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Sisters by Choice by Susan Mallery

Hello Kittens! I hope everyone is adjusting to life under quarantine as best as they can. I have to admit that I am starting to go a little stir crazy. As much as I love reading, eye-strain is real, so even I have to take a break every now and again. Things are so off-balance for me that I did something that I have not done in a really long time…two things actually. I accepted a book recommendation from someone who’s tastes I know are different from mine and I started a book that was in a series without knowing anything about the series or having read any of the previous books. It turned out to be a great move. Readers, I stayed up all night to finish this book. I literally read the whole thing in a 12 hour span with a few breaks in between. I was up until 4am because I couldn’t make myself put it down (although it probably didn’t hurt that I knew I didn’t have to worry about going to work that morning). This one came out a little over two months ago now and it wasn’t really on my radar, but it is a sweet and simple read that I think is just the ticket for these stressful times. Pick it up if you get the chance.

Title: Sisters by Choice Sisters by Choice (Blackberry Island, #4)

Author: Susan Mallery

Author website: https://www.susanmallery.com/

Publisher: Mira (imprint of Harlequin)

Publish date: February 11, 2020

ISBN: 9780778310020

Buy the Book: Amazon, Barnes and Noble

I should start off by revealing that I am not a Susan Mallery fan. I don’t have anything against her, I just tend to prefer a grittier kind of writing and I’m not a huge romance reader. That being said, i’ll be giving her releases a little more of my attention in the future. I don’t know why, but I had pegged her in my mind as more of a Danielle Steel-type writer. This book actually reads more like a Jenny Colgan novel, so if you like her work, definitely give this one a try. Also, if the world is just all too much right now, this is a great escape.

We start off by meeting Sophie Lane, a type-A personality who is on an unimaginative and fairly uninteresting second date. Then she gets a phone call that changes her entire life. The business that she has built from the ground up has just gone up in flames. No one was hurt, but she’s going to have to start all over again, and to make matters worse, when she relocates to a new factory to get started, none of her former employees are willing to go with her. Fortunately for Sophie, the new location is in her hometown, a sweet little coastal area of Blackberry Island, Washington. Who needs loyal employees when she’s got family, right?

Kristine Fielding is Sophie’s cousin and long-time Blackberry Island resident. She is married with three young sons and seemingly has the perfect home life. She also has a small successful baking business on the side that she runs out of her home kitchen. She does it all… but her boys are growing up and she’s starting to want more. When a local property that’s perfect for a bakery storefront comes on the market, she desperately wants to expand her baking dream. She does the research and prepares to discuss the plan with her husband. She’s supported his dreams for their entire marriage, so he’ll be happy to help her build hers, right?

Amber Sitterly is Sophie’s cousin. Amber and her daughter, Heather, begin working for Sophie once she gets her factory up and running, but just because they’re family doesn’t mean all is right in paradise. Amber has a victim mentality about all aspects of her life, nothing is good enough for her, she deserves more than she gets, and she shouldn’t have to work hard for any of it. Heather supports her mother, depleting her savings to give her mother what she wants, but Heather has bigger dreams. She wants to get away from her mother and her negative influence and make something more of her life. Heather works hard and sees working for Sophie as an amazing learning opportunity, as long as Amber doesn’t screw it up for both of them. Amber wouldn’t do anything to undermine Heather or hurt Sophie’s business, right?

And then there’s Dugan. He’s a sexy tai chi instructor who might be just the relaxing no-strings man that Sophie needs. He’s simple and good in bed and seems to be willing to keep their relationship in the “with benefits but no emotional attachments” category. At the same time, he seems to know a lot about her business, and he’s always butting in with advice that she didn’t ask for. When it turns out that Dugan’s more than a pretty face, Sophie has trouble fighting the urge to cut her losses and move on.

This is book 4 in the Blackberry Island novels, and despite having not read any of the other novels, I was able to follow the story line without confusion. Actually, this book was so engaging that I may be picking up the other books in the series the next time that I get a chance. My one issue, if you can call it that, is that these characters are prone to making the same mistakes over and over again, which stretches the believability aspect a little. But that was it. If you are looking for a good escapist novel over the next few weeks, this one would be a good option.

Disclaimer: None needed this time. I picked up this title from the library pre-quarantine.

My rating:

lemonade_icon 2 glasses of lemonade= a book that you could probably recommend to family and close friends. They may not like everything that’s in it, but they’re not going to start sending you cards with holy scripture written in them as messages to get you back on the path of righteousness after reading them either.

This was a great book but it definitely has a few steamy scenes. Unless you know the person, I would be cautious about a recommendation without a heads up about the steam-factor.

The Sun Down Motel by Simone St. James

Hello Kittens! I hope everyone is staying as well as they can. I know that for many people these are scary and uncertain times and I hope that you are finding comfort in any small ways that you can. I have been finding some small solace in reading. I’ve only been home for a few days but I’ve managed to immerse myself in my TBR pile and plow through a few books that had been lounging without the attention they deserved over the last few weeks. Reading allows me to get out of my head. I only know that things have gotten to be too much in my life when I can no longer focus on a book. Fortunately, I have not reached that point yet. This book is a creepy one that just might take your mind off of the real world for awhile. I know that it did the trick for me.

Title: The Sun Down Motel

Author: Simone St. James

Author website: http://www.simonestjames.com/

Publisher: Berkley (Penguin Random House imprint)

Publish date: February 18, 2020

ISBN: 9780440000174

Buy the Book: Amazon, Barnes and Noble

Simone St. James came on my radar last year when I read The Broken Girls as part of my PopSugar Challenge and it blew me away. She’s now on my must-read list, so when her newest book, The Sun Down Motel was offered as one of the options for the January Book of the Month Box, I jumped on it. St. James sets the scenes for creepy mysteries like no one else that I have ever read. She integrates more supernatural elements in this story than she did in The Broken Girls but still creates plenty of scary moments with her earthly characters as well. The story opens with two narratives, separated by 35 years, following Vivian Delaney in 1982 and Carly Kirk in 2017.,

In 1982 Viv Delaney has run away from home and is on her way to New York City to start a new life. She ends up only making it as far as Fell, New York, a sleepy town with limited opportunities. Viv finds work as the night desk clerk at the Sun Down Motel. The job doesn’t require too much of her, since the motel only has a few customers at a time. Soon after starting work, Viv begins to notice some strange happenings at the Sun Down. The more she works there, the more it seems like some of the hotel’s guest checked in…and never left. As Viv begins to unravel the mysteries of the Sun Down, both past and present, she puts herself in real danger. By the end of the first chapter we know one thing for sure about Viv Delaney: by 3am on November 30, 1982, she will vanish.

In 2017, Carly Kirk makes her way to Fell, seeking purpose in her life after the death of her mother. She is drawn to Fell because of an unsolved family mystery, the disappearance of her aunt Viv in 1982. No one in the family would talk about what happened to her aunt, and Carly doesn’t want to live with that mystery hanging over her any longer, so she travels to Fell to find out what really happened. Carly settles into town and starts investigating, ultimately following in her aunt’s footsteps and taking the night desk clerk job at the Sun Down Motel. Along the way she meets a cast of characters who are both helpful and unnerving, including the Sun Down’s long-term residents. She begins putting all of the pieces together and finds herself following the same trails that her aunt did. Carly discovers the truth. Viv Delaney wasn’t the first woman to go missing in Fell. In fact, the town has a history of women meeting violent ends…but Viv was the last.

Told in alternating narratives between Viv and Carly, the reader gets deeply inside the heads of both women. The setting of Fell, New York is eerie, with everyone in town seeming to acknowledge that bad things happen to women in their town. The ambivalence of the townspeople and the local police force in light of these facts only adds to the novel’s tension. Viv’s old-school armchair detective work contrasts sharply with the information that is available to Carly with modern technology. Even as both women are leading the reader to the same conclusion, the story holds so many twists that the reader is going to be flying through the pages, unable to put the book down for fear that they’ll miss something. St. James has a knack for adding supernatural elements that don’t bog down the story. When the final conclusion comes to bear, the real monsters are all too human.

The story is excellent entertainment, but it doesn’t shy away from addressing the very real nature of gender disparity in the 70s. It also succinctly covers issues like mental health and the need to disengage from the facts when they get too dark. The thing that makes this story so good for me, is the fact that Fell, New York, could have been almost any town in the 70s and the story still could have played out this way. Those were dark times, but in all honesty, the story translates well into 2017’s narrative as well. The high point of this story comes when the reader learns how little has actually changed in all those years.

It’s a fast-paced read that mystery readers will love unraveling. Figuring out the whodunnit is only half the battle in this story, where the why and the how is so much more compelling than the who. I would recommend this read to anyone who likes their mysteries a little spooky and isn’t afraid of a little gore. Most of the violence is left off of the page, with the reader left to imagine based on descriptions of the injuries, but it could definitely be a trigger for those who are sensitive to violence against women. Fair warning.

Disclaimer: No disclaimer needed. I got this one through the Book of the Month service that I subscribe to. It’s pretty neat and if you’re an avid reader, I recommend trying it out. You get your choice of books each month across a variety of genres. Some of them are pre-release titles. If you don’t like that month’s offerings, you can pause and choose a book the next month. The prices are reasonable and the titles are top-tier.

My rating:

lemonade_icon 4 glasses of lemonade= a book you could recommend to a book group or anybody who reads. You might find controversial subject matter, but it is handled delicately.

Most of the violence takes place off of the page. I think this would be a great book group selection because it is going to spur discussion of why society has so much trouble taking the endemic problem of violence against women seriously. It’s also pretty thought provoking when it comes to the nature of justice. There is a very minimal amount of foul language in the book, primarily spoken by villains, which I feel makes it more palatable to readers. Overall, I will be recommending this book to several of my patrons and most of my co-workers.

Oona Out of Order by Margarita Montimore

Hello Kittens! I hope that wherever you are, the weather is not awful. We have continued the trend of basically skipping Winter here in the South and going straight into Spring. My primary complaint about that is that without snow days, I don’t get bonus days to read where I’m still being paid unless I actually start using my PTO for these things. I’m not that desperate. Yet. In any case, I did manage to finish a stellar novel last month that is starting to get some buzz, but that I still want to recommend to all of you. It’s called Oona Out of Order and it came on my radar a few months back. I was fortunate enough to win an advance copy in a giveaway from the publisher, and I flew through it once it arrived. This novel would be a great selection for book groups because it deals with the practical complications of time travel as well as the emotional complications of growing up. It deals with all sorts of relationships and is both heartbreaking and heartwarming. I think y’all will like this one if you give it a read.

Title: Oona Out of Order

Author: Margarita Montimore

Author website: https://www.montimore.com/

Publisher: Flatiron Books

Publish date: February 25^th, 2020

ISBN: 9781250236609

Buy the Book: Amazon, Barnes and Noble

The book opens with Oona Lockhart getting ready to celebrate her 19^th birthday, which also happens to fall on January 1st. She is excited, but also anxious, because she is on the cusp of making some very important decisions about her life, her future, her relationship with her boyfriend, her place in her band, and her acceptance to a prestigious university. She is faced with a series of choices, because she can’t have everything that is available to her.

As the party really gets started at midnight, Oona is suddenly transported. She wakes up in a different time, and in a different body…or at least a different-aged body. She comes to with the mind of a now 19-year-old, in a body that is significantly older. There is a young man in the room, who tries to help her understand what has just happened. She comes to find out that this is a part of her life in the future. Every year on her birthday she will be transported to a different year of her life. The leaps will be random and very few people will ever be able to know about them. Every year, Oona starts over. In theory, her future self leaves her a letter each year, trying to prepare her for what the next year holds without letting her know too much.

In theory, it all sounds great, but in practice, it’s a bit like making a wish with a genie…it rarely turns out the way that you expect it to. Even when her future self warns her, Oona often finds herself in difficult situations. The story revolves around how she lives her life with the next year’s leap constantly overshadowing the current year’s life. Oona falls in love, loses important relationships, is betrayed by the people closest to her, and she constantly has to worry about doing or saying the wrong thing.

This book was a phenomenal read for me. Time travel can be a very tricky subject to tackle, and Montimore does it in a way that is seamless, while not bogging the reader down with the “whys” of it all. Oona reacts the same way that I think anyone would if they suddenly found themselves transported into the future. I particularly like when she adjusts to having certain modern comforts, like cell phones and the internet, but then the following year is transported back in time and has to re-learn what life is like before they were invented. Oona is the centerpiece of the book, of course, but it is her relationships with her mother and her trusted assistant that really make this story something special. Her relationships understandably morph throughout her time, but since Oona is unable to tell most of the people in her life about what is going on, these two relationships become so important to her development as a character.

If I had to come up with a negative comment about this book, I would say that it ended too soon. If you’re the kind of reader who likes to have all of the loose threads tied up by the end of the story, you’re going to be disappointed. That’s not to say that the ending was bad. I personally thought it was beautiful, but I wasn’t done with the character of Oona. We end up getting a few snapshots of her life, but we don’t get the full story, and I would love for Montimore to write a follow-up.

Disclaimer: I won an Advanced Reader Copy of this book in a giveaway from the publisher, but there was no expectation of a review in exchange.

My rating:

lemonade_icon 4 glasses of lemonade= a book you could recommend to a book group or anybody who reads. You might find controversial subject matter, but it is handled delicately.

I would have loved to have given this one 5 glasses of lemonade, but it does have a few scenes that some readers might object to. Oona gets involved briefly with drug and alcohol abuse. She also has friends with differing sexual preferences and she engages in a drug-infused sexual escapade at a club. All in all, it’s not extremely graphic, but I still might hesitate to recommend it to everyone who comes in to the library.

Qualityland by Marc-Uwe Kling

Greetings Kittens! I wanted to challenge myself this year after falling short of my reading goals in 2019. I wanted to try to read from genres that I often overlook, while also giving myself permission to do a little more guilty-pleasure reading from my favorite genre: mystery. While Qualityland is not the first book that I read this year, it is the first book that meets challenge #1: read from overlooked genres. The entire book is a satire, and while it is written by a German author, it is very clearly satirizing American culture and politics. I would have been more offended, but the book is clever and funny and hits pretty close to the truth. It’s not going to be everyone’s favorite read, but I can see this gaining some cult classic status pretty quick, especially since HBO has reportedly picked up the rights for an adaptation. Welcome to Qualityland, my dear readers.

Title: Qualityland

Author: Marc-Uwe Kling

Author website: https://marcuwekling.de/en/

Publisher: Grand Central Publishing

Publish date: January 7, 2020 (originally published in Germany in 2017)

ISBN: 9781538732960

Buy the Book: Amazon, Barnes and Noble

The tagline for the cover of Qualityland is: “The Biggest Company. The Perfect Algorithm. What could possibly go wrong?” I think most readers can guess the answer to that question, but nonetheless, let’s meet our cast of characters. The story is mostly the narrative of a man named Peter Jobless (in this new world order, your surname is chosen based on the career of your gender equivalent parent at the time of your conception). Peter Jobless runs a machine crushing business that is mostly unsuccessful. In Qualityland, their machines are the best!

In this dystopian future, people do not need to go online and click through purchase decisions on their computers, instead they have devices embedded into their brains through their ear canals (appropriately called earworms) that communicate directly with the various technological aspects of their society and e-commerce. The user doesn’t need to physically order an item from TheShop (the largest internet retailer), because once the user thinks about wanting the item, provided there is enough currency in their account, the item is delivered by flying drone almost instantly to their door. All of this is an accepted part of Peter’s daily routine, up until the day that he receives an item from TheShop that he didn’t think about and doesn’t want. His efforts to return this item with the help of his sort-of girlfriend Kiki, a wise but paranoid old man, and his band of machines-that-he-was-supposed-to-destroy-but-didn’t drive the novel forward with farcical consequences.

There are so many clever allusions in this plot that it’s tough to pick just a few plot points to share here. First of all, Peter has a personal assistant robot that he has named Nobody, so he frequently has an inner monologue going that revolves around Nobody doing things. As a reader, it can be a little confusing to follow at first, but once you catch on, the humor of that situation is endless. This book came out shortly after the 2016 elections here in America, and one of the plots in the story is a new presidential election. The two candidates are a logical and earnest android named John of Us and a bombastic and nonsensical human named Conrad Cook. Cook frequently contradicts himself and shouts out that every idea he disagrees with is a “lie”. Read into that what you will…

Obviously, this book is not going to be everyone’s cup of tea. It is a satire, taking the worst aspects of capitalism and American politics and culture to their extremes. It is also a little scary to think how close to some of the scenarios presented in the book we have already come. This is Kling’s first novel. He has an international following already, but I believe this title will certainly earn him some American fans. The biggest turn offs for readers are going to be the political scenes that are only thinly veiled references to existing figures as well as the sexual scenes that always lack appeal for certain audiences. From a Librarian’s perspective, this title is well-written, but as a Southern Librarian, this one might be a tough sell for the majority of my patrons (which will not stop me from strategically placing it in displays for the next few months).

Disclaimer: No disclaimer on this one. I heard about it on the All the Books Podcast and requested it from my local library.

My rating:

1 glass of lemonade= a book that can only be recommended to someone whose reading taste you know well, like a best friend. There may be a fair amount of curse words, spicy sex scenes, or potentially morally repugnant behavior. This does not mean that the book is bad, just that the audience might be a little more limited.

Sadly, despite the fact that I loved this book and rated it highly on Goodreads, the frequent references to masturbation and the political satire are going to make me hesitant to recommend it to random patrons. I am definitely intrigued to see how far HBO is going to do with their adaptation.

The Department of Sensitive Crimes by Alexander McCall-Smith

What up Kittens? I am in a fabulous mood after a weekend full of truly excellent reading. Finally, I have found for you the elusive 5 glasses of lemonade rating for a satisfying mystery that is NOT a cozy! Yes, you read that right. It is not a cozy…at least not in the traditional sense. The Department of Sensistive Crimes by Alexander McCall-Smith has been billed by his publishers (and presumably himself) as “Scandi Lite” or “Scandi blanc”. Supposedly it is a new subgenre in crime fiction and we’ll have to see if it takes off. I, for one, think people are really going to like this, but I’m not sure how it will play with hard-core mystery fans. For the time being, I like to think of Gretchen Wieners and “fetch” from Mean Girls whenever I think about McCall-Smith coining this new term. I also have to say that this book helped expand my vocabulary in a non-intimidating way. Here is a selection of the terms that I had to check the definition of from this book: concomitants, philately, auto-didact, abstruse, locus, solipsistic, perfidy, sinecure, and profligacy. For such a short book, it was quite the vocabulary lesson, but that only adds to the charm of this book for me.

Title: The Department of Sensitive Crimes

Author: Alexander McCall-Smith The Department of Sensitive Crimes (Detective Varg, #1)

Author website: https://www.alexandermccallsmith.com/

Publisher: Pantheon (division of Penguin Randomhouse)

Publish date: April 16^th, 2019

ISBN: 9781524748210

Buy the Book: Amazon, Barnes and Noble

Alexander McCall-Smith is probably best known for his No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency novels, so starting a new series is likely no easy feat. In The Department of Sensitive Crimes we meet Ulf Varg, a detective who works as part of a small team to investigate the crimes that are deemed “sensitive” and therefore are diverted from the regular field police to this special unit. Varg drives a charming car and lives alone, his wife having left him some years before. He is an unassuming but thoughtful detective who might have a little bit of a crush on a coworker but would never act upon it. Throughout the course of the novel he will investigate a stabbing, multiple missing persons cases, and a concerning incident with a possible werewolf. Through it all, he maintains his calm and pleasant demeanor, even when working with those whose nonstop chatter might ruffle his feathers a little bit.

The Sensitive Crimes unit is charming and easy to like. In the unit we are introduced to the full range of characters we have come to expect in these situations, including the weekend angler whose just trying to collect a paycheck until he retires and the overeager workaholic who somehow manages to maintain a perfect home life. The reader may be expecting a dark turn any moment if they’re accustomed to Nordic Noir but **spoiler alert**, it never comes. This book is a comforting read and will appeal as much to fans of travel as it does to fans of cozy mysteries. Think of this title as what would result if Jan Karon wrote a mystery novel.

I have only a few minor criticisms of the novel itself, nothing that should dissuade readers in the least. First, Varg references the story of the little Dutch boy with his finger in the dyke. A little light digging on the Internet reveals this to be a largely American story that isn’t well known in Scandinavia, so it diminishes the setting a little bit for me. The second concern that I had was that the novel treats the presumed disappearance of a young lady somewhat lightly. It fits in with the theme of the entire novel, but it is a jarring turn of events from the traditional mystery novel which would treat that type of thing with urgency. The whole book gives the impression of a forced slow-down if the reader is a crime buff, and it does take some adjustment. Lastly, the book references the fact that the detective’s name translates to Wolf Wolf over and over again, but if there is any other connection to that, I missed it. Possibly it is a build up to a future novel, but it gets really repetitive after a while.

Nonetheless, I would have no trouble recommending this title to patrons. I can’t think of anything that would be a cause for significant complaint. I intend to start pulling this one out for people who are looking for a good easy read.

Disclaimer: No disclaimer needed on this one. I checked it out from my local library.

My rating:

lemonade_icon 5 glasses of lemonade= you could recommend this book to anyone. There is nothing in here that is going to upset anyone and you could start handing it out on street corners. (This kind of book is a Librarian’s dream. As much as we love good literature, suggesting a book for someone can be nerve-wracking work that can backfire BIG TIME.)

There’s no cursing, no gore. This book is nothing but charm and good humor set in a place that many people would love to visit. It will make you want to pop down to a cafe and have a warm beverage. Comfort reading at its best, but still with plenty of twists to keep you entertained.