Dresden and Riley

This week, I finished listening to Small Favor, the next Dresden Files book by Jim Butcher. I very much enjoyed spending multiple hours listening to James Marsters tell me the story - he embodies Harry Dresden extremely well. The book felt a bit light on plot and a bit heavy on fighting. It also had a brutal ending, with consequences that will definitely reach further into the series. But overall, it was a fun listen.

I also finished reading The Pearl Sister, which is book four in the Seven Sisters series by Lucinda Riley. I was a bit worried about this one as it is CeCe's story and I hadn't liked her much in the previous books. But she proved a more sympathetic protagonist that I had expected, and I enjoyed the book overall. The past storyline had some irritating aspects, and the present storyline had a whole red herring subplot which served no other apparent purpose than making you think CeCe would end up with one person when in fact she ended up with someone else. I liked the fact that the present-day romance plot was not completely predictable or hetero-normative, but it did feel a bit tokenistic and not very well developed. But I will continue with the rest of the series, as I'd like to complete the set, and I hope that one of the remaining ones will be even more satisfying in terms of diversity.