Bridge of Souls

 

 By Victoria Schwab

Cassidy Blake, Book Three

Third story in the triology finds Cassidy, her ghost friend Jacob and her parents in New Orleans where her parents are working on new episode for their video ghost story series.

Of course a place like New Orleans is going to have a lot of haunted locations and ghosts. But it isn't a ghost that Cassidy runs afoul of, it an Emissary of Death, who has come to take Cassidy back to the place of the dead. She actually got a glimpse of this being at the end of the second book in the series, Tunnel of Bones, where it appeared to her as a person dressed all in black and wearing a skull mask. 

Cassidy is in serious danger but fortunately a magical society in New Orleans and her friend Lara from Scotland and Jacob, of course, are there to help. But even all that help may not be enough to save her from Death's Emissary. Who is really angry that Cassidy escaped death when she nearly drowned. 

I didn't care for this premise. Maybe because I'm old and haven't much time left on this earth. But lifetimes are so short. Why is Death so impatient? In a few short decades, Cassidy will be dead. Death is eternal. Even the sun will eventually die, at least that is what science tells us. In the billions of years that the universe has existed, the lifespan of a human being is virtually nothing. Death needs to chill. Cassidy will be there soon anyway. I just couldn't buy into the idea that Death was so outraged by Cassidy not drowning that it had to send an Emissary to drag her to the land of the dead. Nah.

Here is a review by Kirkus Reviews.

Someone Else's Shoes

 

By Jojo Moyes

Nisha has been traveling with her husband and together they are staying at a fancy hotel in London, England. But what Nisha doesn't know is that her spouse has plans that definitely do not include her: cutting her off without a cent or even access to her own clothing or money. So she is stranded in a foreign country wearing only a bathrobe and slippers since her clothes were mistakenly taken at the gym where Nisha was doing her daily workout.

When she is finally able to get in contact with her faithless spouse, he informs her that she will get nothing from him until she returns the expensive shoes she was wearing when she went to the gym. A very strange request, indeed, but one she feels forced to do. But how is she supposed to track down the unknown woman who took her bag with her clothes and the special shoes?

Meanwhile, the woman who took the bag, Sam, has an important sales meeting to attend, one her success at her job may depend on. She opens the bag and instead of her ordinary clothes there are very expensive and glamorous items. Sam doesn't intend to keep the bag but a time crunch has her in a bind and she is forced to wear the expensive shoes to her sales calls. Interestingly, these power shoes give her that extra boost of confidence and the sales calls work out very well.

Sam has more in common with Nisha than either knows. Sam is facing marriage problems too. Her spouse has been depressed after the death of his father and he has been so shut down for months that most of his time is spent on the couch or in bed, accomplishing nothing at home, including failing to find a new job. Sam is getting pretty tired of carrying the full load all on her own and there is a man at her work who has indicated he is attracted to her.

And poor Nisha, accustomed to a life of luxury after years of marriage to her extremely wealthy husband, has been forced to get a job or end up living on the street. The job she finds is as a maid at the very hotel where her horrible husband is staying with her replacement. But even though the work is not what Nisha has been used to, she finds the people she is working become more important to her than just as coworkers.

I did enjoy this story even the plot was a tad ridiculous and not in an amusing way. Parts of it brought tears to my eyes. 

Here is a review by Kirkus Reviews.

Number One Is Walking

 

By Steve Martin, drawings by Harry Bliss

A look back at his career in cinema by actor/writer/comedian Steve Martin. Steve provided the prose and Harry Bliss did the illustrations. 

I first saw Steve Martin on Saturday Night Live when he sang "King Tut" dressed like Egyptian royalty. It was funny and weird and introduced the world to an extraordinary performer who went on to have a very successful career in entertainment. Still going strong as far as I know. More power to him!

On the other hand, I had never heard of Harry Bliss so I looked him up on Wikipedia: "Harry Bliss ... is an American cartoonist and illustrator. He has illustrated many books and produced thousands of cartoons including 25 covers for The New Yorker. He has a syndicated single-panel comic titled 'Bliss'. 'Bliss' is syndicated through Tribune Content Agency and appears in over 80 newspapers in the United States, Canada, and Japan."

I enjoyed what Steve has to say and I really enjoyed the drawings Bliss contributed. They add so much to the story. Here are a few examples of his drawings from the book:

Here is an example the style in which the story is told. And also has an explanation of the book title:

Class Clown: The Memoirs of a Professional Wiseass

 

By Dave Barry

Dave Barry is a well known columnist, humorist and author. His skills as author and humorist are displayed beautifully in this entertaining, funny memoir. He made me laugh so many times, I think this might be one of his funniest books ever, which is saying a lot. His skills as a writer and humorist are top of the bunch.

He doesn't go into much detail about his private life beyond his childhood which he does delve into. But after that, the book is mostly about his professional life, starting off as a young reporter and kind of ending up a humor columnist accidentally. But he did graduate from serious reporting to being, as it says on the front of the book, a wiseass and we are all the better off for it. So thank you, Dave Barry, for your work and your amazing sense of humor and giving your readers decades of laughs and lighter moments.

Here are just few of the moments in the book made me literally "laugh out loud."

• "I made art projects out of construction paper and this white paste—you Boomers remember this paste—that turned out to be delicious. I enjoyed eating that paste WAY more than I enjoyed eating the Wampus Elementary cafeteria food, which came from giant government cans left over from some previous war, possibly the French and Indian."
• 
  
• "The girls were no longer girls: They were definitely young women. It was as if they had all attended Summer Bosom Camp. The boys definitely noticed this, and were feeling powerful new biological stirrings in the form of semi-permanent boners. A Category 5 puberty storm had hit Harold C. Crittenden Junior High; waves of hormones were sloshing through the halls."
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• "If you or one of your companions gets bit by a snake, don't panic. Take a razor blade and make a cut shaped like an "X," then suck out all the blood. Snakes just hate this, and after you've done it to them one or two times they stop biting people altogether."
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• "For nickname stupidity, no state challenges Indiana, which proudly calls itself "the Hoosier State," even though nobody has a clue what "Hoosier" means. It could be a Native American word meaning "Has sex with caribou."
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• "So the Republicans brought out a parade of humanizers, with the star being Mitt's wife, Ann. She talked, movingly, about a completely different Mitt Romney, a Mitt Romney whom most people have never seen, a Mitt Romney who is funny, spontaneous, tender, laid-back, five feet tall, overweight, bald and—in some [US] states—Jewish." 

I'm adding one last Dave Barry quote, but it is not a funny quote: "For the record: I can't stand Trump. He's a narcissistic jerk and a liar, and his behavior on January 6 was despicable. I'd never vote for him." 

Same for me, Dave.

Here is a review by Bookreporter.com.

Tunnel of Bones

 

By Victoria Schwab

Cassidy Blake, Book Two

We first met Cassidy and her ghostly friend Jacob (the ghost boy who saved her from drowning) in Edinburgh, Scotland where Cassidy nearly died when she was attack by a desperate ghost woman. While in Scotland, Cassidy made the acquaintance of Lara, a girl about the same age as Cassidy who also has the ability to sense and perceive ghosts. Lara taught her a lot about this ability that Cassidy acquired only after nearly dying.

Cassidy's parents have finished with their work in Scotland and are off to Paris, France, to film another in their videos about ghosts and haunted locations. Neither of her parents can perceive ghosts and even though Cassidy has told them she can, they don't believe her and dismiss her claims about Jacob as being an imaginary friend.

Paris is an ancient city and has its share of ghosts and haunted locations, one of which is surely the Catacombs. It is one of the locations her parents are planning to film and the parents bring Cassidy along enjoy a private tour of this massive underground storage depot of human bones. But, with her usual bad luck, Cassidy attracts the attention of a poltergeist. And this poltergeist follows her out of the Catacombs and starts causing mischief, as poltergeists are wont to do. It's their thing. 

Trying to deal with this poltergeist, Cassidy discovers that the mirror trap trick that she learned from Lara doesn't work on this poltergeist. Lara thinks it is because it has been dead for so long it has forgotten who it is and until it remembers, the mirror trap won't work. The poltergeist will continue to rampage in Paris until Cassidy can find out who it was, how it died and reveal those details to it and then deal with it and send it to its eternal destination.

This was an OK story. I find that Cassidy is a little too precocious for a twelve year old and I would like her better if she was a teen and not an adolescent. She is very sneaky and a liar, both things she probably wouldn't have to do and be if she were four or more years older in the stories. Also she makes friends with a young girl and Cassidy is able to display her ghostly talents quite easily to this child but somehow can't convince her own parents?

Anyway, kids and young teens probably would enjoy this series a lot.

Here is a review by Kirkus Reviews.