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."
• 
  
• "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."
• 
  
• "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."
• 
  
• "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.

Accomplice to the Villain

 

By Hannah Nicole Maehrer

Book Three in the Assistant and the Villain series.

Evie has a new job, as assistant to Trystan Maverine, whose title is The Villain. Even though Trystan is The Villain, he is not as bad as one might think. Indeed, it didn't take Evie long to fall hard for the man and try her best to get a similar response from him. But he is a busy man and even though he is very much attracted to her, he is not receptive to her signals, no matter how blatant they are. He has a lot on his hands, as it seems something is very wrong with the magic in the kingdom and the king is not on Trystan's side and Trystan also has to deal a prophecy that foretells doom and gloom due to the fading magic. The prophecy is part of the reason that Trystan is unresponsive to Evie's advances. Which makes for much tension and suspense in the love story of these two characters.

Speaking of characters, the book is loaded with them, but even more than the main characters, the most appealing is probably the little frog, Kingsley, with his funny little signs that he uses to communicate since he can't speak beyond frog croaks, I suppose. 

The book is humorous and much of that humor is provided by Kingsley's signs, along with the witty dialogue and the clash between Evie and Trystan. 

I have to admit this review is based mostly from what I read about the book online. Because I really didn't like it, managing to read to only Chapter 5. I also have read no other books in the series, I didn't know it was a series so I didn't know what I was getting myself into. 

Two things I didn't care for was that it lacked an even flow and I often didn't understand who these people were and why they were acting the way they were. I also really didn't like the way Evie was throwing herself at Trystan, it just came off as unattractively aggressive. I set the book aside and thought I would eventually pick it back up and give it another go. But every time I thought I should go ahead and power through my distaste, I just did not want to. So I gave up and gave to someone else who was familiar with the series and was looking forward to reading it.

Here is a review by Kirkus Reviews.

The Poisoned King

 

By Katherine Rundell

Book Two of Impossible Creatures

Christopher is once more back in the magic lands of the Archipelago, this time summoned there by a small dragon who needs his help to save a girl from her uncle who is going to kill her in order to secure his right to the throne of her and her father's kingdom.

The uncle, Claude, thinks his older brother, Argus, is too liberal. He has talked the king, their father, into making expensive upgrades to the kingdom and increased the size of the military. Although where the money for all this is coming from is not public information. So Claude has decided he should be king and he has also decided not to wait for his father, the king, to die. He poisons the king and frames Argus. Argus is arrested and imprisoned and Anya is told she is to be sent away to a private school. But instead her escorts, three soldiers, were been ordered by Claude to kill her. She was told to drink poison but she tricked the soldiers and escaped.

On the run through the countryside from her pursuers, a boy on a massive sphinx flew to her rescue just in time. It's Christopher, once more back in the Archipelago for more magical adventures, there to help Mal save her father from execution and the kingdom from her evil uncle Claude. And further to save the dragons who are dying in mass in their mountain home from an unknown illness. An illness that has very much to do with the power-hungry and greedy Claude.

Like the first book in the series, it was fairly interesting. Set about a year after the events of the first book, once again the two main characters are both young teens. I was glad that the author didn't kill off Mal's little pet bird friend and that none of the good guys had to die unlike in the first book. 

Here is a review by Kirkus Reviews.

Impossible Creatures

 

By Katherine Rundell

Book One of Impossible Creatures. 

First there a strange green horse-thing running through the trees, followed by a beautiful silver unicorn. Next there was the cry of something in trouble which sent Christopher looking for what turned out to be a young griffin drowning the lake. Christopher rescued it and took it to his grandfather. Who took care of it and told Christopher that the lake was a hidden entryway into the Archipelago, a string of islands concealed by magic from the world, a land where the creatures of mythology survived, kept alive by the same magic that kept the islands hidden. He also revealed the he was the guardian of the portal in the lake and that someday Christopher would be the guardian after him. 

Returning to the lake with the griffin, Christopher was attacked by a demon dog with flaming ears. He tried to fight it off and would have died if a stranger hadn't appeared and told him to kill the monster by dousing the flames with mud. Together they put out the monster's fire which stopped it dead in its tracks. The girl, Mal, short for Malum, had come through the lake portal and she wanted the griffin and to return back through the lake. 

Things back at her home were not safe and Mal begged Christopher to return with her as she was on the run from an assassin who murdered her aunt and had tried but failed to murder her. But she feared he was hot on her trail and she had no one else to help her. And so he followed her into the lake and into the magical Archipelago and into a grand and dangerous adventure trying to figure out not only why Mal is targeted for death but why the magic that keeps the legendary creatures of the Archipelago alive is fading away.

Young adult or older kid's novel, the two main characters are probably about middle school age. They have lots of adventures together and encounter lots of strange, mythical creatures. Eventually they learn why Mal has been targeted for death and of her unique status in the Archipelago and in the whole world. It was a fairly enjoyable story although I did not like that the author killed off Mal's friend, the young griffin, the last of his kind. And Mal has a rather grim fate too which made for a not very happy ending. 

Here is a review by Kirkus Reviews. 

The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet

 

By Becky Chambers

Book One of the Wayfarers series.

Rosemary Harper is a young woman in trouble. Running away from a notorious past that she did not create, she has spent all her considerable fortune on a new identity and an escape from her home planet of Mars. 

In her new identity, she has been hired as a clerical assistant to the captain, Ashby Santoso, of a private spaceship. She will be in charge of scheduling some stops and overseeing ordering of supplies and helping the captain organize his files and set up an archive of the captain's records.

The spaceship, named Wayfarer, is a private enterprise for hire. Captain Ashby and his crew build "tunnels" through space that are short cuts to manage the vast distances of space travel, basically stabilized "wormholes." It's a small crew, only nine members, including the captain and the built-in Artificial Intelligence that helps run the ship. Mostly composed of humans, three of the crew are not human, including the pilot, the navigator and the medical person/chef. And the AI, of course.

Of this mixed company, all are pretty much decent people with the exception of the navigator and the human in charge of the tanks that produce the algae-based fuel that helps power the ship. The navigator keeps to itself and the human is just unpleasant. Another source of power, for more the power-intensive chore to tunnel building, is ambi which a type of raw energy produced by black holes or other high energy phenomenon. 

Captain Ashby's operation is small time, compared to the huge tunnel manufacturing ships that take on the bigger projects. But a friend gives Ashby some inside info that enables him to be the first in line for a much more ambitious and lucrative project located near a planet held by the Toremi Ka, recent members of the Galactic Commons (GC). The Toremi are known to be rather blood-thirsty and their being admitted to the GC is likely based on the huge source of ambi near the planet held by the Toremi Ka. A questionable decision, certainly, given that the GC usually require that member species have reached a high level of technology and social advancement. While the Toremi are technologically advanced, their willingness to kill each other seems to indicate their lack of social advancement. But in the Toremi's case, the GC's greed has overruled common sense. And Captain Asbhy's crew and ship will be the ones to pay the price for that greed, unbeknownst to them, as they set out on a lucrative new job that will hopefully allow them to expand the capabilities of their tunnel-boring operation.

The book is mainly about the crew, how they get along with each other and work together to benefit of them all. Basically a crew of really decent and skilled persons, with very little conflict, although there are a few problems as can only be expected of people who live together for long periods of time in restricted conditions. 

The small angry planet of the title is Toremi Ka. My copy of the book was about 400 pages long and they only arrive at Toremi Ka after page 332. So the majority of the story is about the trip and the people onboard the Wayfarer and their interactions and the problems encountered on the trip. 

The story continues in the second book of the series, A Close and Common Orbit. I have put it on my wishlist because this was a pretty good story and I want to know more about the adventures of the crew of the Wayfarer.

Under the Whispering Door

 

By TJ Klune

Wallace Price is a hard man, a lawyer, partner at an important legal firm. His focus is on himself and on his success. But fate got in the way in the form of a deadly heart attack while at the office on the weekend. Which is how he ended up in the afterlife clad in sweat pants and flip-flop sandals. 

So Wallace is dead, which kind of spoiled all his plans. He did attend his own funeral, which he was rather displeased to see was so sparsely attended. But there was someone at the funeral who was completely unknown to him, a small Chinese woman, who, of all the people in attendance, was the only one who could see him.

Because she was there for Wallace. Because Meiying is a Reaper and she is there to start Wallace on his trip to his ultimate destination. Which is how Wallace ended up at a quaint little tea shop in the mountains run by Hugo Freeman who serves the dead tea and guides them through the Whispering Door and into eternity. Hugo is the Ferryman.

Meiying, when she is not being a Reaper, works for Hugo in the kitchen of the tea shop. Besides Meiying, Hugo's grandfather and his dog, Apollo also reside at the tea shop. But unlike Meiying, Apollo and Nelson, the grandfather, are both ghosts, like Wallace. Ghosts who refused to pass through the Whispering Door and into eternity because Hugo still needed them in his life. And pretty soon, the same is true of Wallace as Hugo and Wallace find companionship in each other that they have been missing in their lives. Makes for an uneven relationship, though, since Hugo is a living man and Wallace is a dead man. 

I was a bit bored with the first quarter of the novel but it got much more interesting as the story progressed. Parts of it were quite moving, especially Chapter 14, which moved me to tears several times. It also had some rather hilarious moments including at the end where Wallace ends up as a floating balloon ghost who needs to be tied down to keep him from floating away and into the, I assume, the infinite depths of Space.

Hugo is a bit too much of a goody-goody for my taste though, as I can show by this passage about him:

But it was Hugo who Wallace watched the most. Hugo, who seemed to have all the time in the world for anyone who asked for his attention. A gaggle of older women came in the early afternoon, fawning and cooing over him, pinching his cheeks and giggling when he blushed. He knew them all by name, and they clearly adored him. They all left with smiles on their faces, paper cups of tea steaming in their hands.

It wasn't just the older women. It was everyone. Kids demanded he lift them up and he did, but not with his hands. They held onto his thinly muscled biceps as he raised his arms, their feet kicking into nothing, their laughter bright and loud. Younger women flirted, batting their eyes at him. Men shook his hand furiously, their grips looking strong as their arms pumped up and down. They called him by his first name. They all seemed delighted to see him. 

A paragon, for sure. His grandfather, Nelson, was more my speed. A bit of a smart ass who wasn't above the occasional ghostly prank, including smacking Wallace with his cane when he was displeased with him. 

I think my favorite character, though, was Apollo, Hugo's ghost dog who had refused to pass on after dying and stayed by Hugo's side because Hugo still needed him. And who was not above taking a ghostly whiz on people who came into the tea shop and upset things, like the nosy phony medium who has the hots for Hugo and the health inspector who has a grudge against Hugo because Hugo spurned his advances.

The book certainly has its lighter moments, like when Wallace is learning how to manifest different clothing after getting tired of sweat pants and flip-flops and ends up dressed only in briefs and thigh high boots. But it also has very touching and serious moments, as the dead pass through the shop, dealing with their deaths and their regrets and their lost lives, of which Wallace is one of, facing the truth about why his marriage failed and how success in business became more important to him than success as a human being. And how Hugo, Nelson, Meiying, and Apollo become more important to him than anyone he left behind in life.

Here is a review by Berkeley Fiction Review. 

 

     

Artificial Condition

 

By Martha Wells

Murderbot Diaries, Book 2

After Murderbot, the rogue SecUnit, was released on its own recognizance by Dr. Mensah, it slipped away from Mensah and the others of Preservation Aux it had protected. It was on a mission: to find out the truth about the mass murder it was told it committed at the RaviHyral Mining Facility Q Station. It doesn't have a memory of it, in fact its memory only goes back to a little more than three years.

But it refuses to accept what it has been told as a fact. It knows how unreliable facts can be and how easily manipulated. Manipulating facts is how it travels through everything, ever since it hacked its own governor module and continues to hack all the security systems and data feeds that would record its passage through various locations. 

It managed to locate a place on a cargo transport headed to RaviHyral that had no humans traveling on it or other SecUnits. It was being driven by a bot, a rather nosey and intrusive bot that Murderbot thinks of as ART or Asshole Research Transport. 

ART becomes an ally of Murderbot and helps it learn how to better pass itself off as a human. A SecUnit unattached to a proprietor is considered to be a rogue and extremely dangerous and unpredictable. But Murderbot isn't interested in enacting revenge on its creators, it just wants to understand itself and believes knowing the truth about its murderous past is where to start. 

So with ART's help and advice, Murderbot gets a job as Security Consultant to a group of young scientists who are desirous of obtaining research conducted by them on RaviHyral that was stolen from them by their former employer, Tlacey Excavations. Here Murderbot introduces itself to the three young scientists as Eden, the name of a character on its favorite serial, Sanctuary Moon. But looking at the situation, Murderbot is pretty sure that the scientists really do need a security consultant to keep them from being silenced. Plus it gets it the reason it needs to be on RaviHyral.

While not quite as action packed as the first book in the series, it does let the reader into the Murderbot's past a bit more. As in the first book, Murderbot is not willing to abandon its new set of charges, the three young scientists, to whatever evil fate awaits them. As it soon becomes clear, Tlacey is a very bad person and has no intention of returning their research. All she wants is them dead. And Murderbot is going to do its best to keep that from happening. 

All Systems Red

 

By Martha Wells

The Murderbot Diaries, Book 1

Murderbot. It's a SecUnit. Its responsibility is to keep the humans under its care safe and alive. Which it doesn't have a problem with and tries to the best of its ability to fulfill that mission. It actually cares about the humans, well, maybe not so much for Dr. Gurathin who has an attitude. Murderbot has feelings about its humans which it probably shouldn't. It's not part of its job. But Murderbot is not a typical SecUnit because it figured out how to hack its own governor module. Which means it makes up its own mind about what it does or doesn't want to do. And that is something that it is definitely not supposed to be able to do. 

So Murderbot's current group of humans under its care are exploring the possibilities of a new planet, going out in small groups under Murderbot's protection. Murderbot is equipped with a range of inbuilt weapons it can access in a flash if needed. Out with two humans one day, Dr. Volescu and Dr. Bharadwaj when a huge animal lunges out of the ground and grabs Bharadwaj. Murderbot is able to rescue Bharadwaj, but is gravely damaged in the process, nevertheless gets both humans back to the base. 

Reviewing some of the incidents that Murderbot first dismissed as failures of the company contracted to supply and backup the survey group that Murderbot is protecting, it and the humans realize something is wacky. They decide to travel to another groups' base but when they get there they find everyone is dead. And they themselves are soon being attacked by the SecUnits that were supposed to be protecting the people at the base. Murderbot realizes that the SecUnits have been taken over by some hostile force and reprogrammed to kill instead of protect. But it soon finds itself in danger of being reprogrammed too.

This story doesn't fool around when it comes to action-packed science fiction adventure. From strange beasts, questionable corporations, rogue bots, and ruthless criminals, the world of Murderbot is the good stuff! Very entertaining and I am looking forward to the next book in the series, which I think is Artificial Condition.

The Raven Boys

 

by Maggie Stiefvater, adapted by Stephanie Williams, illustrated by Sas Milledge

In the town of Henrietta, a private school for boys is known for the wealth and privilege of its students, who are called the Raven Boys.

Blue Sargent is a local teen girl who knows all about the reputation of the boys who attend the school, Aglionby. She doesn't set out to defy her mother's strictures about those boys, but meets a small group of them when they stop in for some food at the diner where Blue works part-time. They get off on the wrong foot with Blue but she finds one of the boys' journal that they accidentally left behind. Snooping, she discovers that the boys are trying to locate in or near the town of Henrietta, something called ley lines which are supposed to be conduits of magical energy. One of the boys, Gansey, is trying to track down the final resting place of a Welsh rebel, Owain Glendower, who lead an uprising against the British in Wales back in the 1400s. The journal left behind in the diner belongs to Gansey and contains writings about his search which has led him to Henrietta where he expects to find the grave of the rebel near a powerful ancient ley line.

As Blue delves deeper into Gansey's journal, she realizes she knows where this ley line is. It's known locally as Corpse Road and it runs past an old abandoned church. She also realizes that she had a vision while on Corpse Road one night of the boy, Gansey, and that some strange fate awaits him. Blue, who is not psychic, is told by a psychic that the only reason she could see a vision of Gansey was because he was either her 'true love' or because Blue will kill him. Which fits completely because Blue has been warned by various psychics, including her own mother, that if Blue kissed her true love, he would die. 

When Blue gets the journal back to Gansey and his friends Adam, Noah and Ronan, she joins them in their quest to find Glendower.  Mainly because they are interesting teen boys and because, as a non-psychic in a family of psychics, she has always felt left out of the magic. And being with Gansey and his friends enables her to be an active participant in something mystical, instead of just an observer. 

But Gansey is not the only one who wants to track down the ley lines in Henrietta. Two others are trying to find the lines and both of them are dangerous and willing to kill to get what they want.

I enjoyed this graphic novel which is based on a fantasy series by Maggie Stiefvater, The Raven Cycle, of which The Raven Boys is the first book in the series. I have not read the book from which this graphic novel is crafted. 

At times, I was a bit lost though, which is typical of my experience with graphic novels. They lack the details which I need to understand what is going when reading a graphic novel.  But that's just me, I think. Another problem I have with graphic novels is sometimes the artist draws the characters to look too similar to each other and I have trouble telling them apart. But again that's probably just my problem.

One thing that I really appreciated about this book, other than the actual story, is that it is in full color. Very nice!

The Housemaid

 

By Freida McFadden

The Housemaid, Book 1

Millie hopes her new job is also a new start for her, a young woman who has not had the easiest of lives so far. She has been hired as maid to the wealthy Winchester household which consists of Andrew, Nina and their little girl, Cece. 

Starting a new job is always a bit stressful but it's even worse when your boss is as capricious and unpredictable as Nina Winchester turns out to be. At times Nina is reasonable and understanding only to turn around and make crazy accusations against Millie. Eventually Andrew lets Millie know that Nina has been hospitalized for mental problems in the past. And that at one point she tried to drown baby Cece and kill herself with an overdose. 

As Nina becomes even more erratic and unreasonable, Nina finds comfort in Andrew's understanding and gentle arms. She never intended to fall in love with the handsome and wealthy spouse of her employer. Or he with her. In short order, loony Nina is sent packing and Millie finds herself the cherished object of Andrew's affection. 

Or so she thought. Because nothing is as it seems to be in the Winchester household. And everyone is playing a deep game, including the groundskeeper, the closed-mouthed giant from Italy, Enzo.

Overall, I didn't care for this story and I admit I skipped vast quantities of it. Turns out I don't enjoy reading about people treating other people like garbage for no reason. But I will say I greatly enjoyed the conclusion of the story where nearly every guilty party got their just desserts. 

B.C. Strikes Back

 

By Johnny Hart

Another collection of newspaper cartoons by Johnny Hart, copyright 1961 and 1962. These earlier cartoons about the world of B.C. are some of Hart's funniest and most charming, I think. Here are a few from the book to enjoy:

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Betting On You

 

By Lynn Painter

Charley and Bailey met onboard an airplane and Bailey decided Charley was Mr. Nothing and wrote him off. But then they both got jobs at the same place and eventually became friends, of a sort.

Bailey's parents are no longer together and Bailey's mom has a serious boyfriend, Scott, that Bailey finds too intrusive. Charley is in a similar situation except his mom is actually pregnant by her lover. So teenage Charley and Bailey have this in common, along with their jobs at the same place. 

Charley made a bet with Bailey. He claims boys and girls can't be just friends. Bailey maintains that they can be just friends. But of course, these two kids fall for each other. This is a romance, after all. And of course complications occur and the kids break up! But good news! Yay! They get back together! 

This was an OK read if a tad boring. I'm a bit too old for a book like this but I imagine younger people might enjoy it quite a bit. A couple of quotes I found amusing are, first, when Charley describes his response to his mother's boyfriend constantly being at the house: "I say, Dude, why don't you stay at your own house like you aren't a mooching loser?" And when Charley is talking about Bailey's  mom and boyfriend being concerned about Charley and Bailey spending too much time alone together on a group trip to Colorado: "They think we're only friends, but they still need to guarantee—because they're responsible adults—that we're painfully aware that we can't sneak into each other's bed and bang one out in the Rockies." I thought that was funny!

Here a review by Kirkus Reviews.

With A Vengeance

 By Riley Sager

Born into wealth and influence, it all turned to dust when Anna Matheson's father was accused of a heinous and terrible act that resulted in the deaths of many innocent people, including US soldiers on their way to fight in World War II traveling on a train built by Anna's father's company. The train engine was deliberately designed to self-destruct because, according to the accusations, Matheson was a Nazi sympathizer. Supposedly Matheson didn't care that his own son, a soldier, was on that train too.

Matheson never made it to trail to face the accusations because he was stabbed to death in prison. After he was murdered, Anna's mother basically gave up on life and died soon after. Young Anna was alone in the world, stripped of mother, father, brother and of a life of comfort and wealth. She went to stay with her Aunt Retta, who taught Anna that life is pain. But also taught her to stand up to it.

When Aunt Retta died, Anna inherited from her along with a small fortune, a box of documents that proved Matheson was framed by a business rival, Kenneth Wentworth. So Anna comes up with a scheme to bring the guilty parties, of which there are six including Wentworth, to justice. She sends out invitations to a train trip from Pennsylvania to Chicago. Included in each invitation are ominous messages Anna is sure will guarantee the invitees attendance on the train trip. And she is almost correct. Five suspects show up. But the number one guilty party, Kenneth Wentworth, is not there. Instead it's his son, Dante, who intercepted the invitation and took his father's place. Because Dante and Anna used to be a couple but Wentworth put a stop to the relationship and now Dante is hoping for a second chance with Anna.

Anna's plan is confront the suspects with copies of the proof of their guilt and then hand them over to the police when the express train arrives at its only stop in Chicago. Of course, it doesn't quite go the way she intended. First of all, Dante is not his father. Secondly, almost immediately, one of the suspects ends up dead, poisoned, it appears. Third, an uninvited person crashes the party, claiming he got on the wrong train. This person, Reggie Davis, is as welcome as a skunk at a barbecue, and even more unwelcome when he reveals he is actually an FBI agent, placed on board to make sure all the involved parties make it to Chicago alive. And he has already failed at that with the poisoning death of one of them. Before much longer the body count increases again. Anna and Reggie have lost control of the situation and their goal of getting the remaining suspects to Chicago alive is seriously in danger of failure. 

An interesting murder mystery with lots of red herrings and, I think, too many suspects. Also, with Anna being an attractive young woman and with three young single men on board the train, I assumed a romance was going to be part of the story. But, as it turns out, although a couple of advances are made, that never happens. So between the lack of a little romance and the shifting list of suspects, I found the story less than enchanting.

 

Witchcraft For Wayward Girls

 

By Grady Hendrix

Neva (Fern) is a hapless teen girl who fell for a boy and then lost him when she found out she was pregnant. This being in the early 1970s before Roe vs Wade court decision in 1973 that gave females the right to control of their own bodies, her parents placed Neva in a home for Unwed Mothers. For the sake of anonymity, none of the girls staying there used their real names and were given names by the woman who ran the facility, Miss Wellwood. She gave all the girls botanical names and Neva became Fern.

Life in the home was pretty strict and straitlaced. But overall, the girls were treated well. They had to work, maintaining the home, cleaning and doing chores and laundry. And the woman running the place, Miss Wellwood, was religious, so religion was a part of their every day lives, especially as they are viewed by the society of the time as wayward and in need of redemption. The worst thing about the experience was the pressure placed on the girls to give up the babies for adoption, for the girls' and the babies' own good they were repeatedly told. The second worst thing was the home was located in Florida and the building did not have central air conditioning. Only a few of the offices had air conditioning and summer temperatures and humidity were uncomfortable, to say the least. 

But the girls were well taken care of by the onsite doctor who monitored their health and guided them toward optimal outcomes for themselves and their unborn babies. Fern was only fifteen and she may have found the treatments a bit surprising and unpleasant but the treatments were entirely appropriate, if a bit overly strict at times. For example, some of the girls were experiencing higher than normal blood pressure and so salt was limited for all the girls, not just those  affected. 

Every few weeks, a bookmobile would stop by the home and the girls could check out books. The librarian, Miss Parcae, helps Fern with her bladder problem (having to go too frequently) and gives her a slim paperback titled How to Be a Groovy Witch, and she advises Fern to keep it hidden from the adults in charge of the home.

It doesn't take the girls, Fern's roommates and friends, too long to figure out that the book is magical and that the spells in the book actually work. But once they successfully cast a spell that helps one them suffering from really bad morning sickness by casting it onto the doctor who did nothing to help her with the sickness, Miss Parcae tracks them down and explains the book's magic is mostly hidden from them because they are beginners at magic. As they gain more power and knowledge, more information will become available in the book. But that won't happen if the girls don't "renounce God and turn your back on the world of man and pledge eternal loyalty and obedience to me" [Miss Parcae]. Tempted by the power of the magic and looking for some control over their own lives, the girls agree and perform a ceremony led by Parcae who pricks their thumbs and presses each bloody thumb to a page in the magic book. The four girls, including Fern, do this willingly and thus their coven is formed and their oath to Parcae is enacted. Which was probably a stupid thing to do and shows why contracts signed by children are, for the most part, not binding.

The main reason the girls got involved in this magic business is because one of them, Holly, is only fourteen and destined to end up back at home and under the control of the man who abused her and got her pregnant. This man intends to adopt Holly's baby who will become his next victim. Although Holly spoke up about the abuse, no one believes her because he is pastor of a church. She even told the social worker at the Home about it and was ignored. The girls see magic as the only way to keep Holly and her baby safe from being sent back to her abuser. However, as the days pass, one of the girls get cold feet about their oath to Parcae and refuses to help when the other three attempt to call up a storm they hope will cover Holly's tracks when she runs away from the home to join Parcae's coven. But you know what they say about the best laid plans.

This was an interesting book and I enjoyed reading it. However, I was expecting a more lighthearted book about pregnant teens and witchcraft and this was not that book. It is quite serious in tone. At the end of the book, Neva finds the phone number of the woman who was her baby and calls her. The woman asks, "You're the one who gave me away?" Neva replies, "No" I say, and my voice is louder now because you have to understand. "No, I didn't give you away. I didn't give you away, my baby. I never gave you away. You were taken." Beautiful way to end the story!

Den of Vipers

 

By K.A. Knight

Story of a criminal gang in a large city in what, given by the language used, is the United Kingdom.

Everyone in this story is perverse, sadistic and masochistic. Basically, they all have survived various forms of abuse, both physical and psychological. 

It starts with a young woman, Roxy, who runs a dive bar. Her father owes money to the Vipers, the criminal gang, and to pay it, he gives Roxy to the gangsters. 

Naturally Roxy does not go along with this idea willingly and she puts up a fight, but she ends up under the control of the gang, the leaders of which are four men who consider themselves brothers although only two of them are actual brothers. All four men have taken the last name of Viper and all four are lunatics. 

Once Roxy figures out that she cannot escape, she lets herself become their sex doll. Oh, they have lots of sex. Turns out Roxy is insatiable and kinky and doesn't mind being hurt because she gets off on it. The four men are constantly horny and they enjoy hurting people and they have no qualms indulging Roxy sexual quirks. 

And there is a gang war with the Triad who are trying to take over the Viper gang's businesses. So the war starts and people get brutally murdered and there is also lots of painful sex, lots of gruesome torture and blood spilled and people just acting really icky, all within the thin structure of gang war. Roxy and the Vipers fall in love and Roxy joins the gang, screwing and killing her way through the story in a way that the gangsters find irresistible. 

If you enjoy reading about graphic sex and torture and murder with very little plot to interfere with the sex and gore, then you will love this novel. It was overloaded with it and the plot was paper thin. Everything in it was overblown and exaggerated and so extreme as to almost be a parody of itself. At one point Roxy is being tortured by the enemy gang and is bound to a chair. Left alone, she manages to escape by rocking the chair until it falls over and shatters: "The chair starts to wobble, rocking with me, the creak loud in the room, but it's drowned out by the fight going on. I swing harder, and with a yelp, the chair falls to the side. Crashing to the floor, I groan as I bang my head, but the chair explodes. I roll on to my back and moan." I guess the gangsters messed up when they used a balsawood chair instead of a standard cheap metal folding chair. I'm surprised it didn't collapse by her just being sat upon it.

Anyway, this is not exactly a work of art, and besides having very little plot, it was much longer than it needed to be. The paperback version I had was about 450 pages long. It actually had the kind of shallow plot typically associated with porno movies. I wonder if the author watches a lot of pornos. I would guess they do. 

Dave Barry's Only Travel Guide You'll Ever Need

 

By Dave Barry

Dave takes a goofy look at travel both international and domestic. He talks about travel by vehicle or by plane, with and without children. He goes after Disney World and has a few pithy words to say about every US state and our two neighbors, Canada and Mexico. Except for Vermont, which only gets '(See "New Hampshire.").' 

After dealing with them, he then takes on Europe and closes out the book with hotels and camping.

Dave Barry is his usual hilarious self in this book. A great read if you are looking to have a good chuckle.