![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
I got to go on a reading retreat this past weekend, for the first time in over year, which was awesome!
I have six reviews to provide - on audiobook I finished on the way there, four books I read over the course of the weekend, and one I DNF'd after I got home.
Inheritance by Nora Roberts:
My dad introduced me to Nora Roberts' annual fantasy trilogies, back in 2022 and I thoroughly enjoyed The Dragon Heart Legacy series over the course of a year. Since the books come out every November, I waited to listen to the first in the Lost Bride trilogy until a couple of weeks ago, knowing that the second instalment would be coming out soon. Inheritance didn't disappoint - it's about a young woman, Sonya, who discovers unknown family and inherits a haunted mansion she goes to live in and gets wrapped up in a centuries-old curse. It sounds really corny, but it's a lot of fun. I liked all the characters - especially Sonia's best friend, Cleo (whose survival chances I'm a bit worries about, though), the atmosphere was very effective (though it did freak me out a few times and I was very careful to finish listening to the book before arriving at a big, remote, slightly creepy house for the weekend), and there were several awesome dogs. I've seen complaints from some readers about nothing happening - and it was perhaps a little slow, but I'm on a real cosy fantasy kick at the moment, and I actually loved all the mundane domestic details, the descriptions of all Sonya's freelance graphic design projects, the listing of all the food and the music, and the routines dictated by the needs of the dog! The book ended on a very intriguing cliffhanger - so it might be difficult for me to hold off on listening to book two for my planned six months, since it comes out in a week...
The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison:
This book had been on my radar for a while because people kept recommending it to me and I finally got around to reading it last weekend. And I mostly really enjoyed it - even if it took me a while to fully get into it. It's the story of Maia, a male half-goblin, half-elf, who is catapulted into being emperor of the Elflands after an airship crash puts him next in line to the throne. It wasn't a great start when there was a multi-page discussion of the Elfland language, which meant nothing to me because I hadn't encountered any of the words yet. I found it confusing that the author decided to take expected gender-related name suffixes and reverse them - and then use the real-world, and usually female, name of Maia for their male protagonist - especially since all the other names in the book were made up... The first half of the book was unexpectedly slow, mainly focusing on the mundane minutiae of ruling the empire, and also with Maia being almost entirely isolated and so there were very few direct interactions that had any depth. However, at about the midway point (just after I'd been complaining to someone about these things), everything suddenly got a lot more exciting and Maia also managed to make several deeper connections with the other characters. I'm not sure the emotional impact of this would have been as great without the preceding lengthy isolation, but it still felt as if the second half came from a different book... I was also very confused about how similar or different the goblins and elves generally were in appearance, since their physicality was never described in enough detail for me to be able to visualise them - despite physical characteristics being very important to the social mores of the society. Still, by the end, I was fully engaged and very satisfied by the eventual conclusion.
The Lost Apothecary by Sarah Penner:
There's a very specific type of book that I've read a lot - young woman in the modern day discovers something relating to the past (usually connected to someone in her family but not always) and investigates it. The books proceed with a split timeline - one thread following the young woman and her experiences in the contemporary world, while the other provides flashbacks to a woman or women in the past, with the two timelines being connected in some way as the story progresses.
I've enjoyed a lot of these books over the past few years and they can be very effective when done well. The problem with The Lost Apothecary was that I wasn't aware that's the kind of books I was reading when I started it - and I was expecting something different. I thought it was going to be wholly set in the 1790s and perhaps a darker and more sombre tale than is usually the case with these kinds of books.
I largely found the present-day storyline distracting, unoriginal and also a bit farfetched, and I wasn't that invested in Caroline finding herself in London after discovering her husband was having an affair.
The past storyline, with Nella and Eliza working together in the apothecary, providing poisons to wronged women, was much more compelling and I thought the setting in particular was evoked extremely well.
I enjoyed it overall, though certain things about it did annoy me, and I think I would have preferred a more focused story, set only in the past.
The Story of the Forest by Linda Grant:
On the surface, it seemed like this would be exactly my kind of book. It starts with Mina, a young Jewish girl, leaving Latvia for the UK with her brother in 1913, and then following the story of her family across the decades to the early 2000s. Unfortunately, in my view, this kind of story needs 500+ pages, or even several volumes, to work - and the 275 pages of this slim volume just didn't cut it. It was largely told in summary and in quite a remote way, which made it difficult to connect to the characters and meant a great deal of the detail was skipped over. It was also almost relentlessly dreary and pretty depressing, which made it a bit of a slog, even with its short length.
Interestingly, Mina's great-granddaughter, Zoe, was introduced in the last ten pages, and her discovery of an old coffee pot that might have belonged to the family a long time ago was by far the most engaging part of the book! I think it would have worked much better if it had started with that and had Zoe as a modern-day protagonist, researching her family history and having her own story arc in the early 2000s, with Mina's story as a separate, flashback narrative thread interwoven with that - and at least 300 extra pages to let both stories breathe.
Romantic Comedy by Curtis Sittenfeld:
I've had a mixed experience with Curtis Sittenfeld - I don't remember liking Eligible that much, but I do remember enjoying American Wife and Rodham. I picked Romantic Comedy up at the local station book exchange and thought it was more likely to be similar to the former than the latter - but I really enjoyed it!
It's the story of Sally, a writer on a late-night live comedy sketch show (like SNL) who falls for the celebrity host of one episode, famous singer/songwriter Noah. The first half of the book charts the week of the show Noah hosts in 2018, and is absolutely brilliant - I loved the backstage look at how the show came together, interspersed with the flirtation between Sally and Noah, plus all their interactions with the other writers, cast members, crew, etc.
Then it skips to the first lockdown of the pandemic, with 200 pages of Sally and Noah emailing each other - which was fun and interesting, but I did miss the other characters and the dynamic nature of the sketch show. (I did very much enjoy them having a discussion about the correct usage of 'I' versus 'me' in different sentences.) It picked up again in the last section and I liked the in-depth exploration of their respective hang-ups about relationships. It was maybe a bit cutesy at the end - but it was overall a very entertaining read.
In Memoriam by Alice Winn:
This was sold to me a 'the best love story in recent years', 'absolutely a five-star read' and 'devastating but worth it'. So, I went in with some trepidation, especially since it's set in the First World War and I've had rather too much of that kind of trauma in books recently.
Still, I thought I'd give it a go - but I didn't even reach my usual 50-page cut-off point.
In the introductory set-up, the story takes place at a fictional public school and 1914 - and I just found all the characters distinctly unlikeable. I'm afraid I'm just not that interested in the internal lives and external traumas of over-privileged, unnecessarily angst-ridden, white boys, who torture those younger and weaker than them, just because that's what happened to them when they were younger.
I'm sure all the war and romance stuff was well-written and affecting, but I found I didn't want to follow these characters into the war and didn't feel very invested in their love story.
Perhaps, if I'd stuck it out, it would have got me in the end - but I didn't care enough to find out.
I have six reviews to provide - on audiobook I finished on the way there, four books I read over the course of the weekend, and one I DNF'd after I got home.
Inheritance by Nora Roberts:
My dad introduced me to Nora Roberts' annual fantasy trilogies, back in 2022 and I thoroughly enjoyed The Dragon Heart Legacy series over the course of a year. Since the books come out every November, I waited to listen to the first in the Lost Bride trilogy until a couple of weeks ago, knowing that the second instalment would be coming out soon. Inheritance didn't disappoint - it's about a young woman, Sonya, who discovers unknown family and inherits a haunted mansion she goes to live in and gets wrapped up in a centuries-old curse. It sounds really corny, but it's a lot of fun. I liked all the characters - especially Sonia's best friend, Cleo (whose survival chances I'm a bit worries about, though), the atmosphere was very effective (though it did freak me out a few times and I was very careful to finish listening to the book before arriving at a big, remote, slightly creepy house for the weekend), and there were several awesome dogs. I've seen complaints from some readers about nothing happening - and it was perhaps a little slow, but I'm on a real cosy fantasy kick at the moment, and I actually loved all the mundane domestic details, the descriptions of all Sonya's freelance graphic design projects, the listing of all the food and the music, and the routines dictated by the needs of the dog! The book ended on a very intriguing cliffhanger - so it might be difficult for me to hold off on listening to book two for my planned six months, since it comes out in a week...
The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison:
This book had been on my radar for a while because people kept recommending it to me and I finally got around to reading it last weekend. And I mostly really enjoyed it - even if it took me a while to fully get into it. It's the story of Maia, a male half-goblin, half-elf, who is catapulted into being emperor of the Elflands after an airship crash puts him next in line to the throne. It wasn't a great start when there was a multi-page discussion of the Elfland language, which meant nothing to me because I hadn't encountered any of the words yet. I found it confusing that the author decided to take expected gender-related name suffixes and reverse them - and then use the real-world, and usually female, name of Maia for their male protagonist - especially since all the other names in the book were made up... The first half of the book was unexpectedly slow, mainly focusing on the mundane minutiae of ruling the empire, and also with Maia being almost entirely isolated and so there were very few direct interactions that had any depth. However, at about the midway point (just after I'd been complaining to someone about these things), everything suddenly got a lot more exciting and Maia also managed to make several deeper connections with the other characters. I'm not sure the emotional impact of this would have been as great without the preceding lengthy isolation, but it still felt as if the second half came from a different book... I was also very confused about how similar or different the goblins and elves generally were in appearance, since their physicality was never described in enough detail for me to be able to visualise them - despite physical characteristics being very important to the social mores of the society. Still, by the end, I was fully engaged and very satisfied by the eventual conclusion.
The Lost Apothecary by Sarah Penner:
There's a very specific type of book that I've read a lot - young woman in the modern day discovers something relating to the past (usually connected to someone in her family but not always) and investigates it. The books proceed with a split timeline - one thread following the young woman and her experiences in the contemporary world, while the other provides flashbacks to a woman or women in the past, with the two timelines being connected in some way as the story progresses.
I've enjoyed a lot of these books over the past few years and they can be very effective when done well. The problem with The Lost Apothecary was that I wasn't aware that's the kind of books I was reading when I started it - and I was expecting something different. I thought it was going to be wholly set in the 1790s and perhaps a darker and more sombre tale than is usually the case with these kinds of books.
I largely found the present-day storyline distracting, unoriginal and also a bit farfetched, and I wasn't that invested in Caroline finding herself in London after discovering her husband was having an affair.
The past storyline, with Nella and Eliza working together in the apothecary, providing poisons to wronged women, was much more compelling and I thought the setting in particular was evoked extremely well.
I enjoyed it overall, though certain things about it did annoy me, and I think I would have preferred a more focused story, set only in the past.
The Story of the Forest by Linda Grant:
On the surface, it seemed like this would be exactly my kind of book. It starts with Mina, a young Jewish girl, leaving Latvia for the UK with her brother in 1913, and then following the story of her family across the decades to the early 2000s. Unfortunately, in my view, this kind of story needs 500+ pages, or even several volumes, to work - and the 275 pages of this slim volume just didn't cut it. It was largely told in summary and in quite a remote way, which made it difficult to connect to the characters and meant a great deal of the detail was skipped over. It was also almost relentlessly dreary and pretty depressing, which made it a bit of a slog, even with its short length.
Interestingly, Mina's great-granddaughter, Zoe, was introduced in the last ten pages, and her discovery of an old coffee pot that might have belonged to the family a long time ago was by far the most engaging part of the book! I think it would have worked much better if it had started with that and had Zoe as a modern-day protagonist, researching her family history and having her own story arc in the early 2000s, with Mina's story as a separate, flashback narrative thread interwoven with that - and at least 300 extra pages to let both stories breathe.
Romantic Comedy by Curtis Sittenfeld:
I've had a mixed experience with Curtis Sittenfeld - I don't remember liking Eligible that much, but I do remember enjoying American Wife and Rodham. I picked Romantic Comedy up at the local station book exchange and thought it was more likely to be similar to the former than the latter - but I really enjoyed it!
It's the story of Sally, a writer on a late-night live comedy sketch show (like SNL) who falls for the celebrity host of one episode, famous singer/songwriter Noah. The first half of the book charts the week of the show Noah hosts in 2018, and is absolutely brilliant - I loved the backstage look at how the show came together, interspersed with the flirtation between Sally and Noah, plus all their interactions with the other writers, cast members, crew, etc.
Then it skips to the first lockdown of the pandemic, with 200 pages of Sally and Noah emailing each other - which was fun and interesting, but I did miss the other characters and the dynamic nature of the sketch show. (I did very much enjoy them having a discussion about the correct usage of 'I' versus 'me' in different sentences.) It picked up again in the last section and I liked the in-depth exploration of their respective hang-ups about relationships. It was maybe a bit cutesy at the end - but it was overall a very entertaining read.
In Memoriam by Alice Winn:
This was sold to me a 'the best love story in recent years', 'absolutely a five-star read' and 'devastating but worth it'. So, I went in with some trepidation, especially since it's set in the First World War and I've had rather too much of that kind of trauma in books recently.
Still, I thought I'd give it a go - but I didn't even reach my usual 50-page cut-off point.
In the introductory set-up, the story takes place at a fictional public school and 1914 - and I just found all the characters distinctly unlikeable. I'm afraid I'm just not that interested in the internal lives and external traumas of over-privileged, unnecessarily angst-ridden, white boys, who torture those younger and weaker than them, just because that's what happened to them when they were younger.
I'm sure all the war and romance stuff was well-written and affecting, but I found I didn't want to follow these characters into the war and didn't feel very invested in their love story.
Perhaps, if I'd stuck it out, it would have got me in the end - but I didn't care enough to find out.
