More Books than Time

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

The Best of All Possible Worlds – Wife Hunting on Cygnus Beta

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In Karen Lord’s The Best of All Possible Worlds humanity is descended from four primary planetary group and their cross-breeds.  Long-lived Sadari masters of mental discipline, subsume their emotions into strong telepathic bonds; the Ntshune are emotional, masters of the heart, strong empaths; Zhinu are strong with things, technology and trade while Terrans are “unmatched in spirit”, strong in mind, heart and body.  Terra (Earth) is quarantined but the rest of humanity can see everything we do and has access to our current arts and literature; Shakespeare and Casablanca are well known.

People on Cynus Beta are a mix of all four with many having been rescued from dire situations by the Caretakers.  Our heroine Delerau is half Terran and Ntshune while her counterpart Dllenahkh is full Sadiri.

The Best of All Possible Worlds opens with Sadira, the home planet destroyed and the only Sadiri survivors are mostly men, those who were off planet at the time.  Author Karen Ord notes that the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami left mostly male survivors which is the inspiration for her novel.  The central question for Dllenahkh is:  What shall the Sadiri do to survive as a culture and race?  Shall they double down and maintain strict racial purity?  Or seek out taSadiri, those Sadiri who do not practice the mental disciplines?  Or cross-breed with other humans but raise the children as Sadiri?

To that end Dllenahkh and Delerau are part of a science team visiting the many taSadiri settlements on Cygnus Beta to evaluate potential wives.  This sounds horribly clinical, eugenic, although Lord makes it clear that human interests and likes are a very large concern.

You might not think that a wife hunt makes a good plot for a science fiction novel, and if you are looking for action or exotic locales then The Best of All Possible Worlds is not for you.  Lord uses the agglomeration of societies on Cygnus Beta to provide plot movement although the biggest events happen inside Delerau’s heart and mind.

Characters

Dllenahkh is complex.  It is unfair to say he’s unemotional and he’s no Mr. Spock with logic overriding all emotions.  Instead the Sadiri are extremely emotional and the only methods to keep from running amok are to become a mind ship pilot, form a close emotional telepathic bond to a spouse, or serious mental discipline and meditation.  That need for a close telepathic bond is the driver for the wife hunt; finding compatible wives is truly a matter of life or death.

We see him as a complicated person but I don’t think we really get to know Dllenahkh.

Delerau is easier to know.  She narrates the story and we see events and people through her eyes, struggle with her through the emotional tangles with Dllenahkh and her family.  She faces a difficult problem when the science team visits the isolated enclave Kir’tahsg and discovers almost slavery and coerced sexual relations.  She decides to run genetic analyses on individuals, when such analyses violate the General and Science Codes.  Even though this this has to be a difficult ethical choice for her, it seems distant, remote and I don’t feel we are privy to her decision or its difficulty.

Plot and Setting

The wife search gives Lord a chance to show off around ten different cultures, all on the same planet and all descended from Sadiri.  They range from the Faery Queen (yes, the Terran version) to an abandoned underground city to a secretive, monastic, isolated group of adepts.  The culture descriptions and the little touches to show the people and their settings were by far the best part of the novel.

Overall

I enjoyed The Best of All Possible Worlds.  It was different from anything I’ve read before, even from other science fiction/romance novels.  The writing is good and the characters are interesting with a plausible plot and actions.

The Caretakers are so intriguing that it’s a shame we see very little of them.  We don’t know who they are or why they act to rescue people.  One of them may make an appearance near the end of the novel.

If you like your science fiction full of dire threats and extravegent action then skip The Best of All Possible Worlds.  If you like reading about people in impossible but subtle situations then try it.

4 Stars

The Glittering Court – Review of Sneak Peek – YA Fantasy with Romance

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NetGalley offered a sneak peek of The Glittering Court, a novel of romance and intrigue set in a fantasy world similar to ours of 500 years ago.  This is considered fantasy due to the imaginary world, but there were no magical events or any of the other elements we think of as “fantasy”.

The story is straightforward:  The Countess of Rothford has a title and ancient family name but little money.  She is to marry a distant cousin and quickly decides this man is not for her.  She sends her maid, Adelaide, back to her family and takes Adelaide’s name and her place in the Glittering Court.  The Court is a school to train lower-born girls to act, dress and talk like upper class ladies so they can find rich husbands in the New World.  Adelaide’s only challenge is to not succeed too much because she needs to remain safely anonymous.

Adelaide faces the threat of exposure and forced return while around her society and her country Osfrid are churning with religious strife and the fallout from the civil war in neighboring Sirminica.  She is intrigued with man who recruited her, Cedric, and it’s clear from the sneak peek that they are falling in love.  That’s a problem because Cedric’s family runs the Glittering Court to supply classy wives to the frontier men, not to find a classy wife themselves.  And Cedric adheres to the outlawed religion; discovery could mean he dies.

The Glittering Court is aimed at teens, 7th grade and up.  The writing style – language, scene changes, themes – are sufficiently engaging that many adults will enjoy the book too.  I didn’t find any of the “and a miracle happens” events nor the abrupt switches among viewpoints that make some teen novels so disappointing and hard to read.  Author Mead does a good job presenting the situations, giving us reasonable dialogue and events, then finishing the scene before moving on.

While I was not intrigued enough to seek out the full novel, I do recommend this to older teen girls and adults who enjoy a romance with fantasy elements.

I received a free copy of the sneak peek in the expectation of an honest review.

To Catch a Bad Guy by Marie Astor – Fun, Romantic Suspense

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Both Amazon and Barnes and Noble offer To Catch a Bad Guy (Janet Maple Series Book 1) for free (always an attractive feature) but what caught my attention was the cover.  Who could resist such a cute dog?

Janet Maple has a new job as Assistant General Counsel at Bostoff Securities, working for her old friend and semi-rival Lisa.  Once Janet arrives she quickly wonders why the company hired her.  Lisa herself isn’t busy and Janet has nothing to do.  Then external lawyer Tom Wyman shows up to zip her through Bostoff’s legal structure – which is extraordinarily complex – and Janet begins to wonder just what is going on at Bostoff.

Janet does not want to rock the boat, but being a smart lady recognizes that she, as a lawyer for the brokerage, is on the hook for the firm’s legal actions and discovers the firm is missing client paperwork.  Management tells her to to forget about it, but Janet suspects something is wrong, and with her sense for crooked books honed after years in the New York District Attorney’s office she senses things aren’t quite as rosy as they appear.

Janet quickly finds herself embroiled with the cute IT guy, dodging  Tom Wyman, digging just a bit under the surface, and worried sick about her friend Lisa and Lisa’s fiance.

Overall To Catch A Bad Guy is cute, fun, a fast read that catches your imagination.  The characters are interesting and I felt for Janet once she realized she was in a sticky situation.  Don’t expect deep character building or complex themes but do expect a fun couple of hours.

Author Marie Astor used To Catch a Bad Guy (Janet Maple Series Book 1) to set the stage for a couple of sequels featuring the same characters, the budding romances and have our friends take care of the bad guys.  I enjoyed To Catch a Bad Guy enough that I purchased two of the follow up novels.

The Color of Water in July – Nora Carrol

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The Color of Water in July is set in Michigan, at the fictional Pine Lake, which is obviously Lake Charlevoix. We have spent many happy days in and around the area so I wanted to enjoy the story. Unfortunately it didn’t hold together for me.

There are several main characters, Jess Carpenter who inherits a lakeside cottage from her grandmother Mamie, Mamie herself who narrates about a third of the book, and Mamie’s sister Lila.  The story revolves around events in 1922 when Lila dies swimming across the lake and Mamie ends up with an illegitimate child, Jess’s mother Margaret.

Jess comes back to Michigan to sell the cottage when Mamie dies and brings her boyfriend Russ.  I could not find anything to grab onto with Jess.  She doesn’t love Russ but she lets him talk her into selling; she doesn’t want the cottage but she remembers wonderful times there; she wanted to be a doctor to help people but ended up a research librarian.  She didn’t have much personality.

Mamie had a strong personality but the pivotal event, her claiming Margaret as her own child made no sense whatsoever.  Margaret was really Lila’s child, abandoned in the woods.  In 1922 there would have been little shame for Mamie to identify Margaret as Lila’s, as Lila was married, and even Lila abandoning the baby could have been brushed off, especially once Lila died.

Mamie’s decision cost her fiance and eventually cost Jess the love she had for Daniel and (another) illegitimate child.  Do you see the plot complexities here?

The timeline was very difficult to follow.

1922  Margaret is born
Sometime between 1940 and 1965 Jess is born
18 years later Jess meets Daniel, gets pregnant, learns Daniel is her first cousin (supposedly) and loses one baby to miscarriage and the other to abortion.
15 years after this Jess is now 33 and comes back to Michigan to sell the cottage.

As near as I can figure, Jess would have been 33 sometime in the mid 1980s, yet the book mentions Russ using the internet, which was not exactly the internet we know today.  (Remember Compushare and AOL anyone?  That’s what we had in the mid 1980s.)

The setting in one of my favorite Michigan places was the best part of the novel.  It was interesting seeing the evolution of the exclusive lake association (basically like a homeowners’ association except with servants), and the surrounding towns and trying to match real with fictional places.

Other than the fun Michigan locale, this book left me lukewarm.  I won’t look for more by the author.

I read this courtesy of Net Galley and received the Kindle version for free in exchange for an honest review.  It’s telling that I just deleted the book from my tablet.

Down Where My Love Lives, Two Books by Charles Martin, The Dead Don’t Dance and Maggie

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First, know that Down Where My Love Lives is a compilation of two novels, The Dead Don’t Dance (Awakening Series #1)
and Maggie (Awakening Series #2). Also The Dead Don’t Dance was the first book Charles Martin published. I read these within a couple weeks of reading Where the River Ends, an excellent novel with many of the same themes.  Unfortunately Down Where My Love Lives felt like the rough draft.

Many reviewers describe Martin’s writings as sentimental, but I don’t agree with that assessment.  Martin includes emotion and he writes about love as the center point and reason for being.  Unfortunately this duology has a big dose of melodrama, but it is still good enough to be an enjoyable read.

The Dead Don’t Dance Book 1

The Dead Don’t Dance starts out with Dylan and Maggie, married for just a couple of years, expecting their first child.  Maggie seems compulsive, unrealistic and controlling, and Dylan’s devotion to her was puzzling.  She sure wouldn’t be my first choice of a spouse.

Dylan farms a large plot in South Carolina that he inherited from his grandparents, but they live on only $20,000 a year. Maggie spent several hundred on nice-but-not-essential baby things at the local baby store, far more than Dylan could afford, and freaked out when she found a black hair growing on her chin.

Their son is stillborn and Maggie hemorrhages and goes into a coma.  The novel alternates flashbacks to Dylan’s life before and with Maggie with his response to her long coma.  In the meantime Dylan starts a new job teaching English at the community college (which Maggie applied for unbeknownst to Dylan), delivers Amanda’s baby in the freezing rain, tries to make friends with Maggie’s pet pig Pinky, and tends Maggie every day.  He lets his farm go and loses his crop.

Throughout we see Dylan through his thoughts and actions and how others respond to him.  He is deeply committed to his wife, overall kind and thoughtful, caring, not terribly interested in money or worldly success.  He’s the type of guy you want to know and be friends with.

The exception was the episode that seemed completely pointless, cruel and had no place in the book, the raccoon hunt.  Raccoons can be vicious and pests in a city but the hunters went into a wild swamp to hunt the coons.  The raccoon in the swamp was surely no threat or pest.  Martin describes how Amos shot the coon – deliberately NOT killing it – so that it fell down through many feet of branches to get attacked and and eaten while alive by the coon dogs.   I don’t have a problem with hunting animals you plan to eat or to remove pests like the bazillion rabbits in our area, but first why would they hunt a wild raccoon they don’t plan to eat and second, why deliberately be that cruel?  And what was the possible reason to include this in the novel?  It gave no insight to Dylan or his friends except to make me dislike the bunch.

The Dead Don’t Dance was overall mediocre and had I read it before others by Charles Martin I would not have pursued any more of his novels.  It was OK at best.

Maggie

Martin wrote a sequel that picks up 17 months later, after Maggie awakens from her coma.  Dylan experienced serious emotional events while she was in the coma and finds it very hard to tell Maggie about them, partly because he doesn’t want to make her feel even worse than she already does about their stillborn child.  This part of the novel felt authentic to me.

Maggie had an intricate and ridiculous plot, picked up the story of Dylan’s love for Maggie and threw in the complication that Maggie may be unable to carry a child to term.  Oh, and throw in the fact that Dylan’s best friend and across-the-street neighbor married Amanda whose father’s enemies – former partners in crime – are after him and everyone close to him.  That leads to kidnapping Amanda, torching Dylan’s house, killing his dog, assaulting Maggie, burning down the father’s church.

The book is overly complex. Dylan and Maggie need to get acquainted in some sense; Dylan lived 4 months alone, buried their son alone, dealt with a new job alone.  Maggie missed all that and woke up with the fear for her child top of her mind.

Maggie gets pregnant but miscarries and she and Dylan decide to adopt.  However the agency looks askew at their finances, overall life style (truck instead of a mini van) and mostly at Maggie’s emotional health.  Dylan takes steps to become acceptable to them, borrowing $40,000 to finance the adoption, trading in his truck for a van, but Maggie is oblivious to the problems.

Now add the neighbor and best friend, Amos, whose father-in-law gave evidence that put his former partners in prison for years.  Those creeps are violent and want to destroy the father-in-law, his entire family, and for some reason, Dylan too.

The last plot point is about Bryce, a former US marine who is rich but lives in a trailer in a closed drive in movie theater.  Bryce is generous with time and money and likes Dylan and Maggie, and in return they take care of him to the extent he allows it.  The twist in Maggie is that Bryce changed; he is bathed, trailer picked up and repaired, he is back in shape.  Someone from the military comes to advise Bryce’s financial adviser and Dylan to keep away from him, that Bryce could snap.

Just like the first book, Dylan is interesting, someone you want to know.  Maggie seems selfish and controlling.  Amos is a great guy, Amanda too good to be true.  Characters are partially developed, not complete people.

Summary

Charles Martin shows flashes of the good writer he later proves to be.  He writes of the most ghastly places imaginable, swamps, South Carolina farms with swarms of mosquitoes, places where a “cool” evening is 78 degrees, and makes them almost seem desirable.  He emphasizes the heat and mugginess and bugs, that summer last 6 months or more, but you can tell that he loves it.  It’s home.  All of his books are set in these horrible places.

He writes of love, especially the committed love of true marriage, but from the husband’s perspective.  Most romance books are from the wife’s point of view and it is lovely to see a man confessing his love.

He used some similar elements in Maggie as in Where the River Ends.  Both have a sick wife, a disparate couple, committed marriage, no children, icky hot muggy swampy southern setting, lots of emotion.  In fact Martin uses the term “indomitable” to describe both Maggie and Abbie in Where the River Ends.  Martin learned to tidy up his plots and show his characters far better by the time he wrote Where the River Ends.

Overall I’d give this 2 or 3 stars.  A mediocre but tolerable first novel, ragged around the edges and not a good introduction to an excellent author.

The Sedona Files Christine Pope, Books 1-3, Bad Vibrations, Desert Hearts, Angel Fire

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I found Christine Pope in the omnibus Gods and Mortals.  (Don’t ask.  Most of the stories were atrocious, muddled teen things.)  Her novel was fun despite the ridiculous premise and worse theology, and I looked for more. The Sedona Files: Books 1-3 collects the first three books in her science fiction / fantasy / suspense / romance novels set in the Arizona town of Sedona, about 10 miles from an alien outpost meant to conquer the Earth.

The premise of the books is a bit silly, but if you overlook the basic plot framework and enjoy the characters, setting and the story, these are fun, fast reads.

In Bad Vibrations (The Sedona Files Book 1) psychic Persephone O’Brien gets into a real mess when a new client asks about his wife, whom he is convinced has been taken over by aliens.  One thing leads to another and pretty soon Persephone and her new friend Paul Oliver have escaped from LA to Sedona Arizona to get help from a bunch of UFO nuts.

Unfortunately the nuts (and her would-be client) are right.  Aliens have a base near Sedona and are trying to take over the world by embedding obedience messages into new films and television shows.    Persephone manages to kick over the alien’s sand castle but not before we readers get entranced with the UFO nuts and the growing bond between Persephone and Paul.

I found this wacky novel with a goofy plot a lot of fun.  It was fast paced, well written and the descriptions of Sedona made me want to hop in the car and go visit.

Desert Hearts (The Sedona Files Book 2) was the weakest of the three.  Christine Pope did a good job on her heroines except this particular one, Kara, had a problem knowing which guy she loved.  She fell for Greyson, the stranger who collapsed in her living room, but dumped him cold when she found long-loved-but-despaired-of Lance was in love with her.  She treated Greyson horribly, it’s plain rude to throw up just because you find out your boyfriend is half alien, and even ruder to have a fling then dump the guy the minute your real heartthrob shows interest.

It is more than rude, it is just plain wrong to treat people the way Kara treated Greyson. In the end it is Greyson, not the intrepid band of UFO nuts who blow up the alien’s rebuilt fusion reactor and base. Pope made Greyson likeable and real, and having Kara just dump him made me dislike her.

Angel Fire (The Sedona Files Book 3) is a good ending for the series.  Kirsten, Kara’s younger sister, is the star of this book along with her “Man in Black”, Martin Jones.  This was tightly written with fast action and more suspense than the others.  We aren’t sure whether Kirstsen will be able to do what she needs to, nor are we really sure what Agent Jones is about.

The aliens attack Kirsten physically and mentally and she must develop strengths she never realized.  One thing I liked was her down-to-earth view of the UFO nuts and New Agers.  She knew the UFOs were real and she knew the tourists would be horrified if they realized how dangerous and threatening the aliens were.

I liked the way the other characters got a chance to shine in Angel Fire, including geeky Jeff, and the fact some of the characters have to sacrifice something to win.  Perhaps that’s what bothered me so much about Kara and Lance in Desert Hearts, they sacrificed nothing but Greyson gave up his life.  The other character who got a free pass was Otto, although he threw the book at Martin Jones.

Summary

In all the books the central character is a woman, a different one each time although all three are present in all three novels.  All three books are fast paced, where the characters don’t know where they are going until they arrive, nor do they have time to stop and whine.  I like reading books with strong female leads and by the time the books ended I felt like we were friends.  I’m sure I’d recognize Kirsten if I met her on the street!

I didn’t like how the ladies in each book fell so quickly in love and into bed but the good dialogue, neat plot, tight characterization and great setting more than made up for the immoral behavior.  Another point that made the books believable was the day-to-day events, things like cooking supper, minding the store, arranging for a helicopter ride.  Lots of books breeze right by these but the humdrum day in and day out stuff makes the stories more believable and the characters more like people.

Definitely I will look for more by Christine Pope.

Chasing Fireflies – Charles Martin – Growing Up, Family and Place

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Chasing Fireflies: A Novel of Discovery is another novel by Charles Martin set in the south with engrossing characters, frequent shifts in time and character and characters who are deeply mistreated but maintain grace throughout.  In Chasing Fireflies we have three stories:  Chase, who desperately wants to know who he is and whose he is, Sketch, an abused boy who is mute but communicates via drawing, Unc, who was framed and looted by his high-rolling brother Jack.

Chase narrates and seamlessly brings us between his memories growing up as Unc’s foster child and his current-day work investigating Sketch and his relationship with Unc and Unc’s niece Tommye who is dying of Aids.  I admired how Martin flipped between times and character focus.

Martin has a gift for making his characters come to life.  Unc is the most developed but we get a solid taste of Sketch.  Chase develops himself partly through his narration – some of which is self-pitying – and partly by his actions and observations of Unc and others.  We also see side characters like Jack, Unc’s wife Lorna, Chase’s friend Mandy.  Tommye tells her own story but it was the weakest of the bunch.  Her motives were unclear.

Chasing Fireflies has a very complex plot with lots of side journeys, some of which seemed a bit too much.  I did not understand why Unc, portrayed as a Christian man with deep grace, would have tossed a body into the river.  That seemed out of character and unnecessary.  We also heard at the beginning and near the end that evil brother Jack was after the last thing Unc owned, the Sanctuary in the middle of the 26,000 acres of swamp and timberland that Jack already extorted from Unc, but we never heard the pretext for the seizure.

The plot is melodramatic but still manages to be excellent.  I read this very fast one evening, then thought I may have missed something that would have clarified Tommye or Jack, so re-read it.  I hadn’t missed anything but the second time through I noticed a few plot and character false notes that hadn’t struck me as off kilter the the first time.

Chase’s constant refrain about wanting his Dad (no mention of Mom) and the aching hole he had as a foundling got a little tiresome.  The point of the book is family and belonging, but at some point we all have to face what is, good or bad.  Even those of us who grew up in loving families have aches in our hearts, it is part of life.

We see that Chase and Mandy are falling in love but their romance is a side conversation.  Martin could have explored that a little more, perhaps having someone to love would help heal Chase’s broken heart.

Overall I loved the book and will continue to look for books by this author.

Irene Hannon – Guardians of Justice Series, Fatal Judgment, Deadly Pursuit, Lethal Legacy

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I’m not sure how we never encountered Irene Hannon before, but after reading her novel Deceived (Private Justice, Volume 3), Dave and I got more of her books from the library.  This review covers the three books in her Guardians of Justice series, Fatal Judgment, Deadly Pursuit and Lethal Legacy.

This series covers two brothers and their sister, all involved in justice-related fields, and their close encounters with vicious or deranged nut cakes.  The books re-use the characters, with each sibling taking the spotlight in one book each.

Fatal Judgment

Jake Taylor is a US Marshal charged with protecting a US federal judge, Liz, the widow of Jake’s college best friend.  Jake has bad feelings for Liz based on her husband’s comments before he died that blamed her for being a workaholic and cold, unloving.  Liz needs security while the FBI and marshals investigate the murder of her sister which occurred at Liz’s home.  Although everyone assumes that her sister’s estranged husband did the murder, they take no chances.

The book has two plot lines, one a straightforward suspense story about finding who was trying to kill Liz and why, and the second is the more interesting, the romance between Jake and Liz.  Overall both are well done, although the suspense part was a bit implausible.

Hannon develops strong and likable characters.  She puts a face on the villain and we see him as a person, not just a foil for Jake and Liz.  I was a bit incredulous that the St. Louis police could drop everything and chase after one person like that, and I wondered what would have happened had the Liz not had the good fortune to have Jake involved.  Jake’s brother Cole is a detective on the St. Louis force and I was struck several times at how they were able to call upon the resources of that police force even when uncertain that a crime was in the works.

Deadly Pursuit

Allison, sister to Jake and Cole, is a case worker at the Children’s Family Services.  Like Liz, Allison gains the fatal attention of a disgruntled man, angry because his ex-girlfriend won’t take him back after he gets out of prison, and blames Allison for the girl friend’s stance.

Allison meets Cole’s friend, Mitch.  We have the same combination of a suspense story and romance.  This novel has the same strengths – excellent character and good story telling – as Fatal Judgment, and the same weaknesses.  I thought it a bit over the top that someone would decide to kill a social worker to pay her back for the girl friend’s rejection.  Even with the villain being a meth addict, this seemed a bit extreme and once again Mitch and Jake were able to call upon the resources of the police department in the nick of time.

Hannon makes her characters so believable that we can go along and ignore the weaknesses in the plot.  I thought this villain was particularly well done, especially the parts where he realizes that he is walking a precipice.

Lethal Legacy

Younger brother Cole, police detective, is asked to look at a case that the prior detective, Alan, already closed as a suicide.  The suicide’s daughter Kelly does not believe her father killed himself and pushed to get the case re-opened.  Cole is attracted to her immediately and agrees to look further despite being skeptical that they will find anything to show murder.

Lethal Legacy had a few interesting twists and I enjoyed it as well.  There were two villains, the murderer and the man who hired him, and neither was sympathetic.  Had the murderer not tried to eliminate Kelly’s questions by killing her, he would have gotten away with it.  There was not much evidence to overturn the suicide determination.

Maybe it was because this was the third in the series and I read all three within a few days, but I didn’t care for Lethal Legacy as much.  The romance seemed a bit more contrived and the villains more hurriedly sketched than the others.

Overall

All three novels shared similar strengths and weaknesses.  The would-be victim in all three was female (and it would be interesting to see Hannon turn it around and have the girl save the guy sometime) and all were in the right place and time to attract a man who was looking for the next step in life, ready to find a wife, come back to church, start a family.

The romance was well done, understated and not at all steamy, and we could see the characters falling in love as if it was inevitable.   The suspense part was also done well, assuming we bought into the basic premise.

I am glad I picked the first book, Deceived, up off the end cap at the library!

Review: First Frost by Sarah Addison Allen Follow On to Garden Spells

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This is a hard review to write.  I cannot do justice to this book.

Sarah Addison Allen came to prominence with her novel Garden Spells, about a family in a small southern town that is blessed with unusual gifts. Claire includes flowers from her garden in her catered meals, pansies to make children thoughtful, rose to remember one’s first love.  Claire’s sister Sydney left home immediately after high school and returns with a small child. Garden Spells ends with hope for both sisters.

First Frost takes place 10 years later.  Sydney owns a successful beauty salon, is happily married to Henry.  Daughter Bay is now a freshman in high school with the gift of knowing where everything is supposed to be.  Sometimes she knows where people are meant to be, and this gift is on overdrive the first day of high school when she sees Josh Matteson and knows immediately she belongs with him.

Claire began making candy infused with her garden flowers, at first for family, then neighbors with sick kids, then she got noticed by Southern Living and now cannot keep up with the candy demand.  She is married to Tyler and has a small daughter.

All the Waverly women and their families are facing the usual problems.

  • Bay’s should-be Josh is popular and a senior, and his father is the Matteson who broke Sydney’s heart.
  • Sydney’s receptionist Violet takes gross advantage of her kindness and doesn’t do  her job.  She also brings her darling baby Charlie to work where he stole Sydney’s heart.
  • Sydney wants another child, a boy for Henry.
  • Claire wants to quit the candy business and go back to catering, but worries about finances.

Enter a silver-haired older gentleman, Russell Zahler, a heartless ex-carnival performer and con man.  Russell is 80 nowbroke and looking for the easier scores, the fast in and out.  He knew Claire and Sydney’s mother years before and kept a photo of her with the children and another couple.

Russell tells Claire that she is really not a Waverly but the daughter of the couple in the photo and asks for a pay off to keep quiet.  Being a Waverly matters to Claire because she believes her skills and gifts are based on her family.

All Set Up for Resolution

Sarah Addison Allen’s genius is in how she builds out real people as she resolves these problems.  The characters do what they do best, act as they would every day and things just work out.

True, Sydney must help Josh and Bay but all she does is build a bridge, she doesn’t even put a sign up saying it is there.  Sydney’s relationship with Violet and Charlie works to its inevitable end, again based completely on Violet’s character and personality.

Claire works out what to do about candy vs. catering and handles Russell the same way she does everything.  She talks to Tyler and her cousin Evanelle and her sister and the decision suddenly is easy.

I am on Sarah Addison Allen’s email list for a reason.  I love her books.  They are hard to describe.  Southern?  Yes, but that’s trivial.  Romance?  A little, sure.  Suspense?  A tiny bit.  Normal contemporary fiction?  Yes it’s contemporary but there is no angst, no divorce, no miserable sins and lies.  Fantasy?  Nope.  Her books are all of these but so much more.  Truly excellent, well done characters you want to see be happy, interesting plots and a touch of magic.

Suspense and Romance, Deceived by Irene Hannon

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Deceived is the first novel I’ve read by Irene Hannon but it won’t be the last.  The library had Deceived on an end cap where it caught my eye.  I almost didn’t read it because the blurb sounded melodramatic.

Synopsis

Kate Marshall lost her husband and 4 year old son in a boating accident three years ago.  Police on the scene found her husband’s body floating without a life jacket but never found the small boy’s body.  Kate was especially distraught because she asked her husband to always use the life jackets.

Three years later Kate is going down the escalator in the mall when she sees a 7 year old blond boy going up.  Despite believing her son is dead, Kate feels certain the boy could be her son, Kevin, because she hears him ask for a poppeysicle, the same thing her Kevin used to say.

Kate enlists a private detective who finds the boy with his supposed adoptive father.  One thing leads to another and we finally have a happy ending.

Suspenseful

Hannon could have taken this story several different directions and we aren’t quite sure whether Kate is on the right track until about halfway through.   She lets the suspense build gradually.  Will the boy be Kate’s missing son?  Is Kate dreaming or going insane?  Will the supposed dad bolt?  Or kill his almost-girlfriend?

The suspense is mild in some ways.  We don’t have a mad killer or terrorist plot, just a man desperate to have a son back, a mother grieving and hoping, a growing love affair.  Once we see that Kate is not nuts and her son could be alive, the questions then become how and why.  And for investigator Conner Sullivan, how to prove enough plausibility that he can get DNA testing.

Characters

Deceived is not a coming of age story or a deep character study.  The three main characters, Kate, Conner and supposed dad Greg Sanders are convincing three dimensional people.  Kate and Greg were the most fleshed out.  The other characters are believable and done well enough to be more than backdrops.

Summary

Another point is the book has minimal violence or gore and no sex scenes.  I found both refreshing.

The full title of this novel is Deceived: A Novel (Private Justice) (Volume 3), telling me there are more books by Irene Hannon to seek out.   Our library has several, next on my list to check out.