[Ren] A Bitter Truth (Bess Crawford #3) by Charles Todd

Title: A Bitter Truth (Bess Crawford #3)
Author: Charles Todd
Published: August 30th, 2011
Rating: 
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This is the third book in a series about a WWI English nurse who solves crimes. It was a huge letdown, because I liked Bess in the first book, but the plot of this book was a complete mess. It starts off as a typical cozy mystery in which someone is murdered and everyone at the manor is a suspect, but the bitter truth about this book is that you have no chance in hell to solve the mystery. The rules of fair play whodunnit are completely tossed out of the window, and in the last few chapters a secondary character appears out of the blue with a piece of information that explains the motive for the crime, which is completely different from what you’ve been led to believe up to that point and impossible to guess.

I found that really disappointing, because of all the time wasted on talking to all the other suspects and pursuing other leads. If the authors were going to make a random character the murderer, they could have spent more chapters developing the main character. Bess does a lot of, well, to be frank, she acts like a criminal. She’s complicit in the kidnapping of a young child from her caretakers, for example. One could make the case that she was trying to act in the child’s best interests and that the war made circumstances different, but to me it looked as if she has no idea what she’s doing. She hurts a lot of people out of thoughtlessness, but it’s all glossed over because she’s meant to be a good character.

Then there’s the matter of Roger, who hit his wife hard enough to give her a concussion, but that’s also forgotten when he becomes friends with Bess. I don’t know about you, Bess, but if I know a man has a history of violence, is always angry, and is a suspect in a murder inquiry, I wouldn’t want to follow him if he says he wants to talk in private. But, like everyone is fond of saying at every turn, who cares about a small disagreement between man and wife as long as the sanctity of marriage is saved. I would have accepted it if there had been some kind of commentary from Bess along the lines of “this is how people think in this day and age and it sucks but what can you do” like her interior monologue when she first saw Lydia’s bruises. But that was before meeting Roger. After she meets Roger he seems like a nice person so she conveniently neglects to think about Lydia’s concussion ever again. Plus, everyone including Lydia agrees that it’s her fault for making him mad after all.

So yeah it was a mess of a book and killed all my interest in this series with one fell swoop. I wanted to find out more about Simon Brandon and about the Australian soldier, but I prefer my mysteries (and my characters) to be a little less random. I’m afraid this is yet another series in which I’d recommend to read the first book, pretend it’s a standalone, and don’t bother about the rest.

[Joint Review] Murder Most Unladylike by Robin Stevens

Title: Murder Most Unladylike (Wells and Wong #1)
Author: Robin Stevens
Published: June 5th, 2014
Rating: 
Find it at:

Like the tagline says: There’s been a rather shocking murder at Deepdean School For Girls… Hazel Wong, a third form student, found the dead body of the science mistress in the gym. But by the time she comes back with her friend Daisy and a prefect, the body has disappeared. So the girls have to solve the murder, but they also need to prove that a murder happened in the first place. Daisy is excited at the idea of having their very own murder to investigate, but Hazel more realistically wonders what will happen if the murderer decides that they’re getting too close to the truth.

Ren: Set in an English boarding school in 1934, Murder Most Unladylike is a bloody good read. From the first page, it’s packed full of words and customs from that era, and I was completely immersed in Hazel and Daisy’s world. I loved that the author sounded very authentic, and the characters were always rooted in their time, without inexplicably displaying modern sensibilities. Plus, they have bunbreaks. I love that. Bunbreaks. In which they eat squashed flies.

Isa: I might have had a minor breakdown when they first mentioned bunbreaks. BUNBREAKS. How cool is that? Personally, I wouldn’t eat the squashed flies (ew, raisins), but I would very much welcome any and all bunbreaks thrown at me. Aside from the bunbreaks, I really loved the characters. They were a healthy mix of imperfect people and I really loved that. Too often characters in books are too perfect or too stereotypical or even just mere caricatures of a few traits thrown in a pot, but not so with Murder Most Unladylike. Daisy (why do I always want to call her Diana?) is headstrong and opinionated to a fault, but she also has a heart of gold when it counts and truly cares about Hazel, who has a bit of a pash on Daisy.

Ren: A pash, for the uninitiated, is a kind of girl crush. All the weird old-timey words are explained in the book, and there’s also a glossary at the end. I had the kindle edition so there was no way for me to scroll back and forth easily, but I assume if you had the dead tree edition you could refer to that if you got confused. Which you shouldn’t, since our narrator Hazel does a great job of explaining it all. I have a bit of a pash on Hazel, who gives us a unique perspective on English boarding schools since she’s from Hong Kong and has been sent overseas to get a perfect English education. Being an outsider, it makes sense that she would question the very English tradition of hitting each others with sticks — sorry, I meant playing hockey — under the rain… She’s torn between being herself and wanting to fit in, which is very relatable.

Isa: Yeahhhhhh… I don’t so much have a pash on Hazel but a full-blown crush. What a cutie! If only she weren’t jailbait, I could smooch her cute face and initiate her into the Order of Canoodling Ladies. Of which there are a bunch, by the way. My cold little heart and I were most pleased by the subtle (or blatantly in-your-face) references to canoodling ladies, hehehehe. And that’s another thumbs up to the author! I found it very refreshing that such things were included because, dude, those things do occur at all-girl schools and they did occur in the past and they way the author treated it was neither gimmicky nor swept under the rug. That, too, was very relatable, at least for me. And if I’m quite honest, it was the thing that excited me the most. (I’m pretty sure I yelled “LESBIANS!” at Ren when I first realised it.)

Ren: (You did. I’m pretty sure my reaction was “BUNBREAKS!” because they’re higher in my priorities. But yeah, I liked the non-gimmicky inclusion of lesbians and I was sad for the Maths Mistress who was obviously in love with the victim.) As for the murder itself, I have to say that I’m like Daisy: I absolutely love mysteries! I grew up with my mum’s Agatha Christie novels, so I really appreciated all the references to the popular mystery books that Daisy was reading and hiding from Matron. This particular mystery was rather easy to figure out for me, I guessed the killer very early on because of the way the author kept trying to divert the reader’s attention to the other suspects, but even so I was charmed by the characters and the setting and I enjoyed reading about how Daisy and Hazel solved the murder. It’s a proper English mystery crime, too, with enough clues that you may be able to figure it out if you like that sort of things.

Isa: I’m not that into mysteries, I’m afraid, mainly because I’m just not as invested. I like reading about the solving of a mystery, but unlike other people I take no joy from figuring out the culprit myself. Though I might make a somewhat satisfactory Watson to Ren’s Holmes, I suppose. I’d be pretty good at the whole writing down important things that you tell me, I bet. Anyhow, despite my general indifference to mysteries I did enjoy this one! I may not be into the solving but it was a compelling mystery and for somebody who didn’t guess the culprit it was quite fascinating to see Daisy and Hazel figure it all out. The author did a great job with that, it really felt as if I was by their side all the time and sharing the experience with them!

Ren: Isa would be an excellent Watson, though I’d be a rubbish Holmes because I’m a wimp and I wouldn’t want to run around chasing murderers. I’m quite happy sitting back and reading about Daisy and Hazel’s adventures instead of being by their side. The girls are really interesting characters and I’m looking forward to how they will evolve, since it seems this will turn into a series. Book two is set at a house party in the country, and while I’ll miss the school setting it will be fun to see Daisy’s family.

Isa: I’ll miss that too, but then I am sure we’ll see some familiar faces, like King Henry! And we might get to meet Daisy’s mysterious uncle! (Fingers crossed that he turns out to be the dashing Uncle Felix who is mentioned in the summary for book two.) All in all I’m terribly chuffed about the first book and I think it totally deserves the four teacups we’re giving it. The writing is compelling and never fails to deliver, and the setting and characters are particularly fabulous. If only there were happy homosexuals (alas, they never are in fiction) and more detailed descriptions about bunbreaks, I’d be willing to give it five. ;)

[Ren] Venetia by Georgette Heyer

Title: Venetia
Author: Georgette Heyer
Published: 1958
Rating: 
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The plot of Venetia follows well-known romance tropes. There’s a heroine, free-spirited and quick-tongued, who’s been living in near seclusion because of her father’s weirdness. And there’s a hero who’s recently moved into his ancestral home, he’s a rake and he’s done some bad things in the past but deep down he’s a really sweet and caring man and he just needs to meet the heroine to be reminded of all the good things that there are in the world. But the heroine won’t fall for his rakish charms until she’s sure that he’s in love with her! There’s dozens of books with this basic plots. Thing is, Georgette Heyer wrote this story over 50 years ago, and wrote it perfectly.

I confess that I had never heard about Georgette Heyer until a few months ago. Then, as I turned to historical romance in my quest for period pieces with female leads, I kept seeing her name mentioned as the creator of the genre. I did some digging around, got curious, and decided to check out one of her books. Now, I was going to give this 4.5 teacups because there were some boring bits in the last few chapters, and also I felt silly for gushing over a silly romance, but I sat on this review for a while and I just keep smiling whenever I think about this story, so I’m giving this 5 teacups and you can’t stop me.

Venetia is adorable, and the perfect heroine. She can be naive at times but she’s never painfully stupid, and she is quite shockingly modern but at the same time follows convention, or at least tries to find creative ways to circumvent them without outright flaunting them. And then there’s Damerel… I could gush about Damerel at length because I love a well-written rake. I loved his interactions with Venetia, and the fact that there were several layers to him, like when he bonded with Venetia’s brother over their mutual passion for the classics. I liked Venetia’s brother, too, by the way. It was so nice to have well-rounded secondary characters whose lives don’t revolve around the hero and heroine getting together.

The banter is awesome, I kept smiling whenever Venetia and Damerel were talking because they played so well off each other. They’re the perfect example of a romance couple done right, they have chemistry and I was obviously rooting for them to finally get married and spend the rest of their lives together — while at the same time hoping it wouldn’t happen for a while yet, because I didn’t want the book to end. And the period details are top-notch, the language sounds right, people act all… properly proper. This includes no pre-marital hanky-panky, or indeed any hanky-panky at all on screen, if you don’t care for that sort of thing.

I’m definitely going to read more of Heyer’s books. I’m just crossing my fingers that I’m not disappointed: I’ve got this really weird thing going on where I read a book by a new romance author that I really like, so I go looking for all of her stuff, and none of her books are as good as that first. But right now? If you haven’t read Georgette Heyer yet, you should do so! And if you have, you should tell me all about your favourites so I know what to read next!

[Joint Review] Keeping the Castle by Patrice Kindl

Title: Keeping the Castle
Author: Patrice Kindl
Published: June 1, 2012
Rating: 
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Seventeen-year-old Althea lives with her family (a mother, two stepsisters, one little brother) in a crumbling castle in Northern England. Being pretty and penniless and extremely practical, Althea has decided that she will marry well and rescue her family from their genteel poverty. There aren’t many eligible men in the town of Lesser Hoo, especially after Althea’s sharp tongue sends her latest suitor running, but when the young and attractive (and rich) Lord Boring arrives, Althea resolves to marry him and solve her financial problems. Also because Lord Boring is young and attractive. But mostly because he’s rich. It’s too bad that Althea’s meddling stepsisters, Lord Boring’s very rude friend, and a whole host of neighbours, keep getting in the way…

Isa: Soooo, Ren picked this book for me in the May Pick-For-Me (I feel like I always say that in PFM reviews, despite the giant badge at the beginning of the post…) and I REALLY ENJOYED IT. I was determined to read it soon regardless of the PFM going on, but I’m glad that Ren’s choice pushed me to definitely go for it this month because it was really lovely.

Ren: And Isa loved it so much that I was spurred to read it too, and now I’m hijacking her review to rant about how good this book was. Like she said, it’s a lovely story: it’s funny and lighthearted and has all the elements I like in a Regency romance, while avoiding stale tropes and clichés. For example, Althea is very different from the usual romance heroines!

Isa: Which was really great. In general, the book was great and not at all what I expected. (Though I can’t even say what I expected, but it wasn’t this.) As usual I’m a victim of shiny covers, so the whole Regency setting came as a bit of a surprise (why? Isa, why??? your thoughts regarding this literally make no sense????) but it was definitely a welcome surprise! I know Ren reads a lot of Regency romance, so she’s already in her element when it comes to the genre, but for me it’s a bit different. I enjoy them, but I often struggle through them too. Don’t know why that is… perhaps because in my mind they just appear as this giant cluster of longwinded run-on sentences where the protagonists take ten pages to describe the exact way in which they are doing their needlework. Even though that isn’t remotely accurate in actuality!

Ren: Well… no, it’s not, really. But to be honest I started reading in the m/f romance genre only a few months ago myself. I’m not disparaging the genre, quite the opposite since you know I’m addicted to it, but the thing is that so many historical romances are just so serious! The heroine and hero are pining and angsting and crying because of their epic love, and so on.

Isa: That’s exactly it! There’s only so much angst and pining and seriousness I can take.

Ren: Keeping The Castle on the other hand focuses on humour and witty banter, and the last chapters made me smile so much that my face hurt. And Althea is very different from the usual romance heroines!

Isa: She really is! Althea was a refreshing change from what the dark recesses of my brain imagined. She’s witty and absolutely determined to find herself a rich husband, no matter what.

Ren: I loved that Althea’s goal is marriage instead of finding her soulmate. And I loved that she is beautiful even though not very accomplished, and she knows it and uses her looks to her advantage. It was a refreshing change from the usual heroine who’s incredibly talented but plain and so angsts about her looks until the hero sees her inner beauty.

Isa: Soulmates are useless anyway. Ain’t nobody got time for that. What if your soulmate is a boring vicar who keeps making fish faces? No, I think the best romantic matches are often made of people (or other beings, if you’re into that kind of thing) who can withstand a bit of healthy arguing and snappy banter. Which is what I loved about this! It reminded me a lot of the Parasol Protectorate series, which is equally witty and entertaining. And it’s not just the wit that was entertaining in Keeping the Castle. There’s also the general situation of Althea’s family that’s really tragic but also incredibly hilarious. Poor Althea for having had a grandfather who built a rickety castle on a cliff because he thought it was visually striking.

Ren: To be honest, it was striking! Just look at that adorable castle on the cover… I wouldn’t want to live there, especially with the leaky roof or the rats, but I could see why Althea didn’t want to lose it and I’d love to visit. Plus, the atmosphere is that of a typical English countryside village, and it’s full of ridiculous characters with names like Lord Boring, Lady Throstletwist, Dr Haxhamptonshire (pronounced Hamster) and so on. Everyone is delightful, and even the evil stepsisters amused me. Aside from Althea, my favourite characters were Mr. Fredericks (loved the banter!) and Miss Vincy (loved how she wasn’t reduced to the role of rival but had her own story instead).

Isa: Eheheheheh, I love the names, negl. It’s another one of the things that reminds me of the Parasol Protectorate. (You should read that, Ren.) (I mean, really. Lord Akeldama. You would love him. And Biffy. You would adore Biffy. Maybe I should sic Evy on you…)

Ren: (Yeeeah, right…) (We can talk about it after you read Captive Prince?)

Isa: I definitely agree with you on Fredericks and Miss Vincy. Any and all negative expectations I may have had were out of the window with these two. They were delightful and genuine, which counts for a lot when really most other characters don’t seem to have an ounce of common sense. Seriously, the whole village/town/smattering of estates must’ve known that Althea and her family weren’t exactly well off (and that’s putting it nicely) and yet they insisted on visiting with them. I love the way that was handled though! Not just the general plot but also the little things like Althea wrestling their domestic situation to suit the needs as best as they could!

Ren: I thought the same, but in hindsight it’s nice that they still visited and didn’t treat Althea and the Crawleys as social pariahs because they were poor. And I agree, it was great to see how Althea dealt with everything that happened. She’s funny and smart and resourceful and has more than earned her happy ending. Her, and everyone else in the story. Except for the ones who earned a stupid ending through their stupidity, but there’s no helping them really.

Isa: Frankly, it would’ve been disappointing if those hadn’t has a stupid ending because that wouldn’t have fit with the otherwise excellent writing. Well, mostly excellent writing. There was one thing that bothered me a lot, actually. I eventually got over it because I was just being unnecessarily nitpicky, but the author kept using ” tho’ ” as a substitute for “though”. Admittedly, I use “tho” as well when I’m lazy, but it kept disrupting the story for me. I’ve never encountered that before in historical fiction and it just kept making me think of internet things, actually.

Ren: Same here, tho’ (ha ha) I looked it up and it’s apparently a spelling that was occasionally used in letters and informal journals. Generally, I liked the writing style. Good banter, funny characters, a unique heroine: this book has it all and I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend it: fans of Regency romances should appreciate the freshness of the plot, while non-fans can get a glimpse of Regency atmosphere and wry humour.

Isa: Very funny you are. And you put it all very well there, I am jealous of your ability to use words. And because I can’t seem to add any more to this review other than flailing about how much I loved it, I’m just gonna add my favourite line from the book:

“I stared after the runaway couple with narrowed eyes and heaving breast. How could they? Without even discussing it with me?”

Isa: Althea’s thoughts and general disposition are just dead funny. Hands down one of the best books I’ve read so far this year and very deserving of the 4.5 teacups we’re handing out!

[Ren] Valour and Vanity (Glamourist Histories #4) by Mary Robinette Kowal

Title: Valour and Vanity (Glamourist Histories #4)
Author: Mary Robinette Kowal
Published: April 29th, 2014
Rating: 
Find it at:

We’re already at the fourth book in the series, so I’ll have to break my spoiler policy a little and talk about the events of the first two books, and also a little about character development. Minor spoilers, mind you, but if you’re completely new to the series it would be better for you to head over to this other post where I talked about the first books in the series. That said…

This book picks up shortly after the third, with Jane and her husband travelling to Murano because they want to study a new technique that combines glamour (aka magic) with glass. Their ship is attacked by corsairs en route to Venice, and their host Lord Byron (!!!) has left the city to pursue some love affair, so our protagonists are left stranded with no money and no friends, in a time where contacting their families in another country means sending a letter and hoping in a couple of months it will arrive. In short, they need to use their wits and their skills to survive, and they end up tangled in a scheme that the back cover describes as Jane Austen meets Ocean’s Eleven. To be honest, I thought it was way better than Ocean’s Eleven.

First off, the good bits. Kowal is a good writer, she knows how to pace the story and how to paint vivid descriptions without being verbose. And she’s definitely done her research. I’m wary of any book set in Italy because most of them are wildly inaccurate, but the bits of language were mostly correct, aside from using polizia (police) instead of the proper poliziotto or agente di polizia (policeman) when referring to individual agents. But the rest of the book’s Italian was pretty good, and after establishing that Jane and her husband spoke the language, most of the dialogue was written in English with occasional remarks. (See, authors, you don’t need to paste your draft in Google Translate to sell me on the fact that we’re in a different country!)

I love heist books — if you follow us on Twitter you might have seen me flailing over Coin Heist whose review will be posted soon — so I was excited when I saw the direction that the book was taking. And this was a good heist book. With a good heist, it’s not enough to have the heroes put on a fake moustache and sneak past the hapless villains: you need to trick the reader, make me think that everything is going well and then throw a wrench in the plan. Or conversely, have something unexpected and dramatic happen and then reveal that it was part of the plan all along. All good heist shows/films/books have this element of tricking the reader, and Kowal does it like a pro. In the acknowledgements she says that Scott Lynch shared heisty tips with her, and this fills me with glee because Lynch is the author my favourite book ever, The Lies of Locke Lamora, which is also a fantasy heist. Two of my favourite writers talking about one of my favourite subject, excuse me while I giggle my myself for a while and clap like an overexcited seal.

Cons of this book… well, it’s kind of sad to admit it after four books, but I realized that I don’t care about Jane and Vincent very much. Vincent is too stubborn and pig-headed, and 90% of Jane’s thoughts revolve around Vincent, and since she’s the narrator we keep having to see her worrying and running after Vincent and so on. In fact, the first chapters of the book were kind of dull because there were just the Vincents and nothing was happening yet. The pace picked up later, and I especially enjoyed the secondary cast, which included the aforementioned Lord Byron, nuns, a puppet player, pirates, glassblowers, and more. Could’ve done with less Vincent and more nuns, to be honest, and that’s not a sentence I ever thought I’d type, but there you are.

Overall, a strong entry in the series and a definite improvement over the second and third book, which suffered from a bit of a slump. I’ve read that there’s a fifth book coming out last year and it’s supposed to be the last, so on one hand I’m sad because I like this series, but on the other I’m glad we won’t have to slog through 60 books describing Jane’s life until she dies of old age. Fingers crossed that I like the next book as much as this.

[Ren] A Duty To The Dead (Bess Crawford #1) by Charles Todd

Title: A Duty To The Dead (Bess Crawford #1)
Author: Charles Todd
Published: August 25th, 2009
Rating: 
Find it at:

Like many other English girls did in the circumstances, Bess Crawford signs up to go overseas as a nurse during the Great War. While Bess is tending to the wounded, a dying young man asks her to deliver a strange message to his brother: “Tell Jonathan that I lied. I did it for Mother’s sake. But it has to be set right.” Later, when her hospital ship is sunk and she’s sent home with a broken arm, Bess resolves to find this Jonathan and deliver the message. However, when Jonathan and his family act like they don’t know what the message means, Bess decides that it’s her duty to investigate and “set right” what Jonathan’s family is trying to cover up.

Overall, not a bad book. Bess Crawford is (much to my surprise and delight) a likeable narrator. She’s sympathetic and caring and paints a vivid picture of the cold English countryside during WWI. While the book takes a while to really pick up, the final chapters were filled with so much action that I couldn’t put the book down until it was finished.

While it was an enjoyable read, there were several things that kept bothering me. I was surprised to find out that the author (authors, in fact, writing under a nom de plume) has written several other books before this one. The writing felt rough and unpolished, especially the dialogue, since most of the times it consisted of characters spouting random pieces of information at Bess, followed by an unrelated question, followed by some other random information that Bess had to recall thirty pages later to advance the plot. Most of said plot is also very transparent. It becomes clear right away (even before you find out who was murdered and how and when) that you only have two or three possible suspects, and then it’s just a matter of following Bess along in her motorcar ride through Kent (and the occasional train to London) until she puzzles it out.

It’s not a bad ride, though, especially for fans of historical mysteries who prefer intriguing characters over fingerprint analysis.

[Ren] The Winter Bride (Chance Sisters #2) by Anne Gracie

Title: The Winter Bride (Chance Sisters #2)
Author: Anne Gracie
Published: March 26th, 2014
Rating: 
Find it at:

Okay, first things first, let me give you the blurb on the back cover of this book:
When Damaris finds herself trapped in a compromising situation with the handsome rake Freddy Monkton-Coombes, she has no choice but to agree to wed him—as long as it’s in name only. Her new husband seems to accept her terms, but Freddy has a plan of his own: to seduce his reluctant winter bride.
Just one tiny problem: this is not what the book is about. The plot is that neither Damaris nor Freddy want to marry, but Freddy’s parents are pressuring him to find a wife and produce heirs. So he asks Damaris to be fake-engaged to him for a few weeks, to get the parents off his back, and in exchange he’s going to buy her a cottage so she can be financially independent and won’t need to marry.

I picked up this book because I liked the first in the series, so I didn’t particularly care whether the plot was about a marriage of convenience or a fake engagement. But the blurb created certain expectations, and through all the first half of the book I kept thinking that something compromising would happen and they’d have to turn the fake engagement into a real marriage, and that didn’t happen. At all. I don’t want to hold it against the author, because the blurb is usually the publisher’s doing, but it was very frustrating and I can’t help but think that it dimmed my enjoyment of the story. Plus, I would have been even more disappointed if I bought this book because I wanted to read about a shotgun wedding and ended up with a story about something else.

That said, I did enjoy this book: it was a quick and light read. Freddy was as charming and funny as I remembered from the first book, even though after he starts falling for Damaris he becomes less funny and more earnest and caring. Which is great in a boyfriend, but not so much in a fictional character, because I liked Freddy better when he was all snippy banter and devil-may-care attitude. Damaris wasn’t very developed in the first book, but I liked her in this one. She’s been through a lot but doesn’t cry over herself (much), and she knows what she wants and doesn’t suddenly change her life plans because a man is sweet on her, and she plays her role of fake fiancée with gusto. The line about experimental Chinese swimming pigs is the best and funniest in the whole book.

There wasn’t much Lady Bea in this one, or the other sisters, but I liked the brief glimpses that we got. And I’m hoping that the next book will be about Flynn and Daisy!

[Ren] Cress (Lunar Chronicles #3) by Marissa Meyer

Title: Cress (Lunar Chronicles #3)
Author: Marissa Meyer
Published: February 4th, 2014
Rating: 
Find it at:

I didn’t think it was possible, because the first two books were already very good, but this is my favourite book in the series so far. Marissa Meyer has done it again, taking a fairytale as a starting point and adding science and magic and awesome characters to it. This time Rapunzel’s tower is a satellite orbiting Earth and the girl, Cress, is a programmer who’s imprisoned there by the Lunar Queen’s thaumaturge.

Talking about the plot would give away what happened in the previous books, so I’ll just say that it was gripping and had me glued to the pages from start to finish. My biggest complaint about books in a series is that sometimes you can see that the author had a good idea for one book, and the rest of the series just uses the same plot over and over again, or worse nothing at all happens for a whole book. Well, this book is the complete opposite. The story started off comparatively slow in Cinder, but it’s been picking up steam (and gaining more POV characters) and the inclusion of the elements from the Rapunzel fairytale was really excellent. The book follows the fairytale rather closely, but never in an obvious way. More often than not it was only afterwards that I could say “ah, sure, this happened in the book because the fairytale went like that” and I loved all the brilliant references than Meyer snuck in. I’m sure there’s several I missed, but even if you have no idea who Rapunzel is, Cress is still excellent.

About the characters, a couple more were introduced aside from Cress, and I loved that because it gave the story more breathing room instead of being stuck with Cinder’s thoughts all the time. Scarlet had both Cinder and Scarlet as points of view, but their stories were separated until the end. This time around I already knew what each character’s relationship to each other was, and how they all played a role in the overall plot about the Lunars. And, also, the characters. Out of the three title characters I think Cress is my favourite so far, she’s just so… tiny and dreamy and determined. Carswell, too, is pretty high on my favourite characters list. His character boils down to “rogue with a heart of gold” and if done wrong he’d be cheesy at best and insufferable at worst, but somehow Carswell just works as a character. I had a smile on my face every time he opened his stupid mouth. Maybe it’s because he doesn’t take himself seriously. Maybe because he’s not a “nice guy” in words only but he actually does little acts of kindness for no other reason than because he wants to.

Speaking of, the friendship between Thorne, Cinder and Iko was one of my favourite parts of the book. I love how this book has friendships between male and female characters, and it’s no big deal, people are fully capable of forming platonic friendships, and sometimes bantering is just bantering and not a way to express some repressed sexual attraction. So yeah, I could have read a whole book just of Thorne and Cinder bickering while Iko was, well, being Iko. What else did I love? The romance was there, but it was always in the background and never overpowered the story. The setting — Northern Africa for a good while, and also New Beijing and Luna — was again different from typical YA fare. As always, I enjoyed all the little worldbuilding details that we got.

If you’ve had a look at my reviews you’ll have seen that I hardly ever give a book five stars because I always have something to nitpick, but in this case I’m hard-pressed to find anything that I’d change! I can’t recommend this book enough, if you have a Lunar Chronicles-shaped hole in your life then you could improve that tragic situation by reading The Lunar Chronicles. (Side effects might include excessive fondness for several characters and emotional involvment in the politics of a fictional planet. Also the last book isn’t out yet. Curses.)

[Ren] Summerset Abbey series by T.J. Brown

Title: Summerset Abbey (Summerset Abbey #1)
Author: T.J. Brown
Published: January 15th, 2013
Rating: 
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In the first book of this trilogy set in the 1910s we’re introduced to the two Buxton sisters, Rowena and Victoria, as well as their childhood friend Prudence. Pru was the daughter of their housekeeper, but Mr. Buxton was very progressive and raised the three girls to be modern and independent. When the book starts, Mr. Buxton has just died, and their uncle insists that Rowena and Victoria come live with his family at Summerset Abbey. There, Prudence is relegated below stairs and treated like a maid, and Rowena and Victoria struggle with their overbearing aunt and a dark family secret.

Title: A Bloom in Winter (Summerset Abbey #2)
Author: T.J. Brown
Published: March 5th, 2013
Rating: 
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In the second book, which picks up after the ~dramatic~ conclusion of the first one, nothing happens for a couple hundred pages. No, really. The relationships between the three girls and their love interests develops a little, people travel from London to the country and vice versa, and there’s a lot of useless talking, but the status quo practically doesn’t change between the end of the first book and the beginning of the third.

Title: Spring Awakening (Summerset Abbey #3)
Author: T.J. Brown
Published: August 6th, 2013
Rating: 
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While Rowena, Victoria and Prudence are trying to untangle their rather complicated love lives, WWI starts and throws everything into disarray.

I’ve just finished reading the last book, but it occurred to me that it makes little sense to review it separately from the others since the three books are like three parts of the same story. First off, you might have noticed the strange ratings: this is a good series overall, but the second book is a snoozefest. It felt as if the author had enough material for two books only, but for some reason she decided to write a trilogy anyway. The only plot where anything happens in the second book is Victoria’s, and Victoria becomes insufferable in it. Because of that I considered not reading the third book at all. I’m glad I changed my mind, because the third book is good and a satisfying conclusion to the series, but my enjoyment was definitely marred by that lump of dumb in the middle of an otherwise good series.

The story is told in alternating POVs from the three girls, and I liked all three of them. Rowena was my favourite: I liked how she slowly gained the confidence to stand up to her uncle and pursue her dreams, and I loved it even more that one of her dreams was flying a plane as one of the first women pilots. She looked the most prim and proper of the three sisters in the first book, so it was interesting to see how her character developed. Victoria was sometimes grating and Prudence was by far the most bland, but they both had a lot deal of character development, so that was good. I won’t talk about their love interests in detail because it’s fairly spoilerific, I’ll just say that I’m happy with who they ended up with in the end. I raged a little on Goodreads and Twitter because there’s a bit in the third book in which everyone seems to be in love with the wrong person and I was afraid the author was going to throw together two people that I thought would never work out. Happily that didn’t happen. Even better, a couple of characters who had said some questionable things ended up pulling their head out of their butts and apologized for it. The ending was emotional and very satisfying.

Now, obviously, I read this series because of the similarity to Downton Abbey. I was a huge fan of the show, back before the fourth season screwed up most of the characters, and I’m still a fan of anything set in the same period. The Summerset Abbey series reads like a watered-down, cheaper version of Downton — the show has a huge cast, but the books revolve around the three protagonists and a handful of other secondary characters. This makes for a tighter story, since there’s fewer subplots to follow, but I actually prefer having a larger cast and sometimes I wondered what the other people at Summerset were up to. Also, the focus of the story was definitely on the “upstairs” aristocratic people; Prudence was lower class, but aside from her brief stint in the first book she was never in the servants’ quarters at all. Again, I think it’s a pity because one of Downton’s great points is how it shows the upper classes and the servants side by side, and what they thought of each other. Is the book capitalizing on the success of Downton Abbey? I think so, the similarities are several, from the title to the three sisters. Is it just a ripoff? No, it’s not, it follows its own story and the characters are developed in different directions.

If you can get past the dreary second book, Summerset Abbey is an enjoyable trilogy, especially if you’re suffering from Downton withdrawal.

[Ren] The Autumn Bride (Chance Sisters #1) by Anne Gracie

Title: The Autumn Bride (Chance Sisters #1)
Author: Anne Gracie
Published: February 5th, 2013
Rating: 
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Here we go again. I’ve just finished another series by Anne Gracie and I told myself I’d take a break from historical romances, but it’s hard to resist their siren song. In this book, impoverished governess Abigail Chantry saves her sister Jane and her two friends Damaris and Daisy from a brothel. Abigail’s mean employers sack her, and because she can’t find any honest work she sneaks into a mansion one night looking for things to steal. Instead she finds Lady Bea, a bedridden noblewoman whose servants are taking advantage of her. Lady Bea decides that the four young women should come and live with her, so they’ll have a roof over their head and Lady Bea will have someone to care for her. So far it’s a little (a lot) far-fetched, but okay.

Enter the hero, Max, Lady Bea’s nephew. Max has been abroad for nine years restoring the family’s fortune, and when he returns he finds four women calling themselves the Chance sisters in his house, and Lady Bea claims that they are her nieces. Instead of asking for an explanation, he decides to be pig-headed and insists that the Chance sisters are the ones who have been mistreating his aunt. This pisses off Abigail, who’s very fond of Lady Bea, so Abigail and Max spend most of the book being snippy with each other for no good reason. The problem is that they’re the book’s designed couple, so they get together in the end, but I never felt that there was such a great passion. The height of romance in the book was when Max was turned on watching Abby eat some syllabub at dinner. Uh, whatever.

It wasn’t a bad book, it was just bland. A lot of time was spent establishing the characters of Abby’s sisters and Max’s business partners. Conveniently, there’s three of them, and there are also winter and spring and summer left… I think I see where this is going. My biggest gripe with the book would be that there’s nothing particularly historical about it. I like Regency fiction because of the elaborate balls and parties, but the characters spent most of the book at Lady Bea’s; there was the infamous Syllabub Dinner, but that was all. And the characters didn’t really care about decorum, Abby and Max were quite happy about kissing in the middle of the street, which I guess is a sign of their smouldering passion (which I never saw in the first place) but I would have been happier with period-appropriate reactions. Overall, it’s a chocolate muffin book. It’s not healthy but I can’t stop reading it. The Winter Bride came out a few days ago so I’m going to check that out, and then hopefully I’ll manage to restrain myself until the third book comes out next year.