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The Mischief of the Mistletoe by Lauren Willig: Book Review

Arabella Dempsey has just seen all her hopes dashed. She's been a companion to her aunt since she was a child and fully expected to inherit from her. She realizes that isn't going to happen when her aunt marries a much younger man--the very man that Arabella has been fantasizing about. Does it get any crueler? But Arabella is nothing if not determined and she determines to make her own way in the world and goes to work as a teacher in an all-girls school. Her first day there she literally bumps into everyone's favorite bumbling idiot, Reginald Fitzhugh. You might know him as Turnip. Turnip because he has the brains of one. But Turnip has a big heart and a younger sister and a secret message in a Christmas pudding, and it all adds up to one very fun book. I confess that I haven't paid a whole lot of attention to Turnip in the other books, but I did love the big doof in this book. He's handsome, and not the brightest crayon, but he has a gigantic heart. He's wrapped around his younger sister's finger, he's rich but doesn't even think about class as a general rule. Everything he's thinking moves across his face, and he's not afraid to defend a lady's honor. Heck, he's willing to play an even bigger idiot and thus put his life on the line for his country! A gentleman indeed! The action in this book takes place in between The Seduction of the Crimson Rose and The Temptation of the Night Jasmine. Well, it actually overlaps with Night Jasmine. It was interesting to see some of those events from a different perspective. Oh, and another thing. Jane Austen as a character. Need I say more? I always read Lauren Willig's books…

Mistress of the Art of Death by Ariana Franklin: Book Review

Children are missing from Cambridge, the town's Jews have been blamed, and King Henry II is receiving less revenue while the Jews are in hiding. Clearly something must be done. Enter Adelia Aguilar. She has been trained at the world-renowned and forward-thinking school of medicine in Salerno, Italy. Her specialty? Corpses. She is a mistress of the art of death and the dead "speak" to her. She's called in to examine the body of the one child who has been found and, along with her friends, try to find the killer. This was a page-turner for me, mostly because of Adelia. She feels completely real. She's super-intelligent but hopeless in society. She's great with her patients but clueless as to how to interact with them outside the examining room. She's a feminist in a time before the word was dreamed of. She tries to hold herself aloof from everyone, but her heart's too big for that and she ends up caring in spite of herself. She feels like someone I would like to know in real life. The other characters are a great supporting cast. For the most part, they're reasonably well-rounded and I wound up caring about them too. My favorite was the little urchin, Ulff. The mystery was solid. I did guess part of it, but not the whole thing. I did end up being very surprised by the end. One thing that did bother me, and I'm not quite sure who to "blame" for this, is that this book takes place around the time that The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett ended, but this one felt like it could have been centuries later. Maybe it was just me, but Follett's England under Henry II was a brutal, hopeless, scary place, and Franklin's England at the…

At Home by Bill Bryson: Book Review

We take so much in our daily lives for granted. Bill Bryson looked around his house one day, realized how little he knew about the everyday objects surrounding him, and, being Bill Bryson, decided to research and write a book about them. I read this slowly as my before-bed book, and I'm not sure that was always a good idea. Reading about how ingenious rats are as I hear the pitter-pat of little rodent feet in my attic space is not necessarily a good idea. But at least now I know who invented the traps my husband set out! This book is hard to describe. It's roughly arranged by room, but my gosh, it travels around on some tangents. I'm not complaining. It all flowed together naturally and I only questioned how I had gotten to one subject if I really stopped to think about a particular chapter title. "The nursery" goes from childbirth to child labor to poor house conditions to the repression of wealthy children to conditions at boarding schools. But I promise you it all flows together, and it's all interesting in the way that only Bill Bryson can pull off. I am not a huge fan of non-fiction, so I don't know that I could really have enjoyed this as much if I had read it straight through with no breaks, but as an in-between book, I really enjoyed it. I'm now full of trivia about all kinds of things that could even remotely be considered to have anything to do with private life. They always say that truth is stranger than fiction. Bryson proves it. I read some of the more outrageous tidbits to my husband, who pretty much refuses to believe that they're true. But I don't question Bryson's research, so I believe him…

The Bells by Richard Harvell: Book Review

Moses Froben, an opera singer of world-renown, raised a son who could not possibly have been his own. When his son asked how they had come to be together, Moses would studiously avoid the question. On Moses's death, however, his son found a memoir that told of Moses's humble beginnings and how father and son found each other. The side of me that loves dark, convoluted, Gothic stories absolutely loved this book! A mother widely believed to be mad, an evil father, life with monks, and love against all odds just add up to the perfect read when I am in the right mood. And I was in the right mood for this one. Gothic doesn't feel like exactly the right word to describe this book, but melodramatic has a negative connotation, at least to me, so I'm going to stick with Gothic. Moses is a sensitive soul, and I found myself wanting to protect him in his childhood years. As he grew up and started to go after what he wanted, I was firmly on his side, cheering him on through everything. I won't get into the supporting characters too much for fear of giving something away, but I even loved and loathed them as I was supposed to. I will give you this quote about a bookish monk*: "And sure enough, the next Thursday, when Nicolai had fetched me from rehearsal and scrubbed my face and combed my hair, there stood Remus, dressed in hat and cloak and carrying a satchel full of books as though we would be traveling for many days, as if running out of books were tantamount to running out of air." Who among us can't relate to that? And they were only going to be away for a couple of hours! Moses' descriptions…

The Christmas Box by Richard Paul Evans: Book Review

The Christmas Box is about a young couple and their young daughter who move in with an elderly widow to help her out with light chores in exchange for rooms. Mary, the widow, becomes an adopted grandmother to them all and feels compelled to pass on wisdom she has gained with her years. This was a nice, easy read (I literally read it in about an hour). The lightness of the story, though, masks the underlying lesson about the first gift of Christmas and the preciousness of time. I would recommend this to anyone, but especially busy parents who are maybe starting to lose sight of what really matters to their children. Reviewed December 6, 2007

The Ice Soldier by Paul Watkins: Book Review

William Bromley is a World War II veteran living in 1950's London. In the war, he led a mountaineering expedition that ended disastrously. He has never moved past this and started living again. He's just existing--teaching school, admiring the secretary from a distance, spending Friday evenings with his one friend, and visiting his father on school breaks. There's nothing exciting in his life and that's the way he likes it. Notably, he has also completely given up mountain climbing. Then something changes and he is left wondering if his life is really enough and does he have the courage to start truly living his life again? I enjoyed this. The story itself was very well-written and easy to read. The pacing was good and the way that things were slowly explained really worked. Probably the best part was that within this very straightforward story, the author manages to explore big themes like man vs. nature, the nature of friendship among men, and what war can still do to those lucky enough to survive. In other words, it works on many levels. If you want a simple adventure story, that's in here. If you want something to chew over and think about for a while, that's in here too. Reviewed June 21, 2008

Once Upon a Marigold by Jean Ferris: Book Review

My seven-year-old cousin and fellow lover-of-all-things-fairy, Natalie, convinced me to read this by reciting the cover blurb to me: "Part comedy, part love story, part everything-but-the-kitchen-sink." What fairy tale fan could resist that? Not this one! I loved that the defining characteristics of the characters weren't their beauty or lack thereof. Chris is intelligent, kind, and loyal. He's also an inventor. He's the first in the kingdom to use p-mail (pigeon mail). Princess Marigold is a reader, also intelligent and kind, and very concerned with making sure that she becomes a good strong ruler of her kingdom. She even asks commoners' opinions on the qualities that a good ruler should have! Even the minor characters are generally defined by their personalities, good or bad. Looks really didn't come into play at all. I found that a little refreshing. The story was a little predictable. We first meet Chris when he's a six-year-old runaway living in the woods. As he grows older, he starts to notice Princess Marigold, who he can watch as she reads on her terrace in the castle. He wants to be her friend, and he wants to know why she frequently looks unhappy. You can probably guess the general outline of the story, beginning to end, just from that. But there were still several surprises along the way that kept the story fresh. Ed the troll might have been my favorite character. Oh, I really liked Chris and Marigold, but Ed made me laugh. He loves to use common sayings, but he can never get them right. Here's one: "But now that you have your act on the ball, you can do better...All you have to do is keep your shoulder to the grindstone and your nose to the wheel." Too funny! And he's working hard to…

Dracula by Bram Stoker: Book Review

I have somehow never seen "Bram Stoker's Dracula" or any of the other movie incarnations of this book. In fact, I was surprised to read the back cover of this book and find out that the book is about Dracula moving to Enland to set up shop. So, I had no expectations going into it. Overall, I enjoyed the book. It's written in a journal/letter style, which I (mostly) liked and found interesting. I liked seeing what was going on with the main characters as we went along. The voices of the narrators kind of all blended together though. Mina was different, but Jonathan and Dr. Seward were pretty interchangeable for me. If there wasn't a clue in the content, I very often had to flip back to see which one was supposed to be writing this section. And I thought Van Helsing's "accent" was terrible! This intelligent physician/lawyer makes some horrible grammar and syntax mistakes that didn't come across as real to me. Granted, I'm not an expert at that kind of thing, but there's my opinon. Speaking of characters--the characters in this book were all (with the obvious exception of the vampires) too noble and good for words. A typical, paraphrased conversation between characters (I think spoiler free): "If I should show signs of becoming a vampire, give me your oath that you will do the honorable thing and destroy me in the appropriate way." "I would lay down my very life to prevent such a thing from happening, but if it should, I would gladly fulfill such a duty to you, in order that you might go to your eternal reward in Heaven." Is this for real? Okay, the book's over a hundred years old, but still... Now for my big pet peeve: the way Mina is…

Behemoth by Scott Westerfeld: Book Review

POSSIBLE SPOILERS FOR LEVIATHAN Now that Great Britain has officially entered World War I, Deryn and Alek find themselves official enemies. Alek knows that he has to escape the Leviathan before his secret is out and he becomes an ultra-important prisoner of war, and Deryn knows that she has to let him go. The two find themselves in Constantinople (or is that Istanbul?), where the Germans are making trouble for the Brits, and developing a weapon that could be devastating for the Leviathan. Can Alek prevent a war, and can Deryn save her beloved ship? I am still loving this series. Deryn is such a feisty character. She's super-intelligent, practical, and not afraid to do the right thing. She's also finding it harder and harder to keep her identity a secret from Alek. Her solutions to problems are always ingenious and she just leaps off the page for me. I don't have quite as much to say about Alek. I like him, but compared to Deryn, he's kind of boring. A new character, Lilit, is introduced in this book, and I loved her too. She's a lot like Deryn, but she's able to live as a girl and still show the boys a thing or two about driving Clanker machines. She's fantastic and I hope we see more of her. The action just didn't let up, and I was always interested to see how things were going to work out. The ending was a bit weak because I thought it just stopped. I actually flipped forward and backward a few times on my nook to make sure I hadn't missed anything. As far as I can tell, I didn't. It just ended. Not exactly on a cliffhanger, but just in an odd place. I received an e-galley from the publisher,…

The Fairy Folk and She by Mary-Anne Grosse Ivie: Book Review

The old woman who lives in a shoe is overwhelmed. Her children are hungry. She decides to pay a visit to Razzlewitch and ask for help. Razzlewitch agrees to help in exchange for the old woman's oldest daughter, Lisa. If Lisa will come cook and clean for Razzlewitch, the other children will be fed and clothed. Lisa agrees but wonders what she's gotten into when she finds herself in a strange new world. This was a lovely little fairy tale. It starts with the old woman who lived in a shoe, but then it becomes its own story. Like all good fairy tale heroines, Lisa grows and comes into her own throughout the book. She has surprising talents that she must learn to use. She must also learn to trust herself. She meets a whole host of magical beings who, for the most part, end up being gentle teachers for her. There's an element of darkness too. Lisa, and her new neighbors, learn that appearances aren't everything. They must work together to overcome the threat of darkness in their fairy tale land. There's a very sweet love story at the heart of the book also. I just loved how this played out. I recommend this for those who are fond of their happily ever afters and who are in search of a gentle, lovely read. Thanks to the author for sending me a copy for review.