The 13th and final installment of the book series that inspired the TV show, The Last Kingdom, is a sad but necessary conclusion to such a great and epic tale. Uhtred is now in his 70s, and while that's not impossible even for the era (average life expectancy if one survived childhood in the Middle Ages was in the 60s), it is starting to get a bit unrealistic, especially as a warrior who still engages in combat. For the last few books, I've been wondering how long Cornwell could really stretch this out, but now that it's finally come to an end, I will miss it, of course. I think that's why I took so long to finish it, I didn't want it to end.
Uhtred's epic journey was such an enjoyable way to detail the turbulent establishment and unification of the country of England and it's monarchs and leaders who made it happen, starting with Alfred the Great, all the way through the reign of his grandson, Athelstan. While Uhtred's relationship with each of them was always rather grudging at best, I think he secretly wanted to believe in Alfred's vision, and it also brought a lot of humor to the series.
In some ways, I wish the story could continue, following succeeding monarchs, perhaps through Uhtred's son's voice, but I know it wouldn't be the same. All good things come to an end, and this was a fitting and worthy ending to Uhtred's story.
A fascinating true story about how a woman turns her husband's brewing company into an empire that survives Prohibition, after he is murdered by one of his mistresses.
I knew nothing about Emma Koehler or Pearl Brewing before picking this up, but the only thing better than a dramatic story is one that's true, so I couldn't resist. It's a great story, but I think it could have been told in a slightly better way. It's as though the author attempted to tell it in dual time periods - one when Emma is elderly and hires a young woman to take notes for her autobiography, and the other as Emma's past. The problem is, we only get Emma's past as she's dictating it, so it's not always a true dual-time period story because we only really hear Emma telling us about her past, we don't get to actually see it very much. That was a little disappointing, and I felt like much of her accomplishments were brushed over, but it's still a great story about woman who wouldn't be held back by the personal tragedies that befell her. Not only did she rise above them, she became more successful and powerful than her narcissistic husband had been during a time when women didn't have the right to vote, and managed to maintain it through WWI, Prohibition, the Great Depression, and even the start of WWII.
Additional dimension is added by exploring the fictional character Mabel Hartley, the notes taker. Rather than just being a means of storytelling, she provides a much needed happier ending too.
Advanced review copy from publisher via NetGalley. My opinions are my own.
Release Date: March 10, 2020 (still playing catch up on my ARCs, sorry)
This fictional account of Jackie Kennedy's life, as told through her own eyes, was pulling me in all different directions emotionally. On one hand, I could really see why she fell so hard for Jack, and even why she stayed with him through all his infidelity. On the other hand, her choice of men in general had me smacking my forehead.
I didn't know much about Jackie before reading this. Obviously, I knew about the eventually tragic fates of her family members, and that she remarried at some point. This book really highlights how tragic her life was, and how she never really recovered from losing the love of her life, but also shows how strong she was to endure everything she did, and eventually find her own way in the world, in spite of the crappy way the men in her life treated her. Absolutely heartbreaking but also uplifting.
Advanced review copy from publisher via NetGalley. My opinions are my own.
Kat makes fast friends with a Chinese gentleman the police suspect of the murder next door, but she is adamant it couldn't have been him. Suspicious people surround the widow and her home, while Kat fights her own battles in the house of her employment.
Based much on the prejudice towards the Chinese in London at the time, and how the English unjustly pillaged goods from China, every time you think you have this mystery figured out, something happens to prove you wrong or throw you off!
But the characters are what make this series so great. As swoon-worthy as Daniel and Kat's relationship is, I've also enjoyed watching Lady Cynthia and Mr. Thanos's budding relationship too, as well as seeing how Kat and Cynthia try to navigate the socially complicated friendship between Lady and servant. At first, I wasn't too keen on Tess, but even she has grown on me now. The latest antagonist within the household had me wanting to scream.
Just as with the Captain Lacy series, this story just keeps getting better and better with each installment.
Advanced review copy from publisher via NetGalley. My opinions are my own.
Written in the style of a memoir, this is a novel about Joseph Stalin's only daughter, who defected to the US.
Perhaps due to the memoir style, there is a lot of "telling" rather than "showing", and the narrative feels very disjointed, hopping from one thing to the next and only briefly detailing important events in Svetlana's life that could have been used to really flesh out the characters and story.
I was really hoping this novel would give me great insight into a historical figure and subject matter I don't know much about but I feel like it didn't tell me much more than I could have learned from reading Svetlana's Wikipedia page.
Advanced review copy from publisher via NetGalley. My opinions are my own.
As the title says, this is a novel of Alice Roosevelt, the eldest daughter of Theodore Roosevelt. Always having a complicated relationship with her father, she adored him but he kept her at arms length since she reminded him too much of her deceased mother, the love of Teddy's life. Yet she was easily the most like him in personality; unapologetically strong willed, strong minded, and outspoken with a quick wit, she was likely trying to emulate him to gain his approval, and in the process made herself into one of the most fascinating characters in American political families. The daughter of this larger-than-life American president is often in her father's shadow, but deserves her own spotlight, and this book more than does her justice. I knew from the moment I started reading this, from the very first paragraph, that I would love this book and Thornton's portrayal of Alice, and I did. So well written with such great characters, this is definitely not one to miss.
Advanced review copy from publisher via NetGalley. My opinions are my own.
Release Date: January 14, 2019 (sorry, getting behind on my ACR's!)
An adventurous novel set in Canada during the War of 1812 about a British militia Captain caught up in a spy ring.
There's a lot of action, which is fun, but there's also some head-hopping which is generally a bit jarring and I'm not a big fan of it. I know it's intended to give the reader perspective of more than one character, but that can be done without head-hopping. For me, it does the complete opposite and jars me out of the scene and makes it more difficult for me to connect with the characters. There's nothing wrong with multi-character perspectives, but keep them exclusive to different chapters or sections, don't jump back and forth within the same paragraph or section (or worse, sentence, though I don't think that happened here).
As a result, I didn't feel much connection to the characters and found it dragged a bit. The writing was otherwise good, and the characters believable and sympathetic, just a shame about the head-hopping.
Advanced review copy from NetGalley via publisher. My opinions are my own.
I adore the TV show Grantchester. I love the characters, the dialogue, the mysteries, etc. Sadly, the actor of the main character, Sidney Chambers, has left the show recently and so they've had to replace him with a new main character, who I don't dislike, but I do miss Sidney so I'd been considering reading the books to get my Sidney-fix.
This book is actually a prequel to when the show (and the first book) began, so I thought it'd be a good introduction to the books. Although it could easily be read as a introduction to either the books or the show, I really enjoyed reading about Sidney's journey to get to where he winds up in the rest of the series having already known him and some of the other characters. It explains a lot about Sidney's character and his relationship with Amanda, with all the charm, witty dialogue, and depth of character I've come to expect from the show. It didn't really have the usual mystery element, it's much more about the characters, but it was still just as enjoyable.
Advanced review copy from publisher via NetGalley. My opinions are my own.
A great novel on an incredible woman. Honestly, if it wasn’t true, I’d hardly believe it. A Hollywood actress who escaped an abusive marriage and the Holocaust just before it came to her Austrian homeland, and became a self taught scientist and inventor, partnering with a musician to develop an unappreciated radio guidance system for torpedoes, which wasn't adopted by the US Navy until the 1960s, and later became the basis for Bluetooth and wi-fi. I know it almost sounds like I just strung a random selection of words together, but it's true and it rightfully makes a great story. My only criticism is that I felt like the ending was a bit of a let down, being somewhat anticlimactic, which I thought might be inevitable given Hedy's life story.
Hedy is a flawed but enormously strong and highly intelligent woman. She uses her beauty to the best of her advantage without compromising her integrity, yet she's not vain, and in some ways, her beauty is what holds her back, as so many people can't see beyond it. She is driven by her empathy and survivors guilt to aid the US military against Hilter. Fulfilling her acting obligations at the same time, she invents a radio guidance system that solves the problem of signal jamming, something no expert with formal education in the industry could do. Sadly, the government rejected her invention until the 1960s for a number reasons, none of them justified.
I feel a little bit like Hedy must have been something of an inspiration for Legally Blonde's Elle Woods: "Did she just wake up one morning and decide 'I think I'll go to law school'?" Did Hedy just wake up one morning and decide, 'I think I'll solve radio signal jamming today'? Of course, it wasn't that simple in reality, but it parallels the movie of an underestimated beautiful woman proving the world wrong and showing everyone just how smart and capable she really is, even if it took some time before they realized it.
Advanced review copy from publisher via NetGalley. My opinions are my own.
A leader of the woman's suffrage movement, Alva Vanderbilt (nee Smith) rejected much about the social convention of her time, and yet arguably also beat them at their own game. If you can't join them, beat them.
The first half of this was a little boring. I know it was setting the scene for Alva coming into her own later on, and we did get to see sparks of the woman she would become, but much of it was just inane snobbish chatter. I suppose it's fitting because that's probably exactly how Alva felt about it too, but it didn't make for the best reading. If we'd gotten to see a bit more of that sarcastic wit that occasionally flared up in Alva, even just internally, it probably would have been a lot more entertaining.
Additionally, I kept waiting for this to turn more political and see how Alva became so important to the suffrage movement, but we actually see very little of that, and only at the very end. It's definitely more about her earlier private life, which could have been more interesting if her characterization was fuller.
Still, watching Alva go from dutiful daughter, sister, wife, and mother to taking her fate and future into her own hands was very fulfilling and I was cheering her on the whole time. About the last third of the book is when it gets most interesting.
Advanced review copy from publisher via NetGalley. My opinions are my own.
Juliet Armstrong works with MI5 during WWII, first simply (and rather boringly) transcribing recordings of conversations among Nazi sympathizers. But it's not long before the world of espionage engulfs her and she is asked to do much more.
I found myself struggling to get through this. The majority of it was just so dull, with what felt like a lot of rambling. Not badly written, just not captivating. It wasn't until about half way through that things picked up and became much more interesting. I still wasn't hugely invested in the characters, but the plot at least picked up. Or at least, I thought it did, and then the WWII story line abruptly ended and jumped forward, which I was expecting at some point, since I knew it was a dual time period plot, but moving forward in the timeline meant the plot slowed down again. There was another peak in the story line at the end, but I'm still not sure all the dribble in between was worth it.
There were some things I really like about this like the writing style and the periodic witty and dry quips in the narrative. And in some ways I think this could actually make an interesting movie (slow paced, granted), but I felt like much of it was just tedious.
Advanced review copy from publisher via NetGalley. My opinions are my own.
An aspiring journalist takes a photo of questionable moral integrity, showing what the Great Depression has driven people to and it winds up being his big break. But when he returns to followup on it, he learns just how his photo and accompanying article has influenced the family in the photo and his niggling remorse over it turns into full blown regret and forces him to take a good, hard look at who he has become. Desperate to make things right, not only with the family, but also with his own parents and friends he has driven away, he embarks on a journey of atonement and self growth.
Based on a similar photo taken during the Depression (see below), the subject matter seemed compelling. It was very well written with well developed characters, but I felt like the plot dragged a little bit. I enjoy a good slow paced book, but sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't and this time it was more the latter. It wasn't a bad read, but it was not as 'powerful' as I thought it was going to be, given the subject matter.
The real life photo which
inspired this novel
I think particularly because the actual photo (in the novel) that wound up being published was staged, the whole book felt too far removed from the real and gritty hardships and desperation of the Great Depression. It was really more about the journalist's remorse over staging the photo and what it winds up doing to the family. The story follows him and his love interest, neither of whom are particularly struggling all that much and don't embody the true depths of despair that time period evokes. I felt like this really could have been placed during almost any time period - the question of what some journalists will sometimes do for a good story and how they deal with those questionable ethics is something that isn't exclusive to the Great Depression. I'm not saying that such a topic isn't worthy of a novel, but this is not what I expected it to be, and therefore it lost it's impact on me.
Additionally, I have to say - the idea that Ellis knew how to pick a lock with hair pins just because he had "a father who preferred tinkering with machinery to conversation" seem ridiculously unrealistic and contrived for the sake of the plot. Maybe if Ellis had an uncle or such who was a locksmith, that would have been more believable, even if still a little contrived. But I just don't know how the author is making the connection between the two. This alone wouldn't be enough for me to dislike it, but it was so silly, I couldn't let it go unmentioned.
Advanced review copy from publisher via NetGalley. My opinions are my own
Jennifer Ashley is so good at creating lovable and fascinating characters, I just want to eat them up (pun intended). Kat is much more astute than her profession as head chef requires, her observant and inquisitive mind is always looking for puzzles to solve, and one of her employers, Lady Cynthia, is more than happy to provide her with one. Asked to look into the disappearance of a few paintings from the wealth household of one of Lady Cynthia's friend's, it only takes Kat mere moments to sort out what's been going on. But more significant thefts have been happening around London too, in the dark underworld of the antiquities black market, and the mysterious and elusive Daniel McAdam is, of course, right at the heart of it.
Kat thinks herself too sensible to get involved with someone who jumps in and out of her life, someone she knows precious little about, but when a man turns up dead in the pawnshop Daniel is working undercover in and she's overwhelmed with concern for him, it's difficult to deny her feelings. We learn a little bit more about Daniel, but each morsel of information leaves us wanting second helpings.
Clever plots, witty dialogue, compelling characters, yummy food descriptions - what's not to love? I didn't want it to end.
Advanced review copy from publisher via NetGalley. My opinions are my own.
Kiki Button, a former nurse and spy during WWI, is now a gossip columnist in post-war bohemian Paris who just wants to drown the memories of war with parties, booze, jazz, and sex... except her past isn't finished with her.
It sounds a little more exciting than it is. The majority of the first half of the book is primarily about Kiki hob-nobbing with the rich and famous, which is, to say the least, a bit boring. I understand it's setting the stage for the second half, but it's still boring. The author tries to keep things intriguing with sex scenes (though not very explicit) and constantly mentioning the mysterious and dangerous "Fox" character from Kiki's past and his poetically cryptic clues about finding a mole, but it fails to be quite as compelling as it's supposed to be, probably because he comes off more as creepy and stalker-ish than fascinating.
That said, it is well written with witty dialogue, and the characters do have well formed back stories. The second half was much more interesting and finally felt like there was a plot, but by that point I just wasn't hugely invested in it.
Advanced review copy from publisher via NetGalley. My opinions are my own.
Revolving around the Grand Central Terminal of New York City, we are told the story of two different women in two different time periods. Slow paced but beautifully written, we gradually learn about the growing success of illustrator and artist Clara Darden just before the Depression and a tragic accident ruins her life. Fast forward, Virginia Clay in the 1970s is still reeling from surviving breast cancer only for her husband to divorce her. When she stumbles upon an old art school that used to exist in the Grand Central Terminal, she suddenly finds meaning and purpose in discovering what happened to Clara Darden and who the mysterious artist who called himself 'Clyde' really was. That's not to say it's a mystery. This novel is very much about the journey and learning about the characters, who are well fleshed out.
I adored the detailed descriptions of artwork and fashion and although it was slow paced, it was never boring. I enjoyed reading about both women come into their own and rediscover themselves.
Advanced review copy from publisher via NetGalley. My opinions are my own.
Intensely eventful, this sequel to Bonnie Parker's life details her crime spree with Clyde Barrow. Although the action never seems to stop, it also feels a little repetitive at times, like the entire book is just Bonnie and Clyde, and sometimes a few others, going around in circles, both literally and not. That's not a criticism, just a description of how crazy their crime spree was.
Popular view tends to paint the picture of Bonnie and Clyde on some kind of fun loving joyride as they commit their crimes, probably partly fueled by the famous photos of them showing off their guns and posing, horsing around, smiling, etc. But this book portrays things much more darkly, with their crimes being more like acts of desperation while they cling onto some fantasy that some day they'll achieve their dreams of living quietly in some remote corner of rural America, as though they are not haunted by the consequences of their choices.
At the same time, the historical view seems to describe the "Barrow Gang" as an organized criminal group, but this novel suggests it was anything but organized and more "fly by the seat of our pants" and "pick up whatever help we can from who we can whenever we can". We get to meet the members of Bonnie and Clyde's so-called gang, but many of them are involved at different time periods, typically not associated with each one another. It definitely felt too erratic to be called "organized", and it wasn't until near the end when it briefly becomes a large group.
Again, none of this is criticism, and it actually appears to be entirely accurate, but it was a little surprising, which made it all the more intriguing.
Advanced review copy from publisher via NetGalley. My opinions are my own.
Sadly, I am going to have to not finish this autobiographical novel of the historical Dunstan, a 10th century Abbot of Glastonbury who was canonized as a saint. I hate doing that with an ARC because I feel like by receiving a free ARC, I'm obligated to finish it, but I know that's not actually a part of NetGalley's rules or expectations so I'm doing it.
The beginning of The Abbot's Tale just did not grab me. The prologue was sort of rambling, and the first few chapters, the main character, Dunstan, just seemed to be a bully, a narcissist, and a sociopath. I was hoping it would get better, but then Dunstan did something I just couldn't get past (see spoiler below, if you want to). His only redeeming quality is that he cares about and tries to protect his little brother, even though he is simultaneously cruel to him. But is that really a redeeming feature? Because abusers do the same thing: "I can be mean to you, but no one else can because you're mine." So I'm not even sure Dunstan even has one good quality. Most frustrating of all is the fact that he doesn't even realize how horrible he is, he genuinely doesn't understand why most people don't treat him like a god, blaming and resenting them when they don't. Only the people he is able to hoodwink into thinking he's "touched by angels" treat him the way he thinks he deserves to be treated.
Look, I know anti-heroes are popular right now and I'm all for it, if it works. But this one doesn't, and I frankly don't understand how this book has gotten such a high average rating with such an unlikable protagonist. Even "Dexter," from the likewise titled TV show, which also features a psychopathic, murdering protagonist, has some kind of moral code, but Dunstan does not. I tried to hang in there, and I think I gave it a fair chance, but I just can't take any more of Dunstan.
The final straw was the fact that Dunstan murdered an innocent cat that more than one character had bonded with. I know, I know, he also killed Godwin, but arguably, Godwin deserved it, and also, he killed Godwin to protect his little brother. The idea that he needed to test the poison on the cat just doesn't work for me. Additionally, Dunstan goes on to murder someone who arguably didn't deserve it so any hope of some kind of moral code was quickly dashed. All of it is just more evidence of the fact that Dunstan is a socio/psychopath with zero redeeming qualities and that's just not the kind of protagonist I enjoy, especially when it's written in first person and therefore I have to endure listening to his narcissistic internal dialogue nonstop. I like flawed protagonists, but I can't get on board with this.
I'm giving it a half star just because the writing quality was good, and it might have been a great story if the characterization hadn't been so bad.
Advanced review copy from publisher via NetGalley. My opinions are my own.
