I have had a lot of bad luck with the novels I’ve chosen in the second half of this year. Unfortunately, there are only a few that I was able to rate four stars or above. Let’s take a look at those.
Mystery/Thriller
The melancholy mystery The River We Remember by William Kent Krueger was really great from start to finish! I was looking up other books by the author to add to my list before I was even finished. I loved the prologue with the slow description of the river and the way it bends and the creatures that live in it, followed by its abrupt last line.
This certainly wasn’t a funny book or intended to be. But it had the air of an inside joke shared only among the residents of the town sort of hanging around it. The story itself was dark, dreary, and sad, which normally isn’t my thing. But I just really liked the way it was told. I enjoyed the small-town vibe and the way it pulled me in and made me a part of it. I was definitely on my way to guessing the ending, but I never did before it was revealed. It was well hidden.
I had a great time with this one and will be checking out the author again soon!
You didn’t have to have read the first book to enjoy Megan Goldin’s Dark Corners. So when it came up as a Book of the Month selection, I decided to go ahead with it. There were references to the main character’s past to explain how she had gotten where she was. Like you would find in any book, really. (I do feel that those references may have spoiled the plot of the first book, though. So I would say to only read this one if you have already read the first or if you haven’t but don’t plan to.)
Now onto the book itself. I thoroughly enjoyed this one. It kept me turning pages and thinking about it while it worked. Notably, I did not solve this one! That is rare for me. I mean, I picked up a couple of obvious things immediately that the police did not. But the overall solution, I did not guess at all. This puzzle was well-crafted. What most impressed me was the whole thing with the ouroboros. I could not figure out its relevance and why it kept turning up everywhere. The answer to that, so simple in hindsight, was what really wowed me.
I would definitely read another Megan Goldin book! I’ll look forward to more.
Michele Campbell’s The Intern is the best thriller I have read since probably The Woman in the Window. It started out strongly and ended the same way, and was hard for me to put down. Only a few times did I find the MC annoyingly stupid, which is rare for a thriller. For one, she really needed to ignore her obnoxious, abusive mother! Just let her suffer in her own insufferableness, for goodness’ sake. I know she believes it, but abuse is not the point of family! So that grated, along with the MC’s lack of communication skills that could have avoided a large chunk of the unnecessary (though fun to read) drama up front.
Apart from that, though, she was pretty clever for a thriller MC and managed to stay ahead of her enemies most of the time. This was one MC whom I really believed had the credentials the author said she did. In this case, a top student at Harvard Law. Past MCs I’ve read in other books who have been top students at an Ivy really did not behave that way. So major kudos for writing an intelligent character!
There was plenty here to keep me pushing happily through to the ending, rather than grudgingly so. I think, had I known that this book was about a certain spoiler-y subject, I may have put it down. That isn’t usually my thing at all. But by the time that became apparent, at least for me, I was too into it to stop. And I’m really glad I gave this one a chance!
There were numerous parts where this made me tear up a little. I found it very emotional at times. But I enjoyed the ending!
Historical Fantasy
Hester Fox’s The Witch of Willow Hall had a little bit of everything to get me into an autumn mood here in Florida. There was some really creepy ghost stuff, some witchy stuff, some New England-y magic, and a cozy romance!
I was extremely annoyed by the lack of communication between all the characters in this book. They almost let their entire lives be destroyed by the lack of communication. It got so dire at one point that for the first time in my entire life (I really detest spoilers), I actually looked at the last page of the book to check whether there was a happy ending or not. Seriously, these characters all needed to learn how to speak to and listen to one another. It was almost enough to make me drop the rating to three stars. But I guess I was feeling charitable after all the bad books I’d read lately.
Apart from that, though, I had a good time. I didn’t see the twist coming at all. And while the book did have some very sad parts, I think the author dealt with the death of a certain character in a very realistic way. All the things the MC thought and did in the aftermath of that were very believable.
Fantasy
Now, this…this was my favorite thing I had read in such a long time! I did not want to put down Stephanie Garber’s Caraval for anything! Sure, it wasn’t without its issues. But it kept me completely captivated from page one all the way to the very end and then some! I can’t wait to read the next book! You can tell how excited I am from all the exclamation points I just realized I was using! Seriously, though, the entire way through, I just wanted to know, feel, and experience more, more, more. I am addicted to this series.
About the issues: Yes, Scarlett was not my favorite main character. She did come off as pretty stupid and naive sometimes. She has this abusive father who is arranging a marriage for her with a man he won’t let her meet until the wedding. …Of course he’s going to be all wrong for you, girl! What are you doing!? And she seemed to make stupid decision after stupid decision.
Despite that, I was so engrossed I didn’t want to do anything else. This whole book was intoxicating.
I’ve noticed that my StoryGraph, which initially was based on all my favorite books as a kid, was mainly made up of books it considered mysterious, adventurous, and dark. But since I’ve been using it, I’ve noticed that my adventurous category was slowly shrinking. As this has happened, something has felt like it has been missing from my reading list. After reading this (shortly after starting it, really), I realized it was that sense of adventure. I need more of this. I’ve always been hesitant to read YA novels as an adult. But if I can only get mysterious, dark, and adventurous together here, then perhaps I need to be reading more of them.
The more I read of V. E. Schwab, the more of a fan I become! Vicious was my third of her books, and I could not put it down. I really liked the pacing and how every timeline kept me wanting more and more, despite the odd order. But it was a great order for telling the story. Every detail was revealed exactly when it should have been. I also really liked (or despised, as needed) the characters. (I thought it couldn’t get worse than Eli until I met Serena. I seriously loathed her. Well done.)
Here’s what brought this book down from five stars for me, and has it teetering over three stars. The “science” in this book did not work for me. Not at all. Now, I don’t think it was meant to be sci-fi. I definitely picked it up thinking it was fantasy. But I feel like she really did not try at all to explain the hows, whats, and whys of EOs. And for supposedly really brainy students, Victor and Eli took an awful lot for granted based on the absolute vaguest of simple assumptions. And they made really, incredibly stupid choices based on these vague, completely unscientific assumptions that just so happened to work (yay). And after that, any attempt at explaining the science just died completely. They went from one hazy assumption to another to even begin experimenting. I had a really hard time buying any of this (which was the entire setup for the book) and had to completely suspend disbelief to move forward once I realized that was all I was going to get. I just did not buy that these two would so thoroughly ignore the scientific method and operate in the ways that they did.
But like I said, once I suspended disbelief and put all that aside, I really got into it. Plus, I adore the “found family” trope, and that was what this was, complete with a sweet dog. I even loved to hate Eli and Serena’s twisted, evil relationship. That was fun for what it was. Overall, my impression of this is positive, and I am excited to read the sequel.
Sci-Fi
I can’t believe I’d never read Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Lost World before. It feels exactly like the sort of thing I would have gobbled up in elementary school.
When I first started the book on my Kindle, which opened on the character of Malone and his love interest, Gladys, I thought I must have tapped on the wrong book by mistake. I actually backed out of it just to be sure I was in the right book. Then I wondered if I had the right title but the book had some other book’s content in it. I simply was not expecting the book to begin with a humorous depiction of a lovesick young man and a clearly uninterested female with silly notions about marrying an adventurer. But I began to see where it was going and assured myself (with more than a few chuckles) I had the correct content.
I can certainly see why Michael Crichton (a favorite of mine) chose to honor this book by using the title for his Jurassic Park sequel. This is definitely one of the precursors to that whole sci-fi-thriller genre. A group consisting of two scientists, a wealthy hunter (whom I could not help but picture as Jurassic Park‘s Robert Muldoon), and a young journalist to record the happenings all set out together in search of a rumored land with unbelievable scientific marvels. Danger and adventure ensue.
The characters in this, including some of the side characters, are fun and relatable. They kept me quickly turning digital pages. The descriptions were vivid enough that even this moderate aphantasic could visualize a good portion of what was happening. A lot of it reminded me of Lovecraft, both in the sights they saw and the feelings they had. At times it also reminded me of King Solomon’s Mines, but I found it a lot more entertaining than that.
This was well-paced, and I even really enjoyed the ending. Also, I never knew there were sequels! So I am looking forward to reading the rest of the series, which consists of two more novels and then two short stories.
If you enjoyed the above and think we may have similar taste in books, you may want to take a look at part 1 of this post.
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