Just Like That by Gary Schmidt

 When Meryl Lee's best friend is killed suddenly in a car accident, she finds she can't face going back to school.  Her parents decide she needs a new start, so they arrange for her to attend a catholic girl's school in Maine.  At first the school is terrible. The other girls come from wealthy backgrounds, and Maryl Lee feels like she will never fit in.  Then she meets Matt, a boy who has been on his own since his own parents disappeared when we was only 6 or 7.   When a kindly school administrator encourages the friendship between the two misfits, things start to change.  As they both come to deal with their fear and grief, they are able to reach out to other students at the school until they form a ring of love and support.  Their new security is threatened by something in Matt's past, and something in Meryl Lee's future.  Will their friendship weather he gale-force winds that threaten it?

I am pretty much willing to read anything Gary Schmidt has written.  His book, Pay Attention, Carter Jones is one of my favorite books of the last decade.  I liked this book as well, but not as much as some of the others I have read by Schmidt.  There was something about the voice of the main character, Meryl Lee, that felt stilted and slowed down the narrative.  Though the story had the heartfelt warmth of other Schmidt books, it dragged, and I kept feeling like I wanted it to hurry up and get on with the story.  The most redeeming element was several laugh-out-loud boarding school hijinks sequences that didn't really move the story forward, but that were just lots of fun.  I also thought the main message--that things can just as suddenly go better as they can suddenly get worse-- is a strangely comforting idea. (400p. 2021)

A Crown of Snow and Ice by Melanie Cellier

 Celine has been invited to Eldon by the strange princesses from that country who participated in the Princess Tourney. Before she goes, her godmother gives her the power to command fire.  When she arrives in Eldon she discovers the value of her gift.  The whole kingdom is freezing over, and is clearly under a curse.  All the citizens are distant and apathetic. Celine knows she must do something to break the curse before everyone in the country dies of starvation because no one cares enough to grow food. She manages to free Prince Oliver first, and they work together to try to figure out the root cause of the curse before a neighboring noble marches into the capital and takes over the government.

I had a different book on hold, but when I started listening to it, it was much too spicy for my taste. So, with nothing else in my cue, I turned back to Cellier, knowing I would fine a clean, entertaining story.  Really, this story is just like all the other stories in the Four Kingdoms cannon, but I hadn't read one in a while, and it was just about at the right level for me since I was stressing over some things at work.  I actually didn't like the story of the Snow Queen when I was a child.  The Snow Queen with her power to freeze other people's hearts is a decently scary villain.  Reading this story made me realize how much CS Lewis drew on the fairytale of the Snow Queen when he wrote the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. I am sure a lot of ink has been spilled about why Lewis chose her as the foil to Aslan.  (2018, 326 p)

The Rose Code by Kate Quinn

In 1940 three very different young women end up working as code breakers at the secret intelligence base in Bletchley Park, England.  Osla, is a wealthy but lonely debutante who is doing "her bit" in the war to try to earn respect. Mab is from East London, and has clawed her way up from poverty in hopes of marrying above her station and giving her future children a better start than she got. Beth is a socially awkward spinster who has been emotionally abused by her mother her whole life, but who has a naturally brilliant, almost savant ability to recognize patterns. They form un unusual friendship that is eventually tried to its breaking point by the pressures of war and their vow of secrecy about their work. Years later, one last puzzle, one last code to be broken, brings them back together and allies them against a common foe.

This is a long book, and I almost didn't make it through.  Like many WWII books, the characters start out so hopeful but as the war goes on things start to fall apart.  I imagine that is how it really was for people living in the war zone, but I was having a stressful week, and the character's stress was leaking into my own life. I pressed on, though and was rewarded with a wonderful ending for the book.  Quinn is both a great writer and a meticulous researcher.  Several characters in the book were inspired by real people and Quinn did a lot of work to make the settings and conditions of life at Bletchley Park as realistic as possible.  There is a long-ish post script that separates for the reader the fact and the fiction of the book.  Even though reading the book was tough for me, and there were one or two particularly grim scenes (edging past PG-13 to the R realm, though the author doesn't give a lot of detail, just suggests deplorable activities), I will be recommending this book to my friends who like WWII historical fiction. (656 pages, 2021)

The Boy in the Black Suit by Jason Reynolds

Matt's mom has died and his Dad has started to getting drunk every evening. Matt is reeling from it all, but is sensible enough to know that someone has to hold it together, so he goes in search of a job. He ends up finding one at the funeral that handled his mother's service.  He mortician takes him under his wing, and Matt finds it strangely comforting to see others who are suffering as much as he did when his mother died.  Then there is a car accent, and a girl, and Matt's life gets even more crazy. 

I am pretty much willing to read about anything by Jason Reynolds.  This is not one of his most famous books, but I still really enjoyed it.  He writes, understanding how gritty inner city life can be, but somehow he shows how the human soul can get through it and rise above.  His use of language is near genius, not because it is flowery, but because he captures real feelings and real language flawlessly.  I feel like his writing makes me love inner city kids who are surrounded by gangs and death and violence, but still get a charge out of their first romance, and learn to make cookies with their moms.  I am so glad Jason Reynolds became a writer. (2016, 272 p.)

The Fallen by David Baldacci

 Amos Decker's boss thinks Decker needs a vacation,  but Amos doesn't have any family or friends to visit.  Alex Jamison, his colleague at the FBI, takes pity on him and invites him to come with her as she visits her sister's family in a rundown town in Ohio.  They are not there long before Decker discovers a bizarre murder in the house across the street.  Decker soon learns that there have been a series of strange murders in the town, and decides he is going to help the local police get to the bottom of it all.  As he and Alex investigate, they soon become targets and narrowly escape attempts on their lives. In the economically depressed town, riddled with opiate abuse,  good guys can become bad guys, and no one is as they seem.

This is the fourth in the Memory Man series. I felt like this one had a little different vibe than the earlier ones.  Amos and Alex aren't on an official assignment so there isn't a lot of FBI involvement.  It has more of a small town, cozy mystery feeling.  That being said, I liked it.  Baldacci is really good at laying down clues during the narrative, and then gathering them all up at the end in a way that makes sense.  I also like the Amos and Alex characters, and the way that Amos' unique personality and abilities both tie them together and strain their relationship. I did feel like in the ending of this one there were too many people "conveniently" confessing. I kept thinking of Scooby Doo, "and we would have gotten away with it if it hadn't been for those darn kids." Still, this is another great mystery that a couple might enjoy listening to together on a long road trip, or reading out loud together after dinner each night. (2018, 432 p)
.