The Little Library

The Little Library, due out 26th March, 2018 by Kim Fielding is a very well written, sweetly cozy M/M romance.  The main story balances love and career choices for two outwardly different guys, former cop Simon, injured in the line of duty, and historian and professor Elliott, a book hoarder nerd.

They meet in their neighborhood and catch one another's eye, but it isn't until Elliott builds a Little Library that they find a common ground.  The library becomes a center point for the entire neighborhood and introverted Elliott begins to come out of his shell and interact with the people around him as his neighbors enjoy borrowing and sharing books.

There is an awful lot to love here.  The theme of books is ever close to my heart.  I find it very difficult to weed through my own library, even those books which I've bought in e-format.  I love it that Elliott built a little library and shows incredible strength and growth as a character which is believable.  I found myself rooting for Simon and his issues with his family and his burgeoning relationship with Elliott.

I love that the author is clearly a huge book fan herself.  This book is chock full of real book references to chase down for further reading and reference.  I really like books that turn me on to other books! 

There was some drama, but relatively low-angst and sweetly reassuring.  I just really really enjoyed this book.  Their first date was hysterically funny.  Real laugh-out-loud funny is very difficult to write, but Ms. Fielding does a great job. 

The author manages to sneak some really good messages into the narrative without being preachy or smug.  Themes such as tolerance, community, strength in adversity, love over money, personal growth, family, and the importance of education and preserving our cultural history, the author handles all of them deftly and with sensitivity.  

Four and a half stars.  Well written, well edited, and entertaining.  Bonus points for rescue dog Ishtar.

300 pages, due out 26th March, 2018 from Riptide Publishing available in print & ebook formats.

Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher.

Bloodstains with Bronte

Bloodstains with Brontë is the second book in the Crime with the Classics series by author Katherine Bolger Hyde. Released 12th Dec, 2017 from St. Martin's Press (Macmillan) it's currently available in ebook, hardcover, and audio versions.

At almost 300 pages, it's a substantial size for a cozy mystery, but the author has a deft hand at plotting and it goes quickly.  This was my commute read to and from work, and I devoured it in a couple days.  The chapter headings are quotes from Bronte novels and I was impressed with the way they coordinated and preshadowed each chapter.

The characters are well written and mostly fleshed out.  I had some trouble with some of the dialogue, but in general there wasn't much clumsiness or being yanked out of the story by anything egregious.  It's basically a bed and breakfast cozy with a literature professor as the amateur sleuth. It's comfortable and clean (totally SafeForWork), very little mild cursing (a handful of hells, damns, and shits).  You know the deal going in, and it doesn't disappoint.  The clues are presented in the story and while most experienced readers will have worked out 'whodunnit' before the end of the book, there are a few unexpected twists along the way.

The book is written in third person omniscient PoV, but there are journal entries written by Katie (a young woman who works with, and is like a daughter to, the main character Emily).  The journal entries (in 1st person PoV) are italicized, but are placed without any segue, so they seem occasionally disjointed from the rest of the narrative.

There is a strong element of Christian faith and sensibility running through the novel, but nothing most readers would find very objectionable.  Emily is written as a person of faith and that affects the choices she makes and her reasoning processes in the book.  She has a different worldview than do I and as long as I remembered that, it wasn't a problem. She is a good person and tries very hard to live her life in accordance with her faith.  

Much of the plot hinges on date rape and non-consent, so if that's a trigger, it's probably best to skip this one.   The author does a pretty good job of writing the necessary awful bits without being too graphic or glossing over the trauma entirely.

I read this second book as a standalone and it worked perfectly well.

Three and a half stars.

 Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher.

Creatures of Will and Temper

Creatures of Will & Temper is a fleshed out story covering the bare bones of Wilde's Picture of Dorian Gray.  The author, Molly Tanzer,  freely adds to and twists the Wilde icon into something that is different and original and wholly itself.

This book ticked a lot of boxes for me; among other things it has Victoriana, demons, an impressively built and well thought out magic system, dastardly antagonists, some mystery subplots and fencing! *swoon*.

It takes a lot of chutzpah to stand up and rewrite, however well intentioned, Wilde.  Wilde. Ms. Tanzer is very competent, the writing is very well done (and not overdone).  The plotting is tight and for an almost 400 page book, the story arc moves along at a brisk pace.  I didn't find the story dragging at all.  There were a few moments of internal eye rolling from me for the anachronistic dialogue and sarcastic sibling squabbling (say that five times fast :).  It's much more a function of it being a YA modern light romance urban fantasy and that I'm a grumpy old fart than sloppy writing however.  This is a surprisingly deftly written book.

Must read for fans of YA urban fantasy, especially Victoriana.  It's not extremely graphic except for one particular brutal passage, which does set up a plot element but felt out of proportion compared to the rest of the book.

Four stars, deftly written prose, fencing demonists, strong(ish) female protagonists.

Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher.