Posted February 14, 2022 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments
The Hellion’s Waltz, Olivia Waite
The Hellion’s Waltz is fun, with a con story arguably at the heart of it, rather than the romance. Sophie and Maddie’s relationship is sweet, but it happens so fast, with more attention given to working out the con than their relationship.
It actually feels better balanced at first, but then Sophie’s so swiftly persuaded to help with the con that there’s no real work that needs to be done with the relationship — and without scenes of negotiation and getting closer, I feel like I don’t know Maddie very well as a character (I know Sophie a little better because it feels like we get a lot more of her inner thoughts and decision-making, and definitely see more of her family), and I definitely don’t know the relationship well.
It’s very sweet, don’t get me wrong — it just doesn’t quite feel substantial, and I don’t feel that Sophie and Maddie know each other well enough (on the evidence) to know for sure they have a stable foundation on which to build the triumphant happy ending. So that knocked this book down a star at least in my rating.
The con story is entertaining, though, and getting to see Mr Giles have his comeuppance is deeply satisfying. As someone determined to help other workers, and determined to carry on a parent’s legacy and take care of others, Maddie’s a great character. The other stuff just didn’t quite gel for me.
Rating: 3/5
Tags: book reviews, books, Olivia Waite, romance
Posted January 7, 2022 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments
The Darkness Outside Us, Eliot Schrefer
This is a very claustrophobic book, with a very tight group of characters. In the “present” of the book, there are three: the operating system running the ship, the spacefarer from Federation, and the spacefarer from Demokratia. There are some glimpses of other characters in the past, but the action takes place on a spaceship, with just those three, stuck together.
It’s a book that I think most people would prefer to read blind, so I’m not going to say too much — most of my comments about the book as a whole would give too much away. I will say, though, that I expected it to be more about the romance and less about the sci-fi/mystery, and instead I’d say that the sci-fi/mystery is the primary thread, with the romance… not quite taken for granted, but definitely not the primary story being told here.
I found it really readable, and actually finished big chunks at a time, though some of the tense bits triggered my anxiety for a bit and I had to put it down. There were things I found predictable, but I was curious about less the “what” or even “why” than the “how”. That paid off for me, especially from part two onwards; in part one I was kinda wondering if I’d stick with it because of that.
Rating: 4/5
Tags: book reviews, books, Eliot Schrefer, mystery, queer fic, romance, SF/F
Posted October 30, 2021 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments
The Care and Feeding of Waspish Widows, Olivia Waite
I picked up The Care and Feeding of Waspish Widows from where it had been patiently awaiting me on the shelf more or less on a whim… and got immediately sucked in. At first I couldn’t quite see how Agatha and Penelope were going to work — and in that sense the book was very much a slow burn and definitely put the work in! I believed in it without question by the end, for sure — and I also believed that they would be good for one another.
Agatha and Penelope are both rather independent, but each in their own way, bringing their own strengths to the partnership. Agatha is practical, focused on her goals of managing her business and her son as he comes of age-but she lacks idealism and joy. Those things aren’t lacking around Penelope, though she has yet to find her voice and her joy. From being quite unlike, you quickly come to understand why they complement each other and work well as friends — better than they might have imagined.
They are the main characters, of course, but there’s much to enjoy in the supporting cast: Penelope’s ‘husband’ and his real relationship with Penelope’s brother; the shocking and unrepentant poet, Joanna Molesey; Sidney, Agatha’s son, and Eliza, his lover… the supporting cast all have their charms and their stories, and help to bring the story to life.
Another aspect some readers will be keen on is the fact that Agatha and Penelope are mature women: Agatha has an adult son, after all! This isn’t a story of blemishless, stunning young women, but one of women who have lived, and enjoy that in one another. Pretty as the cover is, too, it’s misleading — Agatha and Penelope are average women, not higher class debutantes.
To my surprise, the book fell together for me very well, despite my initial scepticism about the characters and how they’d fit together. And their little revenge against closed-minded prigs in their community is rather enjoyable…
Rating: 4/5
Tags: book reviews, books, historical fiction, Olivia Waite, queer fic, romance
Posted October 27, 2021 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments
One Last Stop, Casey McQuiston
One Last Stop was a lot of fun. I thought that the blurb itself kind of spoiled part of that fun, though: there’s very little mystery about… let’s call it the central problem of the book. If you read the blurb, the first 90 pages of the book may be lacking something for you, since you know something the characters can’t know. On the one hand, you might not quite figure out the genre of the book, since it reads as plain ol’ contemporary romance, and on the other, well, plenty of romance has that kind of plot device. (Thinking of Susanna Kearsley here…)
There’s plenty to love other than that, of course: the lovable cast of characters (especially Niko) are basically the queer found family that many queer people in their 20s dream of, and the ups and downs can be both funny and painful, sometimes at the same time. In some ways, I suppose it tries very hard to be acceptably quirky and to make the found family feel very relatable… but that’s all part of making you feel part of it.
Sometimes I felt like the pace was a bit off, and that time would pass in these big jerks that get covered by a paragraph… but it took me longer to read it than I’d have liked, only to end in me mainlining the last 100 pages in an evening, so part of that is also my reading pace.
Rating: 4/5
Tags: book reviews, books, Casey McQuiston, romance
Posted October 16, 2021 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments
Magic Triumphs, Ilona Andrews
Welp, that certainly was a finale!
Again, it’s difficult to review without being either incomprehensible (to those who haven’t read any of this series) or spoilery (for those who have). There are some twists that are quite anxiety-making, some developments that have been a long time coming, and some moments where you think everything is surely about to go terribly wrong (and some moments where things do go terribly wrong). That’s not saying much about the book, though, since it’s true of many books and definitely of every book in this series — but the fact that all those elements are there keeps the pages turning swiftly, almost too swiftly, toward the end.
I love how far all the characters have come, and how much more the world has been developed, and the subtleties in relationships that have developed and changed since the first book. You wouldn’t expect to arrive here, starting at the beginning, but each step along the way has made sense.
I’ll probably read some of the other books in this world in the end, but not yet. For now I want to let it sit.
Rating: 4/5
Tags: book reviews, books, Ilona Andrews, romance, SF/F
Posted October 7, 2021 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments
Slippery Creatures, K.J. Charles
One of my least favourite things in any story is when the plot is driven by miscommunication/lack of communication… but though this is true of Slippery Creatures, I can’t ding the story for it. The lack of communication is built into the characters, and how they react to it is totally consistent, and makes sense with who they are. It would be more frustrating if they weren’t bouncing off each other, because it wouldn’t ring true. Kim is messed up, and Will is horribly stubborn, and the story would be far too easy without them.
I do enjoy their relationship, and their characters, even though Kim unquestionably brings it all on himself and puts Will in terrible danger by misreading him and his motivations, and then not being straightforward with him. But I really enjoy Phoebe and Maisie, and I’d love to know more about them — they both play small but emotionally significant parts in the plot, and I love them.
The end of the book is very much not a happy ending: Slippery Creatures is the start of something, not the end. For that reason, it’s a little rough to say how much I’m going to enjoy this series as a whole — but I suspect it will be a lot.
Rating: 4/5
Tags: book reviews, books, historical fiction, K.J. Charles, mystery, queer fic, romance
Posted October 2, 2021 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments
Magic Binds, Ilona Andrews
Magic Binds would be an impossible read without all the previous books building up the story, laying the groundwork for the relationships, and painting the world Kate works in. When you think about the progression from Magic Bites to this, it’s pretty staggering — the whole scope has changed, the stakes are huge, and there are so many characters of all kinds to love and hate.
I think one of the best things about this book is the nuance it brings to the relationship between Kate and her family. From her heritage being almost completely hidden in the first book to the reveal of what she’s been raised to do to her claim on Atlanta to this… I won’t say too much, but there’s a surprisingly moving scene with someone who you don’t expect to have a quiet moment with. Actually, a couple of moving scenes with very unexpected people, honestly. And some very interesting developments with Christopher…
The ending feels a little cut off at the knees; the book accelerates toward the ending and then, of course, stops. And the next book doesn’t pick straight up from there or something — it’s quite the anticlimax. It feels like there was too much ending to do in one book, so then it just kind of abandons ship.
It gets harder with each book to do reviews without spoilers, and this is not a book where anyone could jump in, pick it up alone, and understand what’s going on. I highly recommend the series, but don’t start here!
Rating: 4/5
Tags: book reviews, books, Ilona Andrews, mystery, romance, SF/F
Posted September 28, 2021 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments
Magic Shifts, Ilona Andrews
Magic Shifts is the last book of this series that I’ve read before, and it’s very difficult to review without spoilers for people who haven’t read the previous books. There’s a “monster of the week”, of course, in that Eduardo gets kidnapped, so Kate and Curran have to dig into what happened there, figure out who/what is spawning weird giants that metamorphose into other animals, and find Eduardo. There’s also some background information about djinn and their place in the world, and about ghouls (only briefly mentioned before, if at all).
There’s also a lot of development for the changes to the Pack composition begun at the end of the last book, and a lot of personal changes for Kate and Curran. Like, you know, having to get used to living in suburbia with a nosey neighbour who wants Curran to avoid walking around in his lion form.
And then there’s the fallout of the previous book, and some hints about where things are going… And that’s all I’ll say about that.
Like the previous books, there’s a lot of action, the plot moves quickly, and Kate is a bit better at investigating things than she says she is. Some things fall into place beautifully, and there are some really nice character moments.
Rating: 4/5
Tags: book reviews, books, Ilona Andrews, mystery, romance, SF/F
Posted September 24, 2021 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments
Tears of Pearl, Tasha Alexander
It took me a bit longer to get into Tears of Pearl than with the other Lady Emily books, and partly that’s because Emily arrives in Constantinople and is promptly a total British tourist and has the most typical imaginable reactions to everything, including her opinions on the treatment of women. Sure, it mentions the relative freedom some of the women have, but… it all felt really shallow.
It’s also a bit weird to read this book and find it so similar to Mary Robinette Kowal’s Glamour in Glass in terms of Emily’s thoughts and fears about pregnancy and childbirth. It makes total sense that it was a preoccupation for women at that time, and these books already inclined more toward historical mystery than romance, so an exploration makes sense… and even the end of the book makes total sense as the obvious thing to happen (trying to be vague here, because of spoilers), but I’ve read that plot before in a book that I love, so it kind of hit weirdly for me.
I don’t know how much longer I’ll stick with Lady Emily; I do enjoy her preoccupation with classical things, and her unconventionality, and her warmth for her friends — and of course her funny dialogue with Colin. But I struggled to get started with this one, and got involved more with how the mystery was solved than with the emotional stuff going on. It’s too soon to say if I’ve fallen out of the series, and I’ll give it another book at least — especially since I read two-thirds of this book almost all in one go… but I’m wondering.
Rating: 3/5
Tags: book reviews, books, crime, historical fiction, mystery, romance, Tasha Alexander
Posted September 22, 2021 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments
Magic Breaks, Ilona Andrews
There is a particular scene from this book that I remembered without remembering much else, and it really seared its way into my brain — the rest of the book, even though it was a reread, was pretty unfamiliar… which meant I had a few shocks! Really, the whole thing was kinda stressful, right from the moment I read the author’s note talking about how this feels like the end of the series in some ways. And it really does — you’d walk away with questions, still, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing, and it certainly turns a page for Kate and her family.
It’s difficult to review this without saying too much, to be honest. There are a few ways that this book is a gamechanger for Kate, and it’s probably most fun if you experience it for yourself.
Personally, I continue to love that these books aren’t straightforward to define: it’s not just a story of vengeance, or a story of a mouthy mercenary with some flashy magic, or a romance story, or a set of stories about a private investigator, or a story of post-apocalyptic survival. There’s so much going on.
To get a little more specific about this book, I love that we get to see more of Ghastek, his past and what drives him. It’s also interesting to see more of some members of the pack, particularly Robert Lonesco. I could wish for more of Andrea and Raphael in this book, but it’s also fun to change it up.
Rating: 4/5
Tags: book reviews, books, Ilona Andrews, romance, SF/F
