“Thought the world of you, did Kitten. Wouldn’t hear a word against you; wouldn’t even admit you can’t drive well enough for the F.H.C. That shows you! Always seemed to me she only thought of pleasing you. If she took a fancy to do something she shouldn’t, only had to tell her you wouldn’t like it, and she’d abandon it on the instant. Used to put me in mind of that rhyme, or whatever it was, I learned when I was a youngster. Something about loving and giving: that was Kitten!”
I have read this comic masterpiece many times and I have always enjoyed it. And I have listened to the almost 25-year-old reading by Eve Matheson. Again, very enjoyable. But this new version read by Owen Findley was just too too funny. His interpretations of all the characters were “bang up to the mark.” Hilarious, thoughtful, and touching. My only quibble was that he spoke too quickly but that was easily remedied by turning the speed down to 85%.
I always kind of wondered why Georgette considered this her best work as almost all of them are pretty brilliant, but after listening to this one again, I can’t argue. It’s famous for being her funniest book, but it had never struck me as particularly romantic. But at the end, when Sherry and Kitten are finally reunited….Well. It was as romantic and tender a scene as she ever wrote made even more so by Owen Findley’s subtle and sensitive reading.
Young Lord Sheringham, “Sherry”, has to get married right away because he’s overextended due to gambling debts and is properly “in the basket.” He is very wealthy but won’t come into his inheritance until he is 25 or married, whichever comes first. When his childhood friend, now a great beauty, refuses his offer he vows to marry the first girl he sees. That would be Hero Wantage whom he happens upon sitting on the side of the road. She is another childhood friend, but more of a tag-along or mascot being 5 or so years younger. An orphan, she has run away from the family who took her in. Their generosity has come to an end and they have given her an ultimatum of either becoming a governess or marrying the very dull and sober curate. Clearly in need of rescuing, she is the perfect candidate! It is a Win-Win! Sherry had always been carelessly fond of her but she has always worshiped the ground he walks on. He takes the sweet and naive girl to London and the fun begins. Sherry doesn’t see any reason why he should alter his bachelor lifestyle for a marriage of convenience. And Hero, who he calls “Kitten” is the last person who would make demands or criticize him in any way. In her eyes, he can do no wrong, much to the bemusement of his loyal best friends simple-minded Ferdy Fakenham, the more knowing Gil Ringwood, and the Byronic George Wrotham, who have a more clear-eyed view of their friend Sherry.
As he is driven to distraction rescuing Kitten from one scrape after another, Sherry grows from a spoiled irresponsible young man about town to embrace his adulthood and responsibilities. He realizes that most of the trouble she gets in is because she is following his example! His crew of friends provide more than their fair share of the humor as they come to embrace Kitten as one of the gang and often take a dim view of Sherry’s affectionate but cavalier treatment of her. But when Kitten runs away (long story) Sherry realizes how much he loves and values her. It all culminates in a comic farce at a posting inn involving an elopement, an abduction, and a punch in the nose. It’s a perfect ending.
This book shares a lot of motifs with some of the old-fashioned Gothics of yore. By yore, I mean the 1960s and 70s. But it goes down a much darker road as far as physical and sexual horror. And it turns at least one of the usual tropes on its head. Luckily (for me) the gross and horrific parts are pretty isolated and not around every corner so I was able to take what there was of those disturbing scenes in stride. I wasn’t bothered by the creepy mushrooms and creeping mold.
Noemí, our heroine, is a young and spirited socialite, who, though a little frivolous, also has a serious side. She is very smart so we understand that most of her flightiness stems from boredom. It is 1950 in Mexico, and Noemí needs her father’s financial support and permission to start her master’s degree in Anthropology. He just wants her to find a suitable husband, but will agree to “let” her go back to University if she will travel to the home of her newly married cousin and childhood friend, Catalina, to check on her. Her father has gotten a very disturbing letter from her and is very concerned.
This house is sick with rot, stinks of decay, brims with every single evil and cruel sentiment…They are cruel and unkind and they will not let me go…I bar my door but still they come, they whisper at nights and I am so afraid of these restless dead, these ghosts, fleshless things…the false faces and false tongues…You must come for me Noemí..the spider walks…You have to save me…Hurry.
Is Catalina going insane or being drugged? Or is she really being haunted? Or possessed? Or is everything under control and Catalina improving as her husband Virgil claims? Highly doubtful.
Understandably alarmed, Noemí hightails it to “High House”, the spooky dilapidated old estate on the mountain to investigate matters and see how she can help her cousin. But the house is completely isolated and Noemí is a guest and there only at the family’s pleasure. Virgil, Catalina’s husband, his cousin Florence, the Mrs. Danvers-like mistress of the house, and Howard Doyle the elderly and sick in mind and body head of the family are firmly in control and hold all of the strings. There is no way they are going to let Noemí just take Catalina and her sizable (and sorely needed) fortune out of their control. From her arrival at the house, Noemí must engage in a cat-and-mouse game with Catalina’s new family with only Florence’s ineffectual and shy son Francis as an ally. She must slice through their lies and obfuscations and somehow fight their power and get Catalina and herself out of their sphere of influence. But Noemí seems to be slowly taken over by something in the house itself. Can Noemí herself escape let alone rescue her cousin?
As the tragic and evil history of the family and what they are up to is revealed, we understand that Noemí must call upon every ounce of her considerable strength and cleverness to escape. But can she escape unscarred? And surely Catalina and Francis are beyond salvation. The secrets and truths are truly dreadful and offensive. Much of the book is slowly paced and the frequent recounting of Noemí’s bizarre and nasty nightmares was of little interest to me. I was frustrated with her blindness to the part drugs probably played in her problems. But the last 20% or so of the book is terrifying and exciting and I was amazed and satisfied at the conclusion. It ends with hope and love and much happier than I expected.
Despite its sometimes over-the-top Gothic elements this was a serious book that incorporates a lot of symbolism, history, and explores the perniciousness of racism based on the belief in eugenics. It was a little out of my usual wheelhouse though I do like psychological horror and domestic thrillers from time to time. I’m not an expert so it was hard to rate. I’d give it a 3 1/2 stars but for the last paragraph which really moved me. 4 stars.
I like a good thriller and welcome paranormal elements in a few types of books. But I didn’t quite expect how all of this played out. I knew something was up when the bowl of nacho sauce exploded in the face of a guy who was being a jerk to our heroine. I’ve read Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, binged Stranger Things, and have seen Carrie. And any reader knows that, despite appearances, if dogs love you, you are a good person at heart, but if they don’t, there is something seriously wrong with you. But I didn’t expect it to be so full-on. I don’t know why it came as such a surprise (not shock-there is a difference) because the clues were there barely 10% into the book
The dog…went on yapping, clawing, baring its teeth, trying to get to me. Eventually, the girl got up and moved, eyeing me as she did. “He’s never like this,” she muttered to herself as she passed by.
Vesper is smart, funny, and beautiful. Too smart and beautiful to be waitressing in a chain restaurant in New Jersey. We learn that she has been on her own for 5 years because shortly before she reached her 18th birthday, she escaped from a strict and fanatical religious cult. While growing up, she had always been indulged and treated as if she was special despite her indifferent and sometimes cruel mother. The loving father she adored had left her and the community when she was 11 and she still yearns for him. She never believed in “The Lord” and felt like an outsider. Yet, outside and free from the cult, she still is an outsider. She does not play well with others. She is lonely and unloved. So when she receives an invitation to attend the wedding of her childhood best friend who is marrying “the only boy she had ever loved”, she can’t resist returning and attending. She is welcomed back with open arms except by her mother (who is a retired “scream queen” movie star). The reader is introduced to Rosie and Brody, the bride and groom-to-be, who are like a Disney princess and her handsome prince come to life.
I wondered what had caught [Rosie’s] attention. She was peach sweet, would stop to admire a rainbow, marvel at a praying mantis.
Wait, what? A praying mantis?
Anyway, early in the book we learn that the cult that has all the hallmarks of fanatical fundamentalist Christianity is not what we have been led to believe.
“Praise to Him.” “Praise to Him.” Their god. Not mine. Never mine. “Hail Satan!” “Hail Satan!” “Hail Satan,” I muttered, infusing my tone with sarcasm to curb my nerves.
Even though I was not surprised, it was shocking to see it in print. And she learns that her father was not like herself: a rebel who left because he didn’t “believe” like the rest of them, but the head honcho himself whom the rest of the community worships. Satan.
It was him. My father. “Look at you,” he said. “My girl.” “What are you doing here?” “I’m here to see you,” he said. Then he gestured around the room. “And my friends. To join the party.” “Praise be!” someone shouted. “Hail Satan!” “Uh . . .” I looked over my shoulder to my mother, who blinked rapidly, fake lashes aflutter. “Everyone,” he said. “Please, rise. It is so good to see you all. It’s been too long. I . . . have been busy. Very, very, very busy.”
After this big reveal halfway through the novel, I was hoping, like Vesper, that her father and his followers were delusional. The clues in the beginning that she has “powers” she is not aware of and an alien or strange nature that repels dogs (and probably cats if there were any in this book) were “just one of those things.”
I was eager to dismiss it all—I didn’t believe in powers or magic or gods or any of that pixie-dust bullshit. I never had, and I refused to start because of my delusional father. I understood that belief was a slippery slope. If you wanted to believe in something, opened yourself up, suddenly you were seeing signs, assigning meaning, taking coincidences as proof. I wouldn’t. I couldn’t.
But finally, the truth is revealed and is impossible to deny. She is not just in a big drug-induced hallucination. She is Satan’s Spawn. “Lucifer Junior”, “The Harbinger”, The Princess of Hell. The Antichrist. A Reluctant Antichrist, but The Antichrist nonetheless. And her role is to be a sacrificial lamb to initiate the Apocalypse and destroy the world the non-Satanists have ruined (Climate change and inflation, it is clarified) leaving no survivors except Satan’s true followers. But Vesper, with a little help from someone unexpected, fights back.
This book did live up to the hype. It was horrific, irreverent, sharp, and funny. “The Princess Diaries meets Dante’s Inferno”* I loved Vesper and her voice. But the book did not address the elephant in the room. And that is, if Satan really does exist, then so does God. If the book had gone deeper and Vesper had had that revelation and dealt with it, the book could have gotten a higher rating from me.
“All kinds of ghastly things may have happened in this tunnel. What’s that?”
The others turned as he said it and when they saw what had frightened Horace he looked a little sheepish. Blackberry was climbing down the ladder. But the cat certainly made an eerie picture as his agile body descended noiselessly….Irene shivered and clutched Horace’s arm.
“There’s something about cats that I don’t quite like,” she said “….not black ones in cellars.”
The shadow of the murdered Vine Thompson still lingers over Judy’s house on Grove Street and once again, her evil doings continue to provide Judy with mysteries to solve and adventures to be had. There is more than one mystery in this fourth book in the series. It starts out innocently enough with Judy and her school friends planning to enter a poster contest to celebrate “Health Week”. Meanwhile, Dr. Bolton has rented out his garage to two strangers who board at Irene’s house. They offer to build a workbench in the Bolton’s cellar with some lumber in the garage. Judy, and Honey will work on their posters there.
Despite her distinct lack of artistic talent, Judy decides to paint a bowl of fruit for her poster.
Golly! It’s bright [Horace] exclaimed “What is it? The sun?”
“Of course not, Silly. Can’t you see it’s in a blue dish?”…
I thought that was the sky.”
“You had the picture upside down.”
“So I did. Hmm! I see now. It’s an orange. Looks as if it’s beginning to go bad. But Judy, seriously, orange leaves aren’t yellow and they aren’t as long as this”…If you just put a little more green in those leaves——
“But they’re not leaves. They’re bananas!”
When Judy wins first prize, everyone is in shock. Sweet Mrs. Bolton wonders if Judy’s poster was taken “for one of those modernistic paintings.” When they go to the exhibit at Brandt’s department store where the posters are being displayed, they see that someone has put Judy’s name on someone else’s beautifully done poster. Why? What are the strange sounds coming from the cellar, and why are papers missing and who ate the apple out of Judy’s bowl of fruit? Why has snobby, mean, and hateful Kay Vincent suddenly befriended poor Irene? Why is Honey behaving so strangely? Why does Kay’s poster have a missing corner and a smudge on it? And most importantly of all, who burned down the High School?
All eyes turn to Judy and she is persona non grata when it is suspected that she took someone else’s poster and claimed it as her own. To make matters worse, it is Honey’s poster that someone has put Judy’s name on, and Honey is not happy. Rumors are spreading that, incredibly, Judy or Honey is the one who burned down the school! And why are the shades always drawn on the car that Irene’s boarders are keeping in Judy’s garage? It all comes to a head when Judy discovers a secret room underneath the Bolton’s cellar complete with a tunnel leading to their garage. I will say no more except to point out that this book was written in 1932, 1 year before Prohibition ended.
This one excelled in tying all of the diverse mysteries into a neatly packaged whole. Both the personal dramas and the genuine criminality that Judy uncovers make for one of the better books in the series. Judy single-handedly extracts a confession from the culprit who started the school fire, and her detective work leads to the disgrace of a prominent citizen of Farringdon. At least we hope so. She even is responsible for getting Irene out of the drudgery of her life as a mill worker. This book advances the relationships between Judy and her friends, and justice is served on all fronts. But have we seen the last of Kay Vincent? Time will tell.
Loved the title. Loved the cover. Loved the premise. The book was a real mess. I usually don’t rate books as low as 2 stars simply because I usually quit reading them well before I feel qualified to pass judgment on them. But this started off well and despite my irritations which built up as the book went on, I was intrigued by the mystery and so I stuck with it, hoping for a big payoff at the end.
Hazel works in a rare bookstore in London but this is her last day as she is about to go to her dream job at Sotheby’s after a short vacation to Paris with her long-term boyfriend. She is sad about leaving because the owners are like her family. Alone in the office, Hazel opens a shipment of rare books and much to her shock they include a manuscript of a children’s fantasy book called Whisperwood and the River of Stars by Peggy Andrews.
When Hazel was a teenager she and her little sister, 6-year-old Flora, were sent to a little farm near Oxford under Operation Pied Piper. This was a scheme at the beginning of WWII to send many of the children away from London to keep them safe from the bombings. Hazel and her sister are fortunate in that they are taken in by Bridey and her son Harry who are very cool and kind. Hazel and her sister are devoted to each other and are further bonded by a fantasy story that Hazel has created and shares with Flora. They “go into” their fantasy story quite often. It is about a land called Whisperwood and is a great secret between just the two of them. Flora relies on Hazel telling her the story whenever she needs comfort and security and is quite enamored with it. Hazel and Harry become infatuated with each other and one day they leave Flora alone asleep in a meadow by a nearby river. The river plays a role in Whisperwood and Flora is attracted by the “river of stars and galaxies” and falls in. She is never seen again and is presumed drowned though her body is never found.
When Hazel looks at the book in the bookstore office it is her secret fantasy story come to life but expanded and embellished with illustrations. Since no one but her and Flora knew about Whisperwood she concludes that Flora must have survived the fall in the river and somehow told the story to someone who told someone else who wrote a book about it. Or could someone have somehow learned about the story before Flora’s disappearance? Or could Flora actually be Peggy Andrews the American author?! The rest of the book is trying to find and talk to the very private and elusive Peggy and chasing down all of the people she knew way back when who might somehow have heard about Whisperwood. This includes her teenage crush, Harry, whom she rejected out of guilt that she was with him instead of watching after her little sister.
There are many reasons why this book did not work for me, but there are several main ones. First of all the details told about Whisperwood interspersed throughout the novel were too precious. I largely skipped over all the twee descriptions. I don’t want to hear about the weird dream you had last night, either. I didn’t like how Hazel fell back with Harry whom she hadn’t seen in 20 years and didn’t really know anymore. She treated her long-term boyfriend shabbily, professing her love to him right to the point where he rightly didn’t believe her and walked out in hurt and frustration. Hazel rubbed me the wrong way from the minute she stole the valuable manuscript from her employer who was supposedly like family and kept delaying fessing up to him until it was too late. “I can explain” is a refrain we hear too often from Hazel about many of her bad decisions.
**Major Spoilers Ahead**
But the absolute most frustrating thing was that the whole book was about the quest to solve how Hazel’s story made its way to America and Peggy Andrews, but in the end, it was nothing but a wild goose chase. A good bit of the book is spent with Peggy, her secretive mother, and their troubled relationship. Twenty-five-year-old Peggy is the same age Flora would be and the reader is teased constantly that Peggy is Flora. Why else would we spend so much time with them and her romance with her boyfriend, “Wren”? But in the end, all of that time and effort came to nothing. The solution to the mystery of what became of Flora came from out of left field from another source entirely. In fact, Flora and Hazel could have been reunited a year before the events of the book even started. But Hazel being Hazel, she sourly refused to be interviewed by a journalist who was writing a series about the lost children of Operation Pied Piper.
So after Hazel, her mother, and Flora are reunited and all of the circumstances of Flora’s disappearance are unraveled and examined, everyone keeps blathering on to everyone else about the wonder of “Whisperwood” landing on Hazel’s desk and how it was a miracle which led to finding Flora. Hazel is told that even the famous illustrator of the book read an “article in the Oxford Mail about your story, about the stolen illustrations and how they led to the solved cold case of your lost sister, the River Child, as they call her.” This false narrative made a good story but it was all nonsense and very irritating. I kept saying, “Wait, What?! What are they talking about?” I read the chain of events over again, to make sure I hadn’t missed anything. And to be fair, they do learn that Flora did survive the river, but Hazel had already come to that conclusion. Because of the brick wall Hazel and company ran into with Peggy and the book, her frustrated mother talks Hazel into meeting with the journalist who has been “hounding” her (Hazel’s words) for over a year. I paraphrase: “Gee Hazel, maybe you should meet with that journalist after all.” “Absolutely Not, Mum! Why drag all of that tragedy up all over again? It would be too painful”. “But Hazel, someone might read the story, and know something.” “Oh. OK, then.” And that meeting is what solves all of the mysteries and gives the book its happy ending for Hazel and Flora (who had been only a phone call away long before this story even started.)
To add to the pointlessness of it all, we learn at the end that distraught teenage Hazel was in the same local chapel that Flora was hidden in right after she was rescued from the river. Hazel even heard her calling out but she was so wrapped up in her own grief and drama that she dismissed the cries she heard as an owl. So Flora needed to never have been lost to begin with if Hazel hadn’t been so self-involved and oblivious.
When I finally came to the end I felt like I had been on a long trip to nowhere. Instead of The Secret Book of Flora Lea it should have been called When a Respected Journalist Wants to Write About What Became of Your Lost Little Sister who Disappeared 20 Years Ago, Take the Call.
What a joy after recent reads to fall back on an old favorite that has one of the most lovable and admirable heroines in all of the great Georgette Heyer’s works. Not to mention one of my favorite heroes. I listened to this on Audible and the narration by Gemma Whelan was excellent. When I am asked what my favorite GH regency is, without thinking twice I usually point to this one. Sometimes another, but most likely this one. I believe it may be the first one I ever read back when I was probably 12 or 13. I am proud of my tween self, too used to the obvious romance and strict formula of contemporary and historical gothics, for pushing through the strange words and mannered sentence structure and so much else, to recognize the sheer brilliance and entertainment value of Georgette Heyer. I became a lifelong devotee and gobbled up the rest of her books like candy.
I won’t go into the plot too much because it’s really not all that important. Heyer’s genius is the world she builds, her wit, her comedy, and her characters. Particularly her secondary characters. The setting is my favorite of the several that Heyer usually employs It’s not a road trip, at an Inn, or at a country estate. It is set in the glittery world of London at the height of the season where the elite of society engage in all manner of entertainments and activities with an eye to marrying off their daughters to eligible bachelors who, in turn, need heirs to carry on their line.
Our heroine, Arabella, a country vicar’s daughter, is sent to London to be brought out by her society matron Godmother. On her way to the big city, she meets Robert Beaumaris when she is forced to ask for shelter at his hunting box due to a carriage breakdown. Mr. Beaumaris is the richest, most admired, and feted Corinthian in the land and is constantly being pursued by hopeful young females. He assumes that Arabella is one of their ilk and she overhears him explaining this to his guest Lord Fleetwood. Being a girl of spirit, she is mightily offended and is goaded to portray herself as a fabulously wealthy heiress to disabuse him of his false assumption and to teach him a lesson.
She contrived, without precisely making so vulgar a boast, to convey the impression that she was escaping from courtships so persistent as to amount to persecution; and Mr Beaumaris, listening with intense pleasure, said that London was the very place for anyone desirous of escaping attention.
Of course, he sees right through her and it amuses him to make her the belle of the season which he can do by merely not looking bored in her presence.
Because of Mr. Beaumaris’s flattering attentions, Arabella’s season fast becomes a success beyond her wildest dreams. When she and her Godmother become aware that the whole of London believes her to be fabulously wealthy, it certainly explains why gazetted fortune hunters are hanging around a poor vicar’s daughter. Arabella, whose conscience is finely honed thanks to her upbringing, feels terribly guilty and to make matters more awkward, she is falling for the sophisticated Mr. Beaumaris. She can’t bear to tell him what a lying silly fool she was. Not to mention his power, with a glance, to squash all of her popularity and her mother’s hopes of her attracting an eligible suitor. As for Mr. Beaumaris, much to his bemusement, he unexpectedly finds himself wound around her little finger. He has grown to realize that not only is Arabella beautiful and unspoiled, but she is a person of great moral and physical courage. In short, the girl he has been looking for all of his life. Not that he was looking for such a girl of course, but someone of substance who would not bore him. The scenes where Arabella, in his presence, rescues a chimney sweep from his cruel master and routs a gang of boys torturing a dirty mongrel, are two of the most entertaining and heartwarming scenes in all of Heyer. The scenes in which the cool and sophisticated Mr. Beaumaris agrees to provide each of these unattractive unfortunates with safe havens and their subsequent effect on his formerly peaceful household (and him) follow closely behind.
The delights of this book are many. Some of my favorites other than those mentioned above, are:
The scenes with Arabella’s large and loving family at the beginning and Mr. Beaumaris’ description of his visit to her family in the wilds of Yorkshire to ask permission for her hand at the end.
Arabella, her sister, and her mother’s preparations to ensure Arabella is not viewed as a country bumpkin when she is introduced to society. And Arabella’s astonishment and secret amusement at the irony when Mr. Beaumaris compliments her on setting an example of taste and modesty in her jewelry and attire that her fellow debutantes are trying to copy.
Mr. Beaumaris’s conversations with and asking for the advice of Ulysses, the rescued mutt that immediately becomes slavishly devoted to him. Heyer’s detailed descriptions of Ulysses’s behavior make him one of the most entertaining characters in the book. The author’s lifelong love and knowledge of dogs shines through.
Chase that cur out of here, Joe! …‘Do nothing of the sort, Joe!’ interrupted Mr Beaumaris. ‘Is he yours sir?’ gasped the landlord. ‘Certainly he is mine. A rare specimen: his family tree would surprise you!’
Mr. Beaumaris’ visit to his grandmother, one of the great dames of her time, to prepare her for his impending marriage, if Arabella will have him.
When the book takes a long side trip to deal with the cautionary tale of Arabella’s brother Bertram’s arrival in London, I resented, in the past, the time away from Arabella’s adventures and romance. But this time, thanks to the narration, many of the scenes of Bertram’s descent into danger and probable disgrace were highlights. His desperation in trying to gamble his way out of debt in an exclusive gaming house playing at a table banked by none other than “The Nonpareil” himself. And how Beaumaris navigates the dilemma of how to handle the situation. And Arabella braving the squalor and danger of the most poverty-stricken area of London to rescue him. Leaky Peg! Quattern Sue! (and her gin-drinking baby!)
In thinking about Arabella, I wonder whom of Georgette Heyer’s many wonderful heroines would take on the salvation of dirty climbing boys, abused horses, mangy curs, sick parlor maids, or slatternly prostitutes. That is, should they be so unhappy as to come across them, of course. At the end of the book, I took a minute to envision Arabella’s and Robert’s future life beyond the pages of the book. As well as a devoted society wife and mother, I am convinced she will become a famous philanthropist and a great lady who will tackle the many evils of the day. But in large ways as well as small. In this, she will be ably assisted by her husband who, though not getting his hands dirty, will unfailingly support and defend her against the disapproval of their peers with his great wealth and influence. Perhaps he will even run for office with Arabella’s persistent encouragement?
I usually read Laurie R. King’s Russell/Holmes mysteries in book form so I can look for clues and check for understanding as I read. And I collect, and therefore buy, her books in Hardback because they, or at least the dust jackets, are so beautiful. I read this one on Audible because I had a credit I kinda needed to use. Nevertheless, I enjoyed listening to this 18th in the series. Forgetting the well-done audible performance, the book itself was extraordinary. To me it was right up there with her first three: The Beekeeper’s Apprentice, A Monstrous Regiment of Women, A Letter to Mary, and her 14th book,The Murder of Mary Russell. King peoples many of her novels with real-life historical personages who intermingle with fictional icons which adds so much to their appeal. In the course of the series, we meet people such as Lord Peter Wimsey, Kimbal O’Hara (Rudyard Kipling’s Kim) Dashiell Hammett, Cole Porter, Elsa Maxwell, T.E. Lawrence, and J.R.R. Tolkien. But like The Murder of Mary Russell, one of the most compelling aspects of this book is the exploration of the backstories of Arthur Conan Doyle’s creations by way of Laurie R. King by way of Mary Russell’s journals. In King’s books, Sherlock is not a fictional character created by Doyle but a real person whom his friend Watson (who is only mentioned in passing a time or two and whom Mary calls “Uncle John”) has based a series of famous detective stories. The resulting fame is sometimes very much an irritation and inconvenience to the real detective. The books begin after Holmes has “retired” to the country and meets 15-year-old Mary Russell, who gives him a new lease on life. He takes her on as an apprentice and later marries her. Or she marries him, maybe I should say.
In The Murder of Mary Russell King delved into Mrs. Hudson’s eye-popping history. In this one, the curtain is flung open on Sherlock and Mycroft Holmes’ family background and a past childhood tragedy. Of course, this tale of Holmes’s past is not based on ACD canon. All we know from the creator of Sherlock Holmes is that Sherlock’s grandmother was the sister of non-fictional French Artist, Horace Vernet. From that little nugget, King weaves a fantastical yet meticulously researched tale that is grounded firmly in Sherlockiana lore and respected speculative theories concerning the great detective. I won’t go into detail, but I will just say that Laurie takes it to a whole new level. I was blown away by the great reveal at the end which I suspect that I would have suspected had I been able to carefully read the book rather than listen to it. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.
Having just arrived home from Transylvania, Holmes and Russell are looking forward to a quiet visit with Holmes’ son, the artist, Damian Adler, and his little family. But it is not to be. The Adler home was broken into by a machete-wielding intruder shortly after some mysterious trunks and crates had arrived for Damien. Now the Adler family has gone missing. Mary, hobbled by a broken ankle is left to her own devices while Sherlock tracks down his son. Of course, Damian’s mysterious boxes are not safe from Mary’s curiosity. What she discovers in the trunks keeps her well-occupied in decoding and translating the fascinating journals of a girl named Lakshmi. We are introduced to her as a child as she is transplanted from France to India. The journals end with her settled in England after fleeing India under great danger. But what does she have to do with the Vernets, Sherlock Holmes, or Damian Adler? Or is the connection with his mother Irene?
The answer is both intriguing, moving, and even amusing. I had a lump in my throat and at the last, was chuckling. And I can’t wait for King’s next entry in the series. I hope and trust the plot will pick up where this one leaves off and build on the last sentence: Well,I thought, This is certainly going to make for an interesting conversation when next we see Mycroft.”
The Python stopped by the table. “Let’s do a roundup here. Your top client is charged with murder, his mother is crawling on the floor doing cleanup, his sister has been working her ass off in your kitchen when she should have been a guest, and topping it all off, Tyler Capello—a player you have not signed—shows up at your party with his slimy ex-agent who sets your place on fire. Is that about right?” He punched out the words. “Am I missing anything?” The River was never at a loss for words. Until now.
Susan Elizabeth Phillips is an automatic buy for me both for loyalty’s sake and because even her lesser books are always enjoyable on the whole. There are always hours of entertainment to be had. Nevertheless, I opened this book with a bit of trepidation. She has not been as consistent lately. Also I’m a lot pickier about chick lit than I used to be. I’m much less about the romance and the usual tropes these days. But SEP always delivers effortless humor, and is such an engaging writer, that she drew me right in like the premier Rom-Com writer she is. I was happily reading along thinking how similar this was to one of her best books, Match Me if You Can, when I realized that I really didn’t like the main character, Rory. Not a good thing. She was a brat. And to make it worse, SEP seemed to think that just because Rory is self-aware and acknowledges her brattiness to herself, it somehow excuses her behavior and makes her more likable. Not to me. She does this throughout the book, until she finally actually ratchets down her nonsense and starts to get it together.
Rory has always felt “less than” thanks to her father and stepmother who always put her down and compared her to their perfect son, her half-brother, Clint. He is now a star football player playing for the Chicago Stars and a client of Brett, a sports agent who works for Heath Champion “The Python”, the hero of the aforementioned Match Me if You Can. Clint is infatuated with a beautiful shallow gold digger and is on the outs with both Rory and Brett because they tried to tell him the truth about her. Early in the book (slight spoiler), Ashley is murdered and Clint disappears. This is ample excuse to throw the two leads together to solve the murder, find Clint, and needless to say, fall in lust, then love, as is usual in this genre. While driving together to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, I was irritated by Rory and Brett’s totally gratuitous encounter with some survivalist conspiracy theory MAGA types. Although played for laughs, it wasn’t that funny and served no purpose but to give the author the excuse to vent her rage against these people and to espouse her views on true patriotism. Even though I largely agree with her, I just wanted to tell her to settle down. One sided portrayals do more harm than good. I waited in vain for some balance. She included a similar group in an earlier book, but they were well-rounded and had some relevance to the plot.
I didn’t enjoy the banter that SEP is so good at as much as I usually do because most of it was based on Rory’s unnecessarily rude comments and it made me dislike her even more. About halfway through, Clint is found and, Whoops! Strike three. I despised him even more than Rory. I hope SEP does not use Clint as the hero of her next Chicago Stars book because, like his sister Rory, he was a brat. In his case, he was a petulant spoiled whiny brat. It was disappointing because he was described by all and sundry in the highest possible terms as honest, moral, talented and smart. Wish we had seen that side of him much sooner than we did. As it was, it was too little too late.
Thank Goodness it is about at this time that Rory has an epiphany and starts to behave in a more mature manner.
Sitting here surrounded by gravestones, she saw the truth. She didn’t have the guts to put herself on the line. Big dreams without follow-through was her mode, and the reason was blindingly clear. As long as she didn’t really try, she didn’t have to risk failing.
Throughout most of the book, she refuses to accept any financial help from all of the rich people in her life to pull herself out of her debt and start realizing her dream of making chocolate for a living. She finally realizes that instead of accepting charity, she can accept money as an investment in her business. That bright idea took a lot longer than it should have considering the desperate straits in which she had found herself. We know what a genius she is at her craft thanks to all of the chocolate porn. Unfortunately, about the time Rory and Clint start to get less irritating, our hero, Brett, who I hadn’t had any problems with, turns into a stalker. When Rory confronts him about his feelings towards her, he blows it and won’t admit that he loves her. (Possibly because he doesn’t know he’s in love with her, which is another Chick-Lit trope I am so tired of). Rory rightly tells him to get lost. And he. Will. Not. Leave. Her. Alone.
In the middle of all this Rory’s stepmother appears on the scene and, as I suspected, she is not the evil witch that Rory had made her out to be. I liked her romance with an on-the-spectrum nerdy guy although it was still very trope-y. What about Ashley’s real killer? You may well ask. I won’t say who it was but it was extremely lame. Probably #1 on the list of Things Not to Do in a murder mystery.
All in all, despite SEP’s writing talent and humor, I felt like her heart wasn’t really in this one. It had too much in common with Match Me if You Can (quirky feisty girl meets Master of the Universe) With some plot things thrown in and some subtracted to make it just different enough. But Susan Elizabeth Phillips is still on my automatic buy list. Because the good thing about inconsistency is that if an author’s latest book is a disappointment, that means that maybe her next one will be great. But please, Elizabeth, can we just have a heroine with a normal profession next time? How about a teacher or an accountant instead of a matchmaker, opera singer, puppeteer, portrait painter, Genius Physics Professor, Televangelist’s widow, former child star (twice), First Lady of the United States, etc. etc.?
Jennifer Crusie is always a reliable purveyor of fun and funny contemporary romances. Her interesting and likable characters, effortless humor, and the ever popular “witty banter” cast most of her contemporaries and successors in the shade. Her heroines never get stuck in their own heads to avoid moving forward solely as an author’s device to create conflict. To my memory, I’ve never silently screamed in frustration at the stubborn stupidity of a Jennifer Crusie character. This book is an early one from 1994 and was originally published by Harlequin as one of their Temptation series of romances.
Tess is a liberal-minded do-gooder who was raised in a hippie commune. She doesn’t care about social status or money. She shops at thrift stores and is a teacher of needy children. When the book opens she has just broken up with Nick who is her opposite in every way. He is a conservative lawyer in an elite if stodgy “old money” firm whose #1 goal in life is to make partner. Tess has just lost her teaching job because the school just lost its funding. The key to Nick realizing his ambition is to land the account of a famous conservative author at an exclusive weekend house party. In order to project stability and the traditional values that are so prized by his firm, he invites Tess to pose as his fiance. Why the opinionated free spirit Tess of all people? Because she actually reads books and despite their differences he really loves her. She feels the same and conveniently is motivated to behave and keep her opinions to herself because a potential new employer will also be in attendance. She figures she can teach the rich kids for a much higher salary and better hours and then volunteer at the foundation which was forced to let her go. But can she restrain her propensity to speak her mind and be the demure, conventional, and proper fiance?
In the course of the book, both Tess and Nick learn to respect each other’s values with some bumps along the way. Their second chance romance is satisfying if predictable. A secondary romance between her best friend Gina, an Italian professional dancer and Nick’s best friend Park, the scion of the family firm that Nick works for provides most of the suspense and surprises. Park is somewhat of a dim-bulb and playboy who is firmly under the thumb of his snobby and judgemental parents. They definitely would not approve of high school dropout Gina, if Park had the guts to introduce her, that is. Into the mix there is a little mystery involving Tess’s upbringing in the commune, the far-right author, and how he got his filthy hands on a series of fairy tales that were written for Tess one summer by a wise visitor who became somewhat of a mentor and father-figure to the young girl. There was a plot twist I didn’t see coming and a very funny and climactic family dinner that ultimately leads to comeuppances, rewards, happy endings, and justice for all.
It’s a 3 1/2 star unpretentious frothy read. But I bumped it up to 4 stars for the sake of one character: Nick’s personal assistant, the cool, collected, and ultra-competent Christine. She is Nick’s secret weapon who knows all, sees all, and sometimes deigns to save the day.
Judy’s hands trembled and her gray eyes were dark with apprehension as she lifted the loose floorboards and looked. “Good Heavens!” The two boards fell back across the open space with a crash as Judy uttered this startled exclamation. She simply sat back on her heels and refused to think until her mind had been prepared for this appalling thing she had discovered.
In the last book, we learned that Peter is the son of Grace Thompson who was rejected by her parents, Peter’s grandparents, The Dobbses, after she ran off with the oldest son of Vine Thompson, a criminal gang leader. When Grace died, after having another baby, who apparently also died, The Dobbses adopted her 3-year-old son, Peter, and raised him.
This book opens with Arthur driving Judy and her friends out to the country to visit an antique store and tea room. After admiring the antiques, they go into the tea room for a snack. Horace asks a pretty girl who is playing the piano to dance. But they soon suspect that her loud piano playing was to distract the owners and guests from the antique store being robbed. The thieves and the piano player make their getaway by stealing Arthur’s beloved car. After the police come, Judy and her friends chase them down and end up almost getting run over by the gang when they get out of their car and try to block the road. At the last minute, the young girl turns the wheel from the driver and saves their lives. She is injured and the grateful Boltons take her home to recover where they learn she has amnesia.
The heart of this book is uncovering the mystery of the girl’s background. Judy calls her “Honey” as they don’t know her name and she has honey-colored hair. She is sweet, eager to please, and grateful to the Boltons for taking her in. But is she a thief and part of a criminal family? Or was she kidnapped? Judy uncovers some lies Honey has told but doesn’t want to believe that Honey is anything other than the good and lovely person she appears to be. But whom was Honey meeting in secret in the dead of night and what was in the package that the stranger gave her? And what are those chimes Judy keeps hearing in her home seemingly out of nowhere? To uncover the truth Dr. Bolton invites a psychiatrist friend from New York City to observe Honey. Thus, we meet Pauline Faulkner, his daughter, who becomes a good friend of Judy and plays a part in this and several other of her mysteries down the road. Judy starts keeping a notebook to record clues and observations and discovers many inconsistencies that make Honey suspicious (to the reader, at least). She wants to catch the thieves that almost killed her and her friends as well as recover the stolen antiques and discover what the connection is between the gang and Honey. When Mrs. Dobbs, Peter’s grandmother, has a stroke she becomes strangely attached to Honey and starts calling her “Grace,” the name of her dead daughter.
While Honey is caring for Mrs. Dobbs, Judy discovers a musical vase that was stolen from the antique store hidden under the floorboards in Honey’s bedroom. That solves the mystery of the chimes but things are looking very dark indeed for the Boltons’ young house guest. Judy feels angry and betrayed. Can Honey really be the sneaky and criminal liar that all the evidence seems to indicate? Judy thinks so and wants her arrested immediately. The cooler heads of her parents and Peter persuade Judy to not judge until they hear Honey’s explanation.
When Judy gets a letter from Pauline who has been doing some detective work for her in New York City, she thinks she has all of the answers and confronts Honey with her disturbing discoveries. But she is not prepared for the story that Honey has to tell. By the end of the book, there are tears aplenty but they are tears of happiness and Honey will start her life anew with a “clean slate.”
Rebekah's Readings and Watchings 