It’s time for another look at what I’ve been reading – and what was good or not-so-good this month.
It was another month of travelling for me, so more airplane books. That means nothing too dark and heavy.
I started with a favourite… Robyn Carr’s Bring Me Home For Christmas
I started reading Robyn Carr when I arrived in the US. This is book number 17in two years – so I guess you could say I am a fan.
Those 17 books all form part of the Virgin River series. While each book stands on its own, they are all set in the same mythical small town. The lead characters of each novel end up settling the town and become part of the supporting cast for later books. I like this. We get to see what happens to them past their own happy ending.
I think I like them because of the strong sense of community that has developed. Given my own small town background, I guess that’s not unexpected. But the characters are very real and very likable.
I have to admit some of the books are stronger than others – but I have yet to read one that didn’t bring a tear to my eye at some point. This one was no different. I strongly recommend giving them a try. It is probably best to start with the first book in the series – but it won’t really matter if you don’t.
Then I went for a change of pace with Brenda Novak’s Killer Heat (what was I saying about nothing too dark?)
I used to read a lot of romantic suspense. I grew up reading the amazing Mary Stewart and kept on from there. I stopped reading it a while back, because I found the US published romantic suspense (or romantic thrillers) didn’t work for me. Our hero and heroine had a habit of dropping into lustful thoughts at inappropriate moments – like when being held at gunpoint. It didn’t ring true.
I decided to give the genre another try with this book. I was pleasantly surprised.
The book is a good balance of romance and suspense. There was no sudden descent into lust when lives were in danger. The serial killer plot worked. I spotted a red herring fairly early in the book – and thought I was being very clever in deciding who the real killer was. It wasn’t until just near the end that I realized I was wrong – there was a second scarlet coloured fish. I like a thriller that can fool me like that.
The romance worked well too – real attraction. Real conflict. Real characters.
I liked it enough to download another onto my kindle.
Staying the the crime/thriller mode, I turned to a big seller – John Grisham. This time it was The Litigators.
The first Grisham I read was A Time To Kill – subsequently made into a movie with the fab Samuel L Jackson. I was hooked and read some more. These early books all seemed to have some moral issue at the heart of them… a father seeks revenge on the men who raped his daughter. That sort of thing. There was something or more importantly someone I could identify with and say – I want them to win! And sometimes the issues were not simply black and white – they made me think.
The Litigators doesn’t do any of that. It is Grisham’s standard legal thriller. A small firm takes on a giant – and in this case the villain is a big pharmaceutical company. Without giving away the ending, this case was not something I could get even remotely interested in. The outcome could have gone either way and I really did not care. There was the hint of a better story there – a child poisoned by lead paint on a toy. But that was a minor subplot and wasn’t very well developed.
As always, the legal detail and the courtroom scenes were fast paced and believable – but I was left with the feeling that Grisham didn’t care about his characters any more than I did. I felt as if he had just phoned this one in. I have enjoyed enough of his others to put this one down as just one of those occasional misses. Considering how much I have enjoyed some of his other books, I won’t give up on him altogether. Not yet.
So it was back to romance for me – I turned to Jill Shalvis and The Sweetest Thing.
This was a new author for me this month. I confess I don’t like the title… I normally don’t like my books “sweet”. But she had been recommended by a fellow writer so I decided to give her a go. The book was well written and fun and flirty and sexy. I liked it – but I didn’t love it.
I think the reason is that I seem to have read this book before – the plot is a bit well-worn.
Woman in her thirties goes back to her home town where she is reunited with the man who was her first love back when they were still at school. A teenager appears who turns out to be the baby they gave up for adoption before they went their separate ways, never to really forget their first love. And while I don’t give spoilers in the blog – it was pretty obvious from chapter one where this one was heading. And everyone in the book was too nice… it could have used a villain, or at least a mean spirited town gossip to make everything a little less smooth. At the very least, the adopted child could have given her birth parents a bit more trouble. The book to me was lacking in conflict – which is really the heart of a good read.
It wasn’t a bad book – it just didn’t give me anything I hadn’t read before.
The best read this month for me was The Iron Kingby Julie Kagawa.
This is a Young Adult novel –a fantasy but it isn’t about vampires. It’s about fairies. Not the Tinkerbell type of fairies – with fairy dust and singing. Oh no. These fairies are nasty. Even the good ones.
The books draws on A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Alice and other fairy classics – but it puts it all in a modern frame… as the older fairies face the menace of the Iron Fey – who grow from our obsession with technology.
I don’t read a lot of YA fiction – so this was a bit of an eye opener for me. What surprised me was how incredible well written it is – and how enjoyable it was for an adult to read. The plot and characters were complex and the world building was as good as any I’ve read in adult fantasy novels.
This book won the YA RITA award a couple of years back – and I can see why. The story stood up in it’s own right, but the heroine’s story continues through other books in the series. It’s highly likely I’ll read some more of them.
I’d certainly recommend this to anyone who likes a fantasy novel… actually – to anyone who likes a really good read.