What Are We Currently Reading?

[Grrarrggh]

Just finished The Trespasser by Tana French and I'm not completely sure what I think of it. I've read most of her other Dublin Murder Squad books and like those this edition will need another read to decide. 

[isalicat]

5 hours ago, Grrarrggh said:

Just finished The Trespasser by Tana French and I'm not completely sure what I think of it. I've read most of her other Dublin Murder Squad books and like those this edition will need another read to decide. 

I just finished it as well and really enjoyed it...I read the entire series over the last year (so clearly not when they actually came out) and thought of the lot the last three were really remarkable, especially this last one. The Secret Place was brilliant in its depiction of the inner life of teen girls and the relationships amongst police detectives, though the mystery aspect was almost inconsequential in my estimation. However, Moran's full debut in The Secret Place is essential to then reading The Trespasser, I think. I'm really glad I read the whole lot, in order. And now I'm going to miss that world (and Antoinette and Steve!) a lot. Maybe she'll write more. I have The Searcher on the way though its not a follow up to anything; looks good.

[sugarbaker design]

14 hours ago, Grrarrggh said:

Just finished The Trespasser by Tana French and I'm not completely sure what I think of it. I've read most of her other Dublin Murder Squad books and like those this edition will need another read to decide. 

I'm a big fan of French's novels, and I wasn't thrilled with The Trespasser.  Don't get me wrong, it was a fine novel, just not in the same league as Broken Harbor or The Secret Place.

[EtheltoTillie]

On 11/22/2021 at 5:23 PM, Darian said:

I only snipped your post for brevity. I have loved several of Elizabeth Strout's books, especially Olive Kitteridge. I bailed on Oh, William. Tried to stick with it, but it just kept feeling like a slog. I couldn't get invested. Gave it a fair chance, but it didn't feel like it was ever going to make me feel anything for anyone. 

Aw, too bad.  I ended up really liking it a lot.  Just finished yesterday.  She's just great at threading various themes throughout and surprising you even when she repeats something.  And it's an unreliable narrator story, but the first-person narrator learns something by the end.  There's some good surprises nearer the end. 

[Grrarrggh]

17 hours ago, isalicat said:

I just finished it as well and really enjoyed it...I read the entire series over the last year (so clearly not when they actually came out) and thought of the lot the last three were really remarkable, especially this last one. The Secret Place was brilliant in its depiction of the inner life of teen girls and the relationships amongst police detectives, though the mystery aspect was almost inconsequential in my estimation. However, Moran's full debut in The Secret Place is essential to then reading The Trespasser, I think. I'm really glad I read the whole lot, in order. And now I'm going to miss that world (and Antoinette and Steve!) a lot. Maybe she'll write more. I have The Searcher on the way though its not a follow up to anything; looks good.

The Likeness is my favourite for exactly what you said; the mystery is almost inconsequential. My second fave is The Secret Place. I really didn't like Broken Harbour because I couldn't stand any of the characters, and while I love Into The Woods I still can't get over the ending or lack thereof lol. When I want to read about mysteries that have never been solved I'll pick up some non-fiction. I purposely read fiction to be in a world where the good guys mostly win and the mysteries are nicely tied up for the reader. Faithful Place was great as well, especially as I read it after The Secret Place instead of before. I think it works better that way. 

SPOILER

 

 

Some people don't like the semi magical bits in The Secret Place but I thought it was needed for the characterisation of the killer. Without that changing her and how she related to her friends she would have never done it. 

[isalicat]

17 minutes ago, Grrarrggh said:

 

SPOILER

 

 

Some people don't like the semi magical bits in The Secret Place but I thought it was needed for the characterisation of the killer. Without that changing her and how she related to her friends she would have never done it. 

I agree with this entirely.

[Minneapple]

I just finished Karen McManus' new one, You'll Be The Death of Me. It was all right, definitely not as good as One of Us is Lying or Two Can Keep a Secret. She's definitely still following her formula though. Some of the plot points were bizarre and kind of went nowhere. Also sometimes it felt more like a middle grade than a real YA novel due to A Message in the book.

[GaT]

I just finished The Wolf by J.R. Ward, it's the 2nd book in her Prison Camp series & I didn't like it much. I felt the story just dragged on too long, and every villain (& of course there's more than one so there can be a book 3) was so "mustache twirly".  She could have wrapped up the whole series in this book, in fact, I don't see how she's going to drag this out to make a series. She may need to move on from the whole BDB world, she's run out of things to write.

This is the 3rd or 4th book in a row that I've read & didn't really like. I'm tired of books that I have to struggle to finish, I just want a good book to read. 😢

[Luckylyn]

2 hours ago, GaT said:

I just finished The Wolf by J.R. Ward, it's the 2nd book in her Prison Camp series & I didn't like it much. I felt the story just dragged on too long, and every villain (& of course there's more than one so there can be a book 3) was so "mustache twirly".  She could have wrapped up the whole series in this book, in fact, I don't see how she's going to drag this out to make a series. She may need to move on from the whole BDB world, she's run out of things to write.

This is the 3rd or 4th book in a row that I've read & didn't really like. I'm tired of books that I have to struggle to finish, I just want a good book to read. 😢

I tend to prefer the Blackdagger focused books more than the spin offs.  I liked The Wolf more than The Jackal.  I think the spin off that focused on the trainees with the Brotherhood were better than the prison camp.  I think book 3 could be really interesting if they don’t drag things out and destroy the camp setting everyone free.  

[GaT]

17 minutes ago, Luckylyn said:

I tend to prefer the Blackdagger focused books more than the spin offs.  I liked The Wolf more than The Jackal.  I think the spin off that focused on the trainees with the Brotherhood were better than the prison camp.  I think book 3 could be really interesting if they don’t drag things out and destroy the camp setting everyone free.  

I prefer the BDB focused books more also, & I think the trainee books were better too. I don't see how they can't find & destroy the camp in book 3, how long can she drag out the Brothers wandering around looking for the place? Especially since they seem to be bringing José into things which means Rio should be involved too, which should lead to the camp. More than 1 more book trying to find it & they'll look like morons. Plus, please do something about that Kane guy, I don't really want another book of his suffering.

[stewedsquash]

Well I finished The Plot by skimming through the second half of the book. I don't even want to write about how terrible this book was for me.

[Danny Franks]

I'm reading This Is How You Lose The Time War, by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone. A short novel that focuses on two agents who travel to different times and engineer events to suit the unknown ends of their rival organisations... and fall in love in the process, through notes they leave each other.

It's very odd, and I have no idea at all what the goals of the organisations are, but I think that part is supposed to be impenetrable. The highlights are definitely the notes between the two protagonists, which start off adversarial and taunting but quickly show levels of teasing and flirtation, as they realise they have a lot in common.

[Starleigh]

Just started The Running of the River by Esther Forbes (author of Johnny Tremaine) and I can tell it's going to be an old fashioned historical saga, the likes of which I haven't come across in years but used to be a reading staple in my teens and 20's 😊😆😆

[Luckylyn]

I’ve started Becoming by Nora Roberts which is part 2 of her Dragon Heart Legacy series.  I really like the characters.  Keegan can be a little annoying sometimes.   I get that he’s focused on the battle ahead and his feelings for Breen make him particularly worried about the danger she’s in.  He has a tendency to assume the worst of Breen and that at this point he should know better.  The way he was surprised she maintained her training when she was away bothered me.  He’s so ready to criticize.  His harshness as her weapons teacher sometimes makes it hard to root for them to get together.  I hope he shows more trust towards her because I can’t see the romance working for me without that.  He isn’t wrong that she has to get better at fighting but sometimes he doesn’t give her enough credit.  I do like that she pushes back and doesn’t crumble when things get tough during training. Breen has confidence issues because of the emotional abuse from her mother and it’s been great to see her gain faith in herself.  

[GHScorpiosRule]

4 hours ago, Luckylyn said:

I’ve started Becoming by Nora Roberts which is part 2 of her Dragon Heart Legacy series.  I really like the characters.  Keegan can be a little annoying sometimes.   I get that he’s focused on the battle ahead and his feelings for Breen make him particularly worried about the danger she’s in.  He has a tendency to assume the worst of Breen and that at this point he should know better.  The way he was surprised she maintained her training when she was away bothered me.  He’s so ready to criticize.  His harshness as her weapons teacher sometimes makes it hard to root for them to get together.  I hope he shows more trust towards her because I can’t see the romance working for me without that.  He isn’t wrong that she has to get better at fighting but sometimes he doesn’t give her enough credit.  I do like that she pushes back and doesn’t crumble when things get tough during training. Breen has confidence issues because of the emotional abuse from her mother and it’s been great to see her gain faith in herself.  

I had to put this aside(!) because Nora has done the one thing she’s never done before: Exposition Dumping. That’s all the prologue was and  the first chapter. 

I”ll try to pick it up again later this week.

[Luckylyn]

14 minutes ago, GHScorpiosRule said:

I had to put this aside(!) because Nora has done the one thing she’s never done before: Exposition Dumping. That’s all the prologue was and  the first chapter. 

I”ll try to pick it up again later this week.

I didn’t love the prologue especially because the information gets repeated when the situation is explained to Marco.   I understand the second book including reminders of events of book 1 but it was unnecessary when dialogue later in the book covers the same territory.

[grommit2]

I tried How Fiction Works by James Wood, a study of techniques used by fiction authors. It appears to be written for serious English majors or other professional authors.  Having a difficult time plowing through it. 

[Haleth]

I am halfway through The Lincoln Highway and am loving it. It’s very Steinbeckesque. Such colorful characters. 

[blackwing]

I finished the latest Louise Penny book, The Madness of Crowds.  I'm not sure what to make of it.  The central guest character for this book is a woman who believes that young children with birth defects like Downs syndrome should be aborted and that elderly people should be euthanized.  She is a despicable woman, and her actions and those of the people around her (particularly the chancellor who is supposed to be Gamache's friend) really coloured my view of this book.  I was glad to finish it and be done with it, and I've never felt that way about an Inspector Gamache book before.

Thankfully, the case did not involve corruption at all, and we didn't have to hear Gamache talk about the warehouse battle.

I must be completely blanking on events from earlier books, but I can't at all remember anything about Isabelle Lacoste

Spoiler

getting shot in the bistro.  The book references this event and her recovery multiple times. 

Could someone please kindly give a brief summary?

[Black Knight]

On 12/2/2021 at 11:48 PM, Danny Franks said:

It's very odd, and I have no idea at all what the goals of the organisations are, but I think that part is supposed to be impenetrable. The highlights are definitely the notes between the two protagonists, which start off adversarial and taunting but quickly show levels of teasing and flirtation, as they realise they have a lot in common.

Yes, that's exactly right. The book is about the ever-shifting relationship between the two protagonists, not the battling organizations or the goals each organization has. Hence the impenetrability of the latter.

[Danny Franks]

14 hours ago, Black Knight said:

Yes, that's exactly right. The book is about the ever-shifting relationship between the two protagonists, not the battling organizations or the goals each organization has. Hence the impenetrability of the latter.

The twist towards the end - the reveal of who the Seeker was - was really fucking cool and even though I still don't understand any of the pseudo-science that made the story and the ending possible, I don't care. It was a good read.

[Haleth]

On 12/5/2021 at 8:58 PM, Haleth said:

I am halfway through The Lincoln Highway and am loving it. It’s very Steinbeckesque. Such colorful characters. 

I finished this today. It is fantastic. Best book I’ve read this year. 

[proserpina65]

On 12/4/2021 at 10:21 PM, Starleigh said:

Just started The Running of the River by Esther Forbes (author of Johnny Tremaine) and I can tell it's going to be an old fashioned historical saga, the likes of which I haven't come across in years but used to be a reading staple in my teens and 20's 😊😆😆

Might have to check that out.  Johnny Tremaine is one of my favorite books from childhood; my best friend gave me a copy of it last Christmas.

 

[Starleigh]

5 hours ago, proserpina65 said:

Might have to check that out.  Johnny Tremaine is one of my favorite books from childhood; my best friend gave me a copy of it last Christmas.

 

It's out of print but I got a decent used copy on eBay for around $10.  I don't even remember why I decided to look up her books except I've gotten really picky with what I read and I like to stick with tried and true authors.

Evidently she wrote a few historical novels besides Johnny Tremaine (which is technically a children's book, I mean it won a Newbery Award iirc).

 

[proserpina65]

14 hours ago, Starleigh said:

Evidently she wrote a few historical novels besides Johnny Tremaine (which is technically a children's book, I mean it won a Newbery Award iirc).

It is, but an extremely well-written one which actually tries to present a more balanced view of the American Revolution than many adult novels do.

[peacheslatour]

I'm reading The Pale Blue Eye and one passage really stood out to me. It keeps coming back. As we live in the Information Age, it was going to make us so much wiser. So well informed but then this passage put me in mind of the world today.

"...all these texts. Do you see? Not gathering into meaning, as you might expect, but erasing one another, until one word was no truer than the next, and down and down we all go, down this rabbit hole of words, clanging and shrilling like ...birds."

[JustHereForFood]

On 12/3/2021 at 7:48 AM, Danny Franks said:

I'm reading This Is How You Lose The Time War, by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone. A short novel that focuses on two agents who travel to different times and engineer events to suit the unknown ends of their rival organisations... and fall in love in the process, through notes they leave each other.

It's very odd, and I have no idea at all what the goals of the organisations are, but I think that part is supposed to be impenetrable. The highlights are definitely the notes between the two protagonists, which start off adversarial and taunting but quickly show levels of teasing and flirtation, as they realise they have a lot in common.

This sounds very interesting. The summary makes me think about Good Omens for some reason, though that could be just me 😄.

[Spartan Girl]

Reading All About Me by Mel Brooks. I adore that man. May he live to be 100.

[dargosmydaddy]

On 12/6/2021 at 12:56 PM, blackwing said:

Could someone please kindly give a brief summary?

It happened at the end of Book 13 (Glass Houses), I think. Lacoste is shot in the head while being a big hero during a shoot-out at the bistro; the book leaves her in a coma. She's in rough shape in the next book in terms of her recovery, but gradually gets better.

So now we have two (Lacoste and Gamache) of our three main detective characters basically fully recovered (other than scars and occasional slight side effects) from getting shot in the head...

[Luckylyn]

I am half way through Will Smith’s biography Will.  I think the audio book is particularly entertaining with Will himself narrating and the inclusion of music at various points.   He doesn’t shy away from discussing his family’s dysfunction.  His father was abusive and an alcoholic while also being a successful business man.  Other rappers judged Will for coming from a financially successful family.   His father ran the family like it was the military.   His mother highly valued her education and took Will’s decision to fixate on a career in rap instead of college very hard.  His father caused a lot of trauma but ended up being the one to come up with the compromise that Will had one year to prove he could make a career as a rapper and if he couldn’t he would go to college for engineering as his mother wanted.  Will is famous for his humor and he writes that he associated comedy with safety.  Making his father laugh could diffuse dangerous situations.  Putting on a humorous performance also helped him get around bullies.  Will’s coping mechanism is to be a people pleaser.  

[Haleth]

23 hours ago, JustHereForFood said:

This sounds very interesting. The summary makes me think about Good Omens for some reason, though that could be just me 😄.

When the Good Omens show came out I said I'd love to see a series with Aziraphale and Crawley bumbling through history.  It would have to star Tennant and Sheen of course.

[blackwing]

21 hours ago, dargosmydaddy said:

It happened at the end of Book 13 (Glass Houses), I think. Lacoste is shot in the head while being a big hero during a shoot-out at the bistro; the book leaves her in a coma. She's in rough shape in the next book in terms of her recovery, but gradually gets better.

So now we have two (Lacoste and Gamache) of our three main detective characters basically fully recovered (other than scars and occasional slight side effects) from getting shot in the head...

Thank you, it sounds vaguely familiar now.

I just finished Jeffrey Archer's latest book, Over My Dead Body.  This book is the fourth entry in his William Warwick series, and my complaints about it are the exact same complaints as I had with the previous books in this series.  Each book is a continuation of the previous book, each book ends on a cliffhanger, by the time the next book comes around, I have pretty much forgotten everything that happened in the previous book.

I really miss the days when Archer would write standalone books, or at least books which only had one sequel like "Kane and Abel".  In between when he finished his 7 book Clifton Chronicles and when he started the William Warwick books, there was a great standalone book called "Heads You Win".  I remember hoping that he would write a sequel to this one called "Tails I Lose".  But now he's got this ongoing Warwick series...

I guess the one good thing about the Clifton and Warwick series is that the books seem to be written fairly quickly.  This book is the second Warwick book published in 2021.  And it's no wonder... he obviously just writes and writes and then the publisher apparently just cuts the book off when there is enough material for one volume.  And then he just keeps going.

From the Author's Note, it sounds like there are at least 8 books planned in this series.  Sigh.  I'm not sure if he will ever go back to writing standalone books.  The good news is that although he is 81 years old, he doesn't seem to show any signs of slowing down or retiring.

Edited December 10, 2021 by blackwing

[GaT]

8 hours ago, Haleth said:

When the Good Omens show came out I said I'd love to see a series with Aziraphale and Crawley bumbling through history.  It would have to star Tennant and Sheen of course.

Are you familiar with the Chronicles of St. Mary's series by Jodi Taylor?

[Ceindreadh]

4 hours ago, blackwing said:

Thank you, it sounds vaguely familiar now.

I just finished Jeffrey Archer's latest book, Over My Dead Body.  This book is the fourth entry in his William Warwick series, and my complaints about it are the exact same complaints as I had with the previous books in this series.  Each book is a continuation of the previous book, each book ends on a cliffhanger, by the time the next book comes around, I have pretty much forgotten everything that happened in the previous book.

I really miss when the days when Archer would write standalone books, or at least books which only had one sequel like "Kane and Abel".  In between when he finished his 7 book Clifton Chronicles and when he started the William Warwick books, there was a great standalone book called "Heads You Win".  I remember hoping that he would write a sequel to this one called "Tails I Lose".  But now he's got this ongoing Warwick series...

I guess the one good thing about the Clifton and Warwick series is that the books seem to be written fairly quickly.  This book is the second Warwick book published in 2021.  And it's no wonder... he obviously just writes and writes and then the published apparently just cuts the book off when there is enough material for one volume.  And then he just keeps going.

From the Author's Note, it sounds like there are at least 8 books planned in this series.  Sigh.  I'm not sure if he will ever go back to writing standalone books.  The good news is that although he is 81 years old, he doesn't seem to show any signs of slowing down or retiring.

I read the first book in the Clifton Chronicles, not realizing that it was going to be the first in the series.  I was so pissed off when it ended on a cliffhanger that I actually threw it at the wall.

I then resolved to not read any of the rest of the books until the whole damn series was published.  I kept to my resolution...and then binge read them all over the course of a week or two.

I might do the same with the Warwick series.

[andromeda331]

18 hours ago, Haleth said:

When the Good Omens show came out I said I'd love to see a series with Aziraphale and Crawley bumbling through history.  It would have to star Tennant and Sheen of course.

So would I. My favorite part of season one was the two of them meeting up at various points in history. I love him calling the Ark a traveling zoo. Crawley agreeing to bring people to see Hamlet so the play wouldn't be disaster. 

[Anduin]

I finished Expanse book 5. Yes, I had a break in the middle. Some books need that. In some ways, the antagonist is better than book 4. He almost has a point, rather than just being a bully. In some ways, worse. He kills more people than have died in the series previously all put together. He's up there with the Grand Moff Tarkin level of fatality.

All in all, while the series is a bit more grimdark than I prefer, I liked it.

Funny thing. My tastes have changed a bit since I was younger. In the beginning, Star Wars & Trek were fine. Babylon 5, it too was good. The first time I tried BSG, I didn't like it. But I gave it a second chance and discovered that I loved the realistic and low tech approach. For me, that's the appeal of the Expanse. By space opera standards, it's way down there.

[OperaLover1229]

I enjoyed The Dark Hours by Michael Connelly with the Bosch and Renee Ballard characters.  I know there is a new Bosch tv series coming and I hope they add the Renee Ballard character to the series. 

[Spartan Girl]

Almost done with All About Me by Mel Brooks, and I have to revise my earlier comment that I hope he makes it to 100. Reading through all his reflections, it really hits you how many of his friends he’s outlived: Don DeLuise, Marty Feldman, Gene Wilder, Cloris Leachman, Carl Reiner…and his wife Anne Bancroft. You can tell those last two hit him especially hard. He and Anne really hard a great marriage, and he was so broken up about it that it took making Young Frankenstein The Musical to get him going again. I remember Gene Wilder doing an interview around that time where he said that he didn’t think it was a good idea, he “wanted Mel to be happy.”

So while it would be cool to have Mel around a little longer, he should go when he’s ready to go.

[GHScorpiosRule]

Just finished the original trilogy, plus the fourth installation because so many bugged Nora for Seth’s story. That would be the Chesapeake Bay trilogy of Sea Swept, Rising Tides, and Inner Harbor. With Chesapeake Blue finishing the series, by SORASING Seth. Or rather, time jumping 18 years! (the original three were released in 1998 and Seth's book came out in 2002).

Nora’s love and understanding of men and boys shines through. Having grown up with four older brothers and raising two sons, helped, I’m sure! This has to be in the top five favorites of all her trilogies.

Hands down, Cam is my favorite as is Anna.

But I always laugh (even though the subject isn’t a laughing matter) at how Anna’s

 

age when she was raped kept changing. She was 12 in her book; then 11 when she told Ethan in his book, and then 10 later in Ethan’s book when she told Grace

.

But the biggest Whuuut? from me was changing Dan and Will’s surnames of Miller to McLean when she wrote Seth’s book.

That said, I can’t stand Dru, so skimmed through to read only the Quinn scenes!😂😂😂

And since I have nothing new to read, and Cam is still on the brain, back to his story.

Edited December 14, 2021 by GHScorpiosRule

[Tom Holmberg]

19 hours ago, Spartan Girl said:

Almost done with All About Me by Mel Brooks, and I have to revise my earlier comment that I hope he makes it to 100.

I have that on reserve at the library.  I'm also looking forward to the forthcoming biography of 1960s "Mr Cool", James Coburn, by his daughter-in-law, "Dervish Dust: The Life and Words of James Coburn." ISBN 9781640124059 (Hopefully there's some interesting stuff about the movie "The President's Analyst.")

[sugarbaker design]

On 12/12/2021 at 12:42 AM, OperaLover1229 said:

I enjoyed The Dark Hours by Michael Connelly with the Bosch and Renee Ballard characters.  I know there is a new Bosch tv series coming and I hope they add the Renee Ballard character to the series. 

I love Michael Connelly, he is definitely the most consistently fine American current crime fiction series writer.  Since I'm reading them in order, I haven't read The Dark Hours (I just finished The Black Box), but it's heartening to see MC is still churning out some good content.

Edited December 15, 2021 by sugarbaker design

[blackwing]

I tend not to post about the cozies that I've read, because they all tend to be fairly similar and formulaic.  But I just finished one that took me by surprise at how much I enjoyed it, despite having all the traits of the typical modern cozy.  It's called It Takes Two to Mango by Carrie Doyle.  At first I was thinking this was just the same kind of cozy... a high-flying magazine editor from New York gets fired and moves to the Caribbean to become a house rental agent and winds up mixed up in murder.  All the tropes are there:

• Plucky (unmarried) heroine who speaks her mind, which often gets her in trouble
• Suffers life event that causes her to move from big city to slower pace of life
• Fish out of water at her new residence, but she's trying to adapt
• Accidentally stumbles into murder
• Nasty co-worker who is possibly sinister
• Handsome stranger she keeps running into
• Sympathetic friend and confidant
• Must solve murder to preserve her reputation and livelihood

It was fun.  I think the Caribbean locale made this cozy a bit different than the typical small hometown America village of most cozies.  I do wish there had been a bit more description of island life, but there was a little bit of description about the food that as I am sitting here in the cold winter, made me want to jet off to the tropics instantly.  The next book in the series is called Something's Guava Give.  I've had some fun trying to come up with more tropical fruit-related puns for future titles.  Not having much success, but I've thought of some lame titles Papaya Don't Preach, A Pineapple a Day, Orange You Glad To See Me.  Completely stumped on what to do with Banana.

I do wish there would be more cozies with more unique settings and themes.  I do like historical setting cozies like Brother Cadfael.  There was one series I read by the late Joyce and Jim Lavene which was set at a Renaissance Faire. 

And I have long hoped to find more cozies which are set in a full-blown fantasy world, complete with magic and magical creatures, but haven't really found any.  The only one I really found was a three book series by the late David Duncan called The Enchanter General which was a great blend of mystery and fantasy.

There's plenty of cozies with fantasy elements.  Like the Sookie Stackhouse books, the first few of which were great, the latter which were terrible money grabs after the "True Blood" TV show made them popular.  And plenty with witches of all sorts.  And plenty with people with magical skills, like the Magical Pie Shop series by Ellery Adams.  But I'm looking more for cozy mysteries set in a Dungeons and Dragons-like world.

Edited December 15, 2021 by blackwing

[peacheslatour]

Quote

Plucky (unmarried) heroine who speaks her mind, which often gets her in trouble

Suffers life event that causes her to move from big city to slower pace of life

Fish out of water at her new residence, but she's trying to adapt

Accidentally stumbles into murder

Nasty co-worker who is possibly sinister

Handsome stranger she keeps running into

Sympathetic friend and confidant

Must solve murder to preserve her reputation and livelihood

Except for the murder part, these all sound just Hallmark Christmas movies.

[EtheltoTillie]

13 hours ago, peacheslatour said:

Except for the murder part, these all sound just Hallmark Christmas movies.

Hallmark Christmas movies just follow the formula of the old Harlequin romance novels. In a previous life I did some freelance editing on romance novels. 

[Luckylyn]

I am reading All I Want For Christmas is the Girl Next Door by Chelsea Bobulski.  Teen Graham has been in love with Sarah since they were kids but she’s dating his best friend.   One night Graham makes a wish on a star and wakes up in a changed world where he’s dating Sarah.  Being with the girl of his dreams isn’t what he imagined and he finds he’s drawn to his coworker Piper.

[GHScorpiosRule]

A friend of mine finally convinced me to read at least the first three books of Kay Hooper's FBI series. While I'm not a fan of audio books unless they are memoirs and narrated by the author themselves (and the narrator for the first one was annoying), the story Stealing Shadows sounded very interesting and Cassie's psychic abilities remind me very much of Marlie from Linda Howard's Dream Man. Down to how Cassie's abilities work.

I'm the type of reader that visualizes what I'm reading in my brain--it plays out like it's on screen, so one of the biggest frustrations with this book is the lack of physical descriptions of the other characters. We have Cassie's from the get go. Ben? About a third into the book. I still have no idea what the Sheriff looks like and he's a supporting character. We're given descriptions of the victims, and even of Noah Bishop (who shows up halfway through the first book), who is the...lynchpin, that connects all the stories together. There are 21 books so far.

I love reading about psychics and this is a very interesting twist with how it's used. And I'm a sucker for romance.

And another thing that can be laid at my anal-retentive feet is the lack of consistency when it comes to the use of contractions. Or the lack of contractions mixed in with other sentences that do use contractions. This is a contemporary series, not a historical, where lack of contractions are more believable. Jayne Ann Krentz does this constantly too.

I know that I'll definitely be re-reading Dream Man after this! That's just how I roll!

[Irlandesa]

16 hours ago, GussieK said:

Hallmark Christmas movies just follow the formula of the old Harlequin romance novels. In a previous life I did some freelance editing on romance novels. 

They're basically adapted Christian romance novels but just toning down the religious aspect of it. 

[dubbel zout]

I finished The Custom of the Country and LOVED it. Edith Wharton is so good. Now I'm back to semi-trashy royal-adjacent biographies, this one by Lady Anne Glenconnor, who was Princess Margaret's lady-in-waiting for years and Saw Things.

[Haleth]

I finished Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr last night.  It's about the effect an ancient Greek parable had on people (mostly children) in three time periods and in three locations - a Greek girl and a Muslim boy in 15th c Constantinople, a lonely man in 20-21st c Idaho, and a young girl on a spaceship in the future.  These are woven together as the people are inspired by the book to change their lives.  The frequent jumping between the three stories was offputting at first, but then I found myself reading faster to see how each one would turn out.  It was very enjoyable; a little sad, a little hopeful, beautifully written.

[BlackberryJam]

Just finished Not a Happy Family by Shari Lapena. It's good, not great. 

I am also a fan of the cozy mystery. It's like the fast food of reading. Quick, filling, doesn't cost a lot in time and energy and they help me escape reality for a while. 

My problem is that not that writers use the same formula, it's that they abuse it. They tick off those boxes and in doing so, fail to develop interesting characters. I do enjoy those with island settings though. There's something about a beach, a fruity drink and a dead body that makes a fun mystery.