April Book List

April flashed by like a bolt of lightning on a sunny day - instantaneous and I didn't even see it. It's been a lot with work and school here lately and I am not able to focus as well as I did in March. But, we persevere, and I completed 14 books this month! I strayed a little from the romance theme (not entirely, don't you worry!), and found my comfort in thrillers. Only four of this month's books were romances this time, but you aren't off the hook next month. I have three or four historical romances in progress and a couple more to pick up, including Mexican Gothic and Snow Flower and the Secret Fan.

The books that made the most impact on me this month are by far White Oleander by Janet Fitch, the Amelia Storm books from Kindle Unlimited, and Fallout by Ellen Hopkins.

Update 5/4/21 - unfortunately I wound up in the hospital without access to any of my belongings, so I wasn't able to finish the books I planned to by the end of the month. 14 is an achievement, but I was hoping to complete more. School will be over at the end of the month and Aaron will leave for work for half a year so I should have a lot of time on my hands until I begin a summer term later in the year.

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The Review - There Be Spoilers

Buckle up folks, because I have a lot to say about The Next Wife. I enjoyed this book despite its predictability, but there were definitely some key flaws. Let's talk about the good stuff first. The timelines worked out properly, and Rouda did a really great job of making her characters unlikeable. That may not seem like a lot, but it's harder to create a bad character than a good one, and she definitely accomplished that. This book made me go "seriously?" and "but really?" a thousand times at least, because as as predictable as it was the predictions were confirmed at unexpected times. Also, the foreshadowing of the cherries was a good touch.

Tailgating on the predictability of this story, unfortunately that was the downfall. I knew from the first three sentences of the book that Tish did it. I also knew from the first page from Kate's perspective that she herself was not innocent. She, from the start, seemed to blame Tish entirely for affair with John, and when she discussed his involvement it was almost with derisive pity. John is just pathetic. Kate was devious, and Tish unhinged, and together these three make the threesome from hell. Definitely going to try out some more Kaira Rouda!

DNF at 35%

Hopefully this is my only DNF for 2021. I found it really interesting in the foreword when Amy Mantravadi talks about Empress Maud and revealed that Maud is her ancestress.

Which is discussed in the book.

Often.

The writer formatted this book as an elderly Maud dictating her story, and she has Maud addressing the audience as "Daughter." I found it to be some American "my ancestor was a princess" wet dream nonsense. And that's all I got to say about that.

Content Warning: Mention of pedophilia

The Review

This is my first exposure to Dean Koontz, and I have to say we love a man who's out to kill a rapist. Especially a cop. Nameless is a really cool character; I love the idea of a vigilante with amnesia and visions, and this mysterious Ace of Diamonds is also fascinating, someone who is calling the shots from an unknown source. Is this a supernatural thing? Or an unexplained clairvoyance? I'm excited to read the other five books in this series.

Content Warning: Sexual assault, thoughts of suicide

The Review - There be spoilers

I am upset. This book upsets me. A lot.

Letty Trentham is terrible and she coerces her hero into a relationship. Now that that part is out of the way, let me explain. Trusting Miss Trentham is about yet another tortured man who meets the heiress to huge fortune. Letty is overly generous in an eye rolling way. During the course of the book she casually donates nearly 100,000 pounds as the author's attempt to scream from the proverbial rooftops that her character is a good person. In today's money, that amount is well over $2 million. Given casually. To random people. In addition, the book is always talking about how plain Letty is, but she is elegant and stately, which well makes up for it. This is the kind of detail that should be mentioned once in a novel, unless it's from another character's first impression of that individual. Larkin stresses that her character is not beautiful, which is again, eye rolling. I don't like when books stress any kind of appearance frequently like that, unless it actually adds to the novel.

Now, the hard part. Letty is helping Icarus Reid hunt down the men who betrayed him in the war. He tells Letty he is dying and he needs her help - he's heard of her ability to hear lies, which was her gift from Baletongue, the Faerie who has offered Letty's family a gift to every daughter. She embarks on a very improper journey in which she poses as Reid's wife, and when she discovers he has PTSD nightmares, she begins to wake him up and cradle him and read to him, until eventually she begins to drug him (at first without consent, and then with consent) with valerian root and whiskey. This care escalates until Letty gives Reid oral sex in bed and he wakes up upon ejaculating to find that she has violated him. He says as much to her, and she becomes offended. He forgives her and they continue a hesitant affair, which wracks him with guilt as she presses him to engage in more sexual activity. It's abhorrent, and if it was a male character performing oral sex on a drugged female, people would be up in arms.

Again, Larkin does the thing where she makes you have to read the next book, because we are promised an actual queer romance this time! I hope Larkin can pull the damn thing off.

The Review

Emily Larkin has a bad habit of trying to be queer-inclusive and winding up being completely homophobic in the process. Her first outright gay novel (in this series, I'm unsure of her other books), this one has two lifelong best friends in passionate love with each other for years and the inability to express it due to the social climate at the time. Tom Matlock is fervent in his love for Lucas Kemp, who hates both himself and the idea of being gay and having no desire for women. Larkin also limits the sex to just oral and manual, with both Lucas and Tom condemning "back-door" gay men as if they are dirty. I'm not sure if I was just taking it the wrong way but I definitely had a bit of a problem with it.

I liked the ending of this the best once Lucas finally went through the intense thought process and trial of coming out in a beyond unfriendly society for LGBTQ+ individuals and realized his true love for Tom. It redeems itself in the end partially, but I don't like how she went about it.

Content Warning: foster care abuse; statutory rape

The Review - I'm not sure if these count as spoilers but here you go anyway

Ingrid should not have been a mother.

Ingrid should not have been a mother.

Ingrid should never, by any stretch of the imagination, be called on to fulfill any kind of role of responsibility. Her life as a poet is wild and free, and she is a strong, sensual, and vibrant woman who did not need to be responsible for another human being. She gave birth to Astrid for her, not out of any desire to be a parent or anything of that nature, but to reproduce her own genes into her perfect daughter.

Spurning men as anything beyond playthings, Ingrid is finally enamoured of a plain but charming producer, and from there they begin a love affair and Astrid thinks she has finally found her Daddy - until he cheats and Ingrid turns Astrid's world upside down. Ingrid kills him with poison made from white oleanders that grow near the home. She is arrested and Astrid is sent to foster care while her mother serves time in prison.

White is an ever-present theme in this book, with Ingrid's minimalist white home, the white gold hair, the white clothing. Ingrid also stresses to Astrid their Norse heritage, which is of interest to note because obsession with Viking heritage is a well-known Nazi dog whistle. Was Ingrid that far into it? Is this a coincidence or intentional. Regardless, Ingrid is foul and that's another foul thing to pin on her.

Astrid's time in the foster system is heartbreaking and traumatizing. Here she experience life with a variety of different kinds of mothers and finds herself along the way, separate from her mother's microscopic lense. In the first house, she latches on to the boyfriend of her foster mother, at first the father she never had, and then her lover. My heart broke - barely fourteen and groomed by a father figure the first time she even has one.

In her next home Astrid finds a friend. She has a meaningful relationship with a black woman who works as a sugar baby, a bold and elegant neighbor who teaches her that men can be controlled by sex and she can use her powers to get what she wants. Finally, in the last home, Astrid meets a wonderful, troubled woman who needs a babysitter for her tenuous mental health. She looks up to these two women as mothers, and breaks free of her mother's hold.

I love this beautifully written book. I resonated with Astrid, and honestly Ingrid as well. I think Ingrid has deeper rooted mental issues that were masked with a sense of confidence and sexuality. Another case of "damn, my girl needs therapy."

The Review

Oh man, I was disappointed. I wanted a great conclusion to the Smythe- Smith series, as it has been my favoirte, but poor Iris Smythe-Smith got the short end of the stick. Richard was manipulative and TOXIC and I ached for Iris...but this book redeemed itself in the end, further proving Julia Quinn’s heroes rarely deserve their heroines, and yet I keep coming back for more.

The Smythe-Smith quartet has been my favorite, so I’m a little sad that I found this one so objectionable, as I had high hopes for Iris. At least SHE met my expectations.

Content Warning: Violent rape, gore, drug abuse

The Review

This one took a long time for me to read, because it was so dark and so graphic. It was well written, but I had mixed feelings. The narrator is, in a word, a douche-nozzle. His disjointed fall from promising musician to homeless junkie is captivating and violent in turns, with some parts turning into dark, macabre poetry and most of it just very graphic descriptions of rape and murder, overdoses and child p*rn rings.

I don't even want to call it gritty. This book was just dark. I can't even say I liked it or disliked it: this book merely was.

Content Warning: Rape, suicide

The Review

I loved this book. I found it spellbinding - the changing of narrators to me made sense and was seamless, the juxtaposition of Cath's book and her life was masterfully done. Morwenna Blackwood really understands how mental health works and I appreciated how she handles the discussion of suicide and trauma. Richard is a truly deplorable villain, and Kayleigh is a worthy heroine.

A couple things that could have been done better (spoilers beyond this point):

I didn't like that Will was set up to end up with Kayleigh and then boom, the dead girl's ex who hasn't been a real character ends up with her. What's the point of building up the relationship? I also felt that Blackwood could have done so much more with Kayleigh's brief stay in the psychiatric ward - spent a little more time there while Richard wreaks havoc or something.

All in all, enjoyed this a lot, I just wanted far more than we got.

Content Warning: Drug Use

The Review

Hopkins did it again! A stunning conclusion to the Crank trilogy, this book follows the struggles of three of Kristina's children: Hunter, Summer, and Autumn. We get bits and pieces of the tumultuous road Kristina walked, and the damage that she did to her children. At this point, Kristina is so far gone that she barely regards her children, save the two youngest.

Written in the same raw, incredible prose that Hopkins is so skilled at, this one tugged at me in a different way. The fallout of drug abuse in a family is nuclear. Autumn, Summer, and Hunter act out in different ways, young adults trying to navigate life with unstable fathers and an absent mother.

I read through this one quickly and had trouble putting it down. I ached for the children, and the families, and even a little bit for Kristina, but what killed me was for the first time we see Kristina's parents through different eyes. In Crank and Glass, we see Kristina's annoyance with her parents, their relentless hounding and tough love. In Fallout, we see the heartbreak and the loving effort involved in raising five children in your golden years. Fallout was truly an incredible book, and the best of the three.

Content Warning: human trafficking, rape

The Review - There be spoilers for Storm's Fury

Amelia Storm is back, and with a bone to pick with the mysterious, endlessly wealthy man whispered to be the Shark; a man who is close to Stan Young, the senator who rules Chicago with an underhanded fist. This time, the Leone crime family has abandoned sex trafficking and have adopted labor trafficking. Amelia has two missing children to find, stolen from their families to work the farms that feed the city. The boss in charge has a horrible, dirty secret and a vicious way of hiding it. It is up to Amelia to find the answers, without raising the suspicions of the unidentified rat in the FBI field office as well as dodging his relentless sexual advances.

This is another book that I can't say I loved but I very much enjoyed. I picked up Storm's Cage almost immediately after this because I cannot get enough of Agent Storm. We have a truly hateable consistent villain, an engaging M/F detective duo (with sexual tension, naturally), a secret mole, and a sympathetic Mafia boss ( on the D'Amato side, of course). All my favorite crime thriller tropes redressed in something truly nuanced and incredible. Thank you Stone and Wilson!

Content Warning: human trafficking

The Review - There be spoilers for Storm's Fury

I thought this one would be the book where our FBI mole is revealed, but I guess not. Instead, we have a corrupt cop who is responsible for some of the evil activities I mentioned in my review of Storm's Peril.

This book was well written, but it is a bit of filler and exposition. A lot of character development occurs, a lot of secrets revealed, but it is a little lower on the action and more focused on our mole's mind games and some of Amelia's demons coming out.

I enjoyed this book from a cerebral perspective and found myself saying "oh no he did NOT" aloud many times, but as I said it's lower action and mostly serves to set up the story, and is a successful bridge novel. I can't wait to start the next!

The Review

Oh, bless her heart. Julia Quinn's first novel fresh out of college certainly reads that way. Her work is well written, but the story weaving leaves something to be desired. Our hero is an ass of the worst degree, our American heroine very basic and not much personality aside from "rebellious but easily cowed by our controlling hero and is 100% tricked into believing she's in love." Most of the sex scenes are forced on Emma but she reluctantly gives in, which left a bit of a bad taste in my mouth.

A few positives - some of the inside jokes Quinn has with her audience make an appearance (namely, the opera singer squirreled away in a fancy hidey-hole). I liked Emma, but unfortunately we fall into the "oh my gosh you are beyond beautiful" trap that is so easy. Again, this is a first novel and she has gotten so much better over the years!

The Review

Dancing at Midnight does a much better job at presenting the audience with a hero that is not as toxic as Splendid. John Blackwood is a tortured man (love to see it) who believes he is not man enough to love a beautiful lady (another trope but again, love to see it) because of his injury. Honestly, I'm getting some The Sum of all Kisses vibes from this one, almost like Quinn decided to rewrite the book and do it better. This was not a bad book by any means and Quinn did a much better job this time around, however, the hero from the last book is even more toxic than before, if you can believe it.

I'm only finishing Minx because I'm a completionist and the gentleman around whom this book is centered is the kindest and best behaved out of all the gentlemen Julia Quinn has written at this point in her career (remember, this is early early on).

The Review

Wall of Silence is a decent book, full of plot twists and very good pacing to the story. My only gripe (and it's a big one) is that the writing is a bit simplistic and it makes for a very fast read, so we don't get the thrill part of the thriller; rather, we are stuck with just the -er, as in "er, that was it?" I wasn't excited or mystified the way I like from a thriller.

I did enjoy the uniqueness of a mother covering for her children in an attempted murder, and the plot twists that get us there. Like I said, the book was decent, but not extraordinary.