memoir of her childhood in reading (pretty much a sure thing, given we’re very close in age and in childhood reading tastes, although I hadn’t read the Gwen Grants and Mangan is not all that fussed by fantasy and never disappeared off into detective stories, sf, and novels about the second Jacobite rebellion) and Kimberly Brubaker Bradley’s The War duology. The second of Dal Maclean’s books was very very good, but just not as good as the first.( Assorted March. )

I read (but haven't yet blogged) her The Hate U Give last December and thought it was great - solid story, thoroughly developed characters & community, fabulous control of tension as events proceed through the book. This is set in the same community with a different lead - Bri, a young rapper out to make a name for herself, in trouble at school for selling candy - and it's also excellent. Bri's father was an underground rapper killed by a gang; Bri's mother got hooked on drugs and abandoned her kids for years before getting clean, and that hangs over all of Bri's relationships, whether with her older brother who is working in a pizza parlour and struggling, unable to get a decent job despite his degree, her aunt Pooh, a drug dealer with connections, or her friends. Bri works at her music, too; constantly thinking about rhymes, rhythm and flow, and the music pieces - her freestyle raps and her singles - reminded me of reading Roddie Doyle's The Commitments, and actually hearing the music. Some of the plot developments are obvious (the identity of Rapid) but still satisfying. Again, the sense of a community, with intersecting circles of people and identities, is particularly well done, and Bri's attempts to grapple with her own identity - who people believe she is, and what happens when she takes on those expectations - play out compellingly against that.

Tigers on the Run and Tigers on the Way, Sean Kennedy. In the first, Dec and Simon have to deal with Dec's ex getting together with Simon's PA, as well as one of the gay sports teens Dec mentors going off the rails; in the second Dec & Simon have decided to have kids, after Simon's former PA Nyssa volunteers her services as a surrogate, but during the initial work up Simon is diagnosed with a testicular tumour. The series is definitely suffering from diminishing returns, as well as pacing issues and some technical slips (it is not possible to do IUI with donor eggs, so the whole bit about doing this and resulting accidental multiples doesn't work), and although I do like the characters they're wearing out their welcome. I don't think he intends any more at this stage - I will check out the YA spin-offs, though, as the different narrators might shake things up a bit.

Bone to Pick, TA Moore. Cloister Witte overcame his family background and works as a K9 officer in San Diego with his dog, Bourneville. Assigned to a case involving a missing ten year old boy, he has to work with Special Agent Javi Merlo, an abrasive Mexican-American officer who Cloister previously nearly assaulted over another case.

This is much stronger on investigation than on romance, as Javi's personality is a pretty big obstacle. But they do manage to work well together, and there's a sequel where, just possibly, Javi might manage more than a glimpse of character growth. But the best thing about this is Bourneville, who is a dog (not just a dog-shaped plot convenience) and a fabulous, competent one at that.

Invisibly Breathing, Eileen Merriman.  NZ YA (set in Lower Hutt, for local readers :D ). Felix Catalan has few friends at school and his parents’ marriage is breaking up; he copes by listening to Green Day and obsessing over mathematical rituals. Then Bailey Hunter arrives at school: he’s the oldest of a large family with an alcoholic abusive father, he stutters, loves judo, and is bisexual. The two of them get together, but have to cope with bullying, the threat of discovery, and Bailey’s decompensating father. After a slightly rocky start (I feel that I have read more than enough children’s/YA in which the main character is quirky and has Strong Feelings about numbers, and Bailey is all too obviously a teenage problem character looking for a teenage problem novel) I got into this - the relationship develops well, the bullying isn’t totally over the top, Felix’s parents come across as actual people - but then, regrettably, the ending became more melodramatic and less believable).  

( “Spoilers.” )

First in her Emergency Services series, m/m contemporary romance featuring two police officers who share a 60 000 km beat in Queensland, Australia. Gio is new, a big city cop who was on the rise until he turned his boyfriend and fellow officer in for abusing steroids; unfortunately the boyfriend has put a spin on the story that means Gio is now seen as a dog, which is apparently what Queensland police call a traitor and they are bullying him out of the force. He ends up taking a job in Richmond, where his sergeant, Jason, is still grieving the death of his wife five years earlier and struggling to look after Taylor, their ten year old son.

As Gio learns how to be a good small town cop, and Jason works out what the real story behind Gio's past is, the two of them start a no-strings-attached sexual relationship (Gio is out, Jason is bi and possibly poly - he met his wife when they were both sleeping with the same guy, with definite overlap), but events and emotions make things more complicated.

The small town policing and the Australianness of this are definite strengths (I read at least one irked review complaining that they had no idea what Vegemite was; also Gio's first call out in Richmond is to get a deadly snake out of someone's wardrobe) - Henry is a dispatcher for the Queensland police, and it all feels very lived-in. I liked Gio, and I like that Jason, unlike many other single dads in m/m, is doing his best for his son but it is quite definitely not enough; he can't single-handedly mind a ten year old and run a police station, and he can't keep expecting others to look after Taylor, either. I am less convinced by the near total lack of small town homophobia and, while I do really like "no-strings that becomes something more" as a trope, I didn't get enough heat and emotion out of Gio and Jason to really make that work. I've liked previous books by Henry while finding them a bit too fond of the delicate younger easily abused man meets older competent cynical protector to always work for me, so it's interesting to see Henry trying something different; and I'll definitely read the next one.

(I was looking at my past reviews of Henry's books and hit this line from a review of a rather irritating m/m from a totally different author: "Edward – Eddie – is also totally naïve, gay, and an extremely effective black belt in karate, despite being so clumsy that at one stage he gets his hands stuck in his pockets and requires two people to free him." Inexplicably I never read another book by them :D )

I am joining in rachelmanija's monthly challenge of posting about books right after reading them (a concept I am apparently unfamiliar with!). So far..

Brave, Svetlana Chmakova. Second in a graphic novel series about middle school (yet another reading-this-before-I-send-it-to-the-niece-I-bought-it-for). Jensen dreams of saving the world from various threats (especially sunspots) but reality is much harder. The other kids in the art club (which he loves) keep leaving him out of things, no one picks him to do a class project, and the school newspaper crew only want him around because they want to talk to him about bullying - but Jensen doesn’t want to admit that he is being bullied, rather than just having a few bad moments. This is nicely done with a lot of great characterisation, and it’s particularly good in showing how little decisions can build up into a culture, for good or bad. Will look out for the others.

Changing Lines, RJ Scott and VL Locey. Hockey m/m, first in a series about a new team; I’ve been reading a few sports romances recently with what I can only describe as variable success (I am open to recs of any high-perfomance sports f/f romances?). In this one Ten, the youngest of three brothers who all play high-level hockey, joins a new team to get out of his brothers’ shadows, and falls for the coach, Jared, who is a family friend (he’s 33, Ten is early 20s) and openly bi. Ten is cheerfully enthusiastic and manages to come out to his parents, his brothers, his team, various managers and the world with an encouraging but not entirely convincing lack of drama, while Jared, who has a 17 year old son who is also a talented hockey player, is mainly trying to protect his son from going pro too early due to grandparental pressure, and is not apparently at all perturbed by a coach/player relationship. The characters are stronger than the story, except when they veer towards the sentimental at which point everything becomes doused in treacle, and it didn't really engage me.

The highlight this month was the Jinty re-reads, because I can still find my childhood reading self in those pages.

Omega Required, Dessa Lux
Rocket Fuel: some of the best from Tor.com non-fiction
The Secret Ministry of Ag & Fish, Noreen Riols
Ship It, Britta Lundin
Exog, Peale McDaniel
In Love and War: Nursing Heroes, Liz Byrski
Land of No Tears, Pat Mills and Guy Peeters
The Human Zoo, Malcolm Shaw and Guy Peeters
The Abyss Surrounds Us, Emily Skrutskie.
Hull Metal Girls, Emily Skrutskie.
Sheets, Brenna Tummler

( Reviews )

Princess Princess Ever After, Katie O’Neill. A sweet short middle-grade graphic novel in which Sadie, the “big-boned” princess imprisoned in a tower by her older sister’s magic and her own self-doubt (she has befriended Oliver, the dragon set to guard her, largely by feeding him) is rescued by Amira, a princess of colour with “kick-butt hair”, who left her own kingdom to save people rather than get married to a prince. They, in turn, rescue a prince suffering under parental expectations, stop an ogre from destroying a village (Sadie tells him he’s a great dancer but his stomping is scaring people away. The ogre: “… Actually, I often wonder if my lack of creative fulfillment is because I never have an audience…”), and ultimately defeat Sadie’s sister. Then Amira leaves, to become a hero, and Sadie stays, to become a queen, but that’s not the end…

The creator’s website is here; she has a few other graphic novels that I will keep an eye out for (although they're published through the US, the author is an NZer).