More Books than Time

Book Reviews - Romance, Fantasy, Science Fiction - By an Adult for Adults

Beautiful Day: A Novel by Elin Hilderbrand Nantucket Romance Wedding Story

by Leave a Comment

Beautiful Day: A Novel is the first book I’ve read by Elin Hilderbrand. It is set on Nantucket, a location I found fascinating in Island Girls by Nancy Thayer. When I browsed Island Girls on Amazon this book, Beautiful Day came up as a “if you liked” recommendation.

I had a like / not-like reaction to Beautiful Day. I found the relationships and emotional conflicts interesting, especially in the oldest sister Margot’s guilt over her affair with her father’s partner and her betrayal of a job seeker.

But – and this is a big but – I didn’t like the characters. Bride Jenna is spoiled and silly. Supposedly she is dedicated to helping people, environmentalism, ethical mining, so on and so forth. In reality she spent $180,000 on her wedding. Really? I believe people have the right to spend their money as they choose, although I would never spend even a tenth of that on a single day, but is it consistent with a true champion of the poor? No, it is not.

Doug, Jenna’s dad, is unhappy. He is married to a woman he doesn’t love, Pauline. He misses his dead wife Beth so much it prevents him from being happy with someone else or even growing up enough to face the consequences of his rather aimless agreement to marry Pauline.

The rest of the group are no better. I didn’t like the characters and found the plot silly. There are other missteps.

For example, bride Jenna is a teacher at a low income school. She invited several of her fellow teachers to her wedding and they came. Yes, they managed to afford a 1) boat or plane trip to Nantucket, 2) a dress to fit in with a very rich crowd, 3) a hotel room on Nantucket in July on a weekend. Nope, I don’t buy that. Unless all her friends are the same as she, little rich girls playing at solidarity with the poor, it’s ridiculous.

Margot’s supposed lover, her father’s partner, turns out to have a very young real girlfriend. He used Margot and Margot, supposedly a super smart woman and great judge of character, fell for it.

Margot’s and Jenna’s mother Beth wrote Jenna the Notebook before she died with directions for her wedding.  It’s a lovely sentiment but the wonderful, loving mother that all seem to worship came across to me as careless, obsessed with material perfection and manipulative.  She suggested Jenna could wear her dress, but of course she didn’t have to, although she, Beth, was crying just thinking how lovely her little girl would be.   If Beth had been alive she would have been ghastly.

Lastly over half the bunch were cheaters.  Newlywed girl cheating with the best man.  Groom’s dad cheating with a woman, having a child.

Even the lovely Nantucket was scarcely shown.  Instead of seeing the gorgeous island sun all we read about is the 40% chance of rain.

Maybe it’s me.  This is not the type of book I usually read, but I found Island Girls by Nancy Thayer so enjoyable and liked the light, fluffy relationship story so much that I borrowed several by Nancy Thayer and similar authors from the library. I thought I’d found a new genre and new authors to enjoy.  So far all have disappointed. Guess I’m just not into wow ’em weddings, fancy clothes, cheaters and whiny brides.

Short Stories from Intergalactic Crime to Cat Rescues Novellas Kira Bacal

by Leave a Comment

I love trying new authors and one of the best ways is to browse the free or cheap books for my Nook.  Kira Bacal is a doctor who worked at NASA and the Senate before moving to New Zealand.  She published seven free Nook novellas, all enjoyable, easy reads.   I’ll cover three in this post.

All I Need to Know about the Earth, I Learned in Kindergarten

What do you do when you’re an intergalactic criminal and need a safe, quiet hideaway?  Why come to Earth and teach kindergarten of course.  “Miss Buttercup” is leading her classroom out to catch their buses home when one of the kids steps into the road, right in front of a car.  Miss Buttercup can move much faster than humans and rescues the child, however there is a witness:  Mrs. Weinbaum, an 80 year old crossing guard.

Mrs. Weinbaum asks Miss Buttercup to come to her home where they agree to a mutually advantageous outcome.

This story is not deep but it is well-written and entertaining.  I enjoyed Miss Buttercup and her penchant for helping her human students and would love to read a longer story with her as a main character.

Look What the Cat Dragged In

Would you answer the door during a howling blizzard if you live alone in a remote cabin?  Our main character does and lets in a young kitten she names Amber.  Amber has deformed front legs that don’t let her walk normally and our heroine is mildly curious how she managed to make it to her doorstep before freezing in the snow.

A few weeks later she learns the answer when Amber’s real people show up…

I liked the characters in this one too, but especially enjoyed the ambiguity around the pronouns “She is protecting it”.  Who is the “she” and who is the “it”?  This was a fun fast read, possibly the weakest of the stories yet well worth the time.

The Ananaki

This one was different from the others.  Still had a science fiction background, but the main character is a fishing captain on a backward planet.  Some unscrupulous folks convinced the locals they were “gods”, “Ananaki” and provided an amulet and altar for communication and punishment.

Luckily for our hero his latest passenger, a rescued young man, does not believe in the Ananaki and damages the altar.  That damages causes the amulet to instead contact a military or police vessel (we never learn who) that manages to disabuse the natives of the Ananaki’s perfection and removes the Ananaki from the planet.

I enjoyed the dialogue and the style of this one very much.  The story was good and we learned just enough of the people to see there was trouble afoot.  The “gods” were mean and greedy, not the sort anyone wants around.  The middle of the novella dragged just a bit when the captain and his rescued atheist argue but the rest was very good.

All told I’d give these 4 to 5 stars.  Excellent, fun reads, perfect to spend a few minutes enjoyably.

Note to readers:  For some reason the spell checker in Word Press isn’t working very well – or else I”m not making any typos or misspellings.  Ha, not too likely!

Good Story, Lots of Suspense, Bit of a Fizzle at the End Images of Betrayal Claire Collins

by Leave a Comment

One way I like to find new authors and books I might not otherwise read is to get free Nook books and then check out the “people also bought” selections for the ones I like.  It works most of the time.  In fact the biggest problem is the sheer number of free Nook books available!  When I shop via my Nook and search by price, the second sort criteria is title and there are so many that I’ve never gotten past the free books with titles starting with “A”.

I don’t remember how I found Images Of Betrayal by Claire Collins (which is not free) and I wasn’t sure what I was getting. The blurb says “He possesses the remarkable ability to take photographs of events that have not yet happened.” Will this be fantasy? Science fiction? Suspense? Or? The Amazon blurb hints it’s not a fantasy about a guy who really can photograph the future: “Walker-her apparent savior, David-her new admirer”. Kinda gives it away a bit; it’s Photoshop, not a time machine.

Plot and Characters

Tysan is 17 years old and the left behind kid from her parents’ divorce.  Her mom got custody of the four younger kids and her Dad got her.  Unfortunately Dad forgot about earning a  living, paying bills and has neither interest nor intention to take care of Tysan.  In fact Dad left and left Tysan behind.  She dropped out of school to wait tables to pay the bills and working the day shift at a steakhouse she can barely make enough to stay alive.

Enter Walker, a guy in his 20s, who chats up Tysan at the restaurant and shows her some photos he took of her that show people she knows, situations she has been in, and photos he claims are of the future.  The future is horrifying, showing Tysan horribly burnt.  Walker asks Tysan to come to his home the day that the fire is supposed to occur.  Indeed, the restaurant explodes, a couple people are killed, Tysan’s friend Sheila is hurt.  She leaves Walker’s home and goes back to her own apartment terrified, shaken and now jobless.

Sheila is kind and generous and knows well that Tysan is barely able to keep her apartment.  Sh asks Tysan to come stay with her family for a while, at least until she finds another job.  Tysan and Sheila’s popular, 18 year old son David soon are on the edge of an affair.  That’s as much as I can say without spoiling the book for you.

The characters are moderately well done.  Tysan’s conversation is authentic and her relationship with her sister feels real.  Her parents are monumentally selfish, but believable too.  Sheila, Mike and David are a little less believable and Walker is only sketched in.

The Good Parts

Tysan was so convinced by Walker that we readers are almost convinced too, at least enough to get into the story and go along with it. Images Of Betrayal is fast moving, with enough suspense and creepiness to engage.

The Bad Parts

What parent in their right mind would think it was a good idea to let their teenaged son and their almost foster daughter play house in the basement?  I know lots of kids indulge in sex and lots of people don’t see anything wrong with it, but any parent who thinks it’s a great idea and encourages their kids has rocks in their heads.  Kids, especially naive vulnerable 17 year old girls who have been abandoned by their families, do not have great judgement and if you add sex to already heightened emotions, plus the hormonal stew pot, you are setting that girl up for misery.  How many teens stay happily in love with the same person from age 17 forever?  And how hard would it be for that girl to break up if she should decide to do so?

Yet this is what Sheila and Mike do at the end when they offer Tysan a home and offer to fix up the basement for her and David to share as their own home.  This is the romantic equivalent of buying the booze for your kids to have a big drinking party.

4 Stars except for the ending

Island Girls Nancy Thayer Summer Read Beach Book Romance Novel Chick Lit

by Leave a Comment

Island Girls: A Novel was a bit off the usual type of book that I read. It’s entertaining, classic beach novel, about three sisters who spend the summer together, fall in love and renew their sisterhood.

This was the first book by Nancy Thayer I have read. Our local library newsletter included this in their recent “new books” section and it sounded fun. Plus the cover was lovely with the fluttering beach umbrella. I detest books full of women having affairs and angst about marriage, careers, suburbia depression. I much prefer books about happy people or people who at least recognize happiness when it flits in and seize the joy. Island Girls: A Novel was that.

Characters

Arden is a semi-famous television personality with her own show in Boston. She’s threatened a little by a younger colleague brought in to revive ratings by appealing to younger viewers. Arden is 34, single and has not been back to Nantucket since she was exiled by her stepmother for alleged theft. Arden gets along fine with her own mother.

Meg is Arden’s half sister, 31 and also unmarried, an English professor at a community college. She feels drawn to teach at the smaller school because she is a teacher first, before a researcher. She wants to help her students and she is very good at it. Meg’s best buddy is 26 and a guy; Meg is drawn to him but fights it as she fears he will dump her like her dad dumped her mom. Meg’s mother remarried and has a new life with her husband and sons; Meg is an afterthought in their lives.

Jenny lives on Nantucket in her parents’ summer home and runs a computer business. Arden and Meg’s father adopted Jenny when she was 10, making her Arden and Meg’s stepsister. She is also 31 and gets along fine with her mother.

The mothers all appear in the book too but are not central characters. The sisters’ boyfriends and would-be boy friends have parts and their deceased father plays a role too.

Plot Plot is light and fluffy. Arden, Meg and Jenny must spend 3 months on Nantucket living together to inherit their father’s house. The house is worth over $2,000,000 so it’s worth an inconvenience or two.

Of course the girls end up renewing their sisterhood and all fall in love.

Overall This was fun and I was intrigued enough to check out vacation rentals on Nantucket. (Summer rentals start at several thousand per week; October is more reasonable.) I also checked out two more Nancy Thayer books although I suspect she will be a once a year author, not a steady diet. I’m not enjoying the second on nearly so much.

4 stars.

The Ocean at the End of the Lane Neil Gaiman Dark Fantasy Fiction

by Leave a Comment

The Ocean at the End of the Lane: A Novel has gotten almost overwhelmingly positive reviews from critics and readers. And rightly so. It is a good story, well written, interesting characters. The narrator is a seven year old boy caught in a frightening, bewildering series of events begun when his parents’ border, an Australian opal miner, commits suicide. The boy wakes up choking on a shilling and others in his neighborhood experience stangeness all related to money.

The boy visits the neighbors at the end of the lane, an eleven year old girl, her mother and grandmother. The girl takes him with her to remove the “flea”, a supernatural creature, that is causing the problems. She thinks she bound the flea to its current location but in fact it sent a piece of itself into the boy.

The boy’s mother hires a new housekeeper, Ursala Monkton, whom the boy recognizes immediately as the flea. The creature wants to make everyone happy, at least at first, but fears the boy and influences the father to nearly drown him in the tub.

Summary, The Good and Not So Good

I got caught up in this and enjoyed it very much while reading the story, but once done it raised nagging questions. The story is sold as a novel but in fact is more a novella; with plenty of white space it is 178 pages, That caused several flaws.

  • The Hempstock ladies were never explained.  The story alludes to them being older than the big bang and immortal, but what they actually are and why they live as they do is never explained.  That’s not uncommon in fantasies where we really don’t want a detailed, technical explanation of every magical element, but it left me wondering what they were for.  A longer book would have given more opportunity to explain.
  • The ending was strange.  The boy revisits his old home after a funeral and wanders down to the Hempstock farm where he remembers the entire story.  Grandma Hempstock tells him he has been there before but as he leaves the memories fade immediately.  We never learn who the funeral was for, nor why the character cannot remember anything once he leaves the farm.
  • Ursala Monkton had immense power, yet was controlled by the Lettie Hempstock and destroyed by the hunger birds.  Yet neither Lettie nor her mother could control the hunger birds when they attacked the boy.
  • The boy gets a cat that becomes his dearest companion yet cannot remember what happened to her.  Nor does he even remember her until he begins to remember that summer he was seven.  If you love a cat you remember it.

These are minor points.  You would expect unexplained characters and events in a short story, not so much in a novel.  Yet the book did not strike me as one that would have benefited had Gaiman written more.  This fit his style and allowed the mood to swing from somber to fearful to contentment.

I read through a few of the reviews on Amazon and noticed that the negative ones either found the book boring or felt cheated by the extreme short length.  I did not find it boring and the length probably fit the story and Gaiman’s style better than a full-fledged novel.

Overall I found The Ocean at the End of the Lane excellent, one of the more enjoyable books by Neil Gaiman that I have read.  Although the main characters are children this is not a children’s book.  Teens would enjoy it but it is written for adults.    Five stars.

Mike Stellar: Nerves of Steel, K A Holt, Funny YA Science Fiction, Space Travel

by Leave a Comment

Mike Stellar: Nerves of Steel could have been boring. Our hero is 14 year old Mike Stellar whose biggest concern is keeping out of the detention clutches of  teacher Mrs. Halebopp – right until he hears at dinnertime his family is moving to Mars. Tomorrow.

Sound like something you have read before?  Do you think the author must have ordered stock characters A, B, N and Q, settings C and D, plots 1 and 6?  A 2013 novel version of The Jetsons?  Instead of being a rehash of sad old plots and characters this was fast, fun and interesting.

Characters

The kids in Mike Stellar are Mike and Larc with Mike’s best friend Stinky mostly a voice at the end of the forbidden phone.  Mike is smart, gets into trouble and is terribly afraid that his parents have sabotaged the ship.

Larc turns out to be a most unusual girl and makes friends with Mike.  Together they foil the bad guys, rescue the previous expedition and uncover the real guilty people.

Don’t these sound like the stock characters in any teen aged science fiction story?  True, they are not unique but the way they work together and how the characters handle conflict and fear make them three-dimensional and a lot of fun.

The adults are shown from Mike’s viewpoint and are not as well-developed as the kids, but we still get enough to see them as people instead of characters you can order off the menu.  The creepy Leslie Sugahbert (aka Sugar Bear) is one of those ever-smiling get-you-later types that Mike instantly distrusts.  He is proven right when Leslie (a guy by the way) turns out to be spying on Mike’s Mom.

Plot

The plot is a little more complicated than some YA novels, with terraforming gone amok, a missing expedition that isn’t missing, just shoved aside, corporate politics (thankfully in the background), multiple sides and goals, and e e cummings poetry.

Overall it is a lot of fun, even for adults.  There are the usual “a miracle occurs here” moments that would be more noticeable in an adult novel. For example, it’s incredible that a robot would have a critical power connector that could be shorted out by contact with a sweaty hand.  And it’s even stranger that we’d be terraforming planets in other solar systems before we visit Mars.  These are small things though.

What I was glad to NOT see were kids acting like wise grown ups.  Kids acting like kids are a lot more fun to read about than kids that act more adult than any adults I know.

Summary

Mike Stellar: Nerves of Steel is anything but boring. There is a little coming-of-age going on (he is 14 after all) but mostly the story moves.  It is a fun read.  I looked for more by the author but found only a zombie novel in Haiku.  It might be good too, who knows.

4 Stars

Two to Avoid: Greyson’s Grove and Hero’s Guide to Storming the Castle YA Fantasy Novels

by Leave a Comment

I read two YA fantasy novels this week that just did not work for me.

Greyson’s Grove

In fact, let’s be accurate.  I gave up on the first one, Greyson’s Grove, after 200 pages.  I only got that far because I got fascinated with how obtuse the heroine was.  I had a small bet with myself as to how long it would take  her to realize her crush / secret boyfriend was really another elf.   She was surrounded by clues but unable to put together that basic fact?

Greyson’s Grove’s biggest problem was the umpteen bazillion pages spent being a teenager.  About the only cliche Greyson didn’t hit was worrying about her weight.

Most of the online reviews are favorable, and if you are a teen or tween girl you’ll probably love it.

I bought Greyson’s Grove after reading a short sample on Barnes and Noble.  The sample was interesting, with a might-be-fun premise, intriguing setting and characters.  Plus (honesty time) I had just gotten two B&N gift cards for my birthday and wanted to buy something. This was a waste of $2.99.

Hero’s Guide to Storming the Castle

The other book would be fun if you were 10 or so. The Hero’s Guide to Storming the Castle is written in the first person with cute characters and what might be a fun plot. The illustrations are interesting and I especially liked the feisty-looking young lady on the cover.

Alas. I’m not 10, or even under 20 and this was terminally cute. I stopped reading it after about 15 pages. If I were in a different mood I might like it as a light diversion but I’m not feeling that mindless today.

 

The Paid Companion Amanda Quick Regency Romance Suspense Jayne Ann Krentz

by Leave a Comment

The Paid Companion is a lot of fun, a good combination of romance and suspense set in Regency England. Our heroine Elenora has been cheated of her entire inheritance by her dumb and greedy stepfather and her erstwhile fiance dumped her the minute he heard she lost her fortune.

Sadly this situation happened; in the early 1800s women had no control over their own fortune and their male “guardians” could gamble it away. Elenora was not surprised when the sheriff arrived to kick her out but she was surprised when her fiance broke the engagement.

Meanwhile the hero, Arthur Lancaster, Earl of St. Merryn, has had his fiancee run away to marry another man. One of the best scenes in the book is when Arthur hears that she has bolted while at his club and makes a dry comment about the best way to secure a wife would be to look for a paid companion. Of course his friends think he is cold and unfeeling while in fact he had helped orchestrate the elopement.

Arthur wants to solve his uncle’s murder and does not want to be hounded by marriage-minded mamas and daughters. He hires Elenora to pose as his fiancee. They quickly run afoul of the villain, the mad Parker, who killed the uncle to obtain his snuffbox. The box was one of a set with a pure ruby.

The villain Parker fancies himself a great scientist, “England’s second Newton” and has set up his laboratory in a fascinating part of London, underground, accessible by a “lost river”. Amanda Quick notes that these rivers actually exist, apparently flowing under London and built over.

It’s quickly obvious to the readers and to Arthur the two lead characters are in love, but it’s not so obvious to Elenora. The book has several enjoyable plot twists and secondary characters.

The Good Points

The Paid Companion is a fun, fast read with enjoyable characters. There are secondary villains, such as Elenora’s ex fiance or Arthur’s butler that add greatly to the story. The butler especially was an excellent character; Amanda Quick took care to make him realistic and his actions plausible.

Amanda Quick took time to elaborate the setting and background of Regency England high society. This also added to the story and made it more interesting and vivid.

The Less Good

The ending was a little too pat. We knew Parker would come to a sticky end and we knew Elenora and Arthur would end up with a real engagement. When you know the ending it’s tricky getting to it with any element of surprise.

The other thing I didn’t like were the love scenes. Would a woman in Elenora’s position – a paid companion with few resources in milliue where women had few rights and unwed mothers were viewed as tramps – really risk her future on sexual intercourse? I don’t think so. Plus I don’t care for the current fashion to throw obligatory sex scenes in every novel. Is this really necessary?

Quicksilver by Amanda Quick Paranormal Romance Victorian England Jayne Krentz

by Leave a Comment

As the title says, Quicksilver: Book Two of the Looking Glass Trilogy (An Arcane Society Novel), is the sequel to the excellent contemporary romance In Too Deep. A few points make this a most unusual sequel.

    1. There is no continuity in the characters.  The two leads Virginia and Owen have a tenuous connection to Jones and Jones and the Arcane Society.  Virginia mistrusts Arcane as she feels they view people like her who make their living via their paranormal skills as frauds.  Jones and Jones contracted Owen to solve the murders of two glass readers.
    2. The author writes under different names, Jayne Ann Krentz for In Too Deep and Amanda Quick for Quicksilver
    3. Quicksilver is set in Victorian England, some 130 years before In Too Deep.  Quicksilver included a short teaser for the third book, Canyons of Night which is by Jayne Castle and set several hundred years in the future and on a different planet.  (I have read several of Jayne Castle’s science fiction/paranormal romances and enjoyed every one).

Certainly an unusual combination for a sequel!  It’s actually the second book that includes paranormal weapons made by Millicent Brightwater.  The “quicksilver” is a mirror that makes a cameo appearance at the very end of In Too Deep and then used for attempted murder in Quicksilver.

Overall

I liked Quicksilver and will continue to read books by Jayne Ann Krentz (and her other two names Amanda Quick and Jayne Castle), but I think she is an author best read in small doses, say a couple books now and then a couple more in a month or two.  I find this is true for most authors in fact.

The dialogue felt real, you could feel the gloom in the setting, and the characters’ motivations and feelings were plausible.  I didn’t care for these characters or the Victorian setting nearly as much as the contemporary In Too Deep.  The limitations that Victorian women worked under (and through) were real, but tiresome to read about.  It would have been interesting to read more about the credulous clients and those who found the paranormal – whether real or fraudulent – so popular.

The plot had a few eye-rolling moments, especially the set up at the end with the two villains.

Overall 4 Stars.

Here is my review of the earlier In Too Deep:

In Too Deep: Looking Glass Trilogy, Arcane Society, Jayne Ann Krentz

Beauty and the Werewolf, Mercedes Lackey, 500 Kingdoms, Fantasy Fairy Tale

by Leave a Comment

Beauty and the Werewolf is from the Tales of the 500 Kingdoms by Mercedes Lackey. All the books in this series so far have been enjoyable, easy to read and loosely based on a fairy tale.

Mercedes Lackey cleverly developed The Tradition, a sort of mindless force that wants to mold people into the traditional motifs: evil stepmothers, foolish older brothers, Cinderella, Snow White, so on and on. The Godmothers each handle one or more of the 500 Kingdoms, keep the peace and try to foil the worst of The Tradition’s impact on those step sisters, older brothers, step mothers.

I wasn’t immediately sure which fairy tale Beauty and the Werewolf was based on. True, the character Bella’s father is a rich merchant, and the title implies Sleeping Beauty. But Bella wore her father’s red riding coat with a hood to visit the local Granny when she ran into the unpleasant Woodsman and was attacked by a wolf. This is Little Red Riding Hood. There are liberal doses of Red Riding Hood but with a twist, plus Sleeping Beauty, but the story is unique and stands on its own.

Characters

The wolf that attacked Bella turns out to be Duke Sebastian, a werewolf, and Bella must spend 90 days confined to Sebastian’s castle to ensure that the bite she got does not turn her into a werewolf too. The book spends a bit too much time showing Bella as a somewhat self-centered, smug young lady, rather too sure of herself. She’s convinced that no one – not her step mother nor step sisters nor housekeeper – can run her family’s home in her absence. And she’s angry at Sebastian for biting her and at the king for imprisoning her.

What helps Bella develop a personality and us to enjoy the book is the Woodsman / Gamekeeper, Sebastian’s illegitimate half brother Eric. Eric takes Bella out with him to look for poachers (and for his own reasons) and Bella is glad to go out. She realizes that Eric is too likely to see her as fair pickings and she decides to act more like a boy, dress in Sebastian’s old clothes and act as Eric’s assistant.

The other change is Sebastian asks Bella to help him with his magic and (of course) Bella discovers she has a talent for wizardry. She helps Sebastian find a way to keep his wolf instincts under control and everything ends happily for all except the villain.

Summary

Overall I liked this among the best of the 500 Kingdoms novels. The people were real, although I wanted to yell at Bella a few times when she was being particularly self righteous. The villain was all too easy to spot, the magic was understated and more or less normal, the Godmother was there but not the omnipotent power. The romance had time to develop and was a bit obvious but still fun and a reasonable part of the plot.

Like all the 500 Kingdoms novels this was a fun, fast read. Take an evening and enjoy!