The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion by Beth Brower Volumes 1&2

 Emma is an orphan and an heiress, so why has she been relegated to the garret room in her own home?  It has to do with her step-cousin Archibald and The Incident that gave him The Scare. Since The Incident, Archibald has had it out for her, and used his guardianship of her finances (until she comes of age) to purchase dozens of expensive silk dressing gowns and to purposefully lose at the races.  Emma must use her considerable force of will to regain control of whatever fortune she has left, and find a way to support herself on a very limited income.  She is recruited to become the less attractive foil of her very wealthy friend, and by that gains entrance into the center of London Society.  She also rents out part of her domicile to a mysterious stranger whom the neighborhood ghost called "a man of war." She finds she likes the brooding tennant, and looks forward to the notes that get passed under the garret dividing wall. But he is not the only man of intrigue in her life.  There is the sham cousin of her friend, Jake, and the charming and commanding Lord Islington. What is an education deprived, impoverished, heiress to do?

My daughter, Diane, recommended these to me.  They are not available in audio yet, so I waited until I was going on a trip to read a print-based version.  They are unusual books.  Each volume is quite short, and all the chapters are written as entries in Emma's journal. Both short volumes ended quite suddenly without any satisfying conclusion.  Emma has a irreverent, sarcastic personality, world weary but delighting in the ridiculousness she sees in the people around her. They are super fun to read, mostly because of the snappy patter between characters. Now that my vacation is over and I have only read the first two of the seven in the series, I have to decide whether to press on and read the others, or wait until my next vacation. (V. 1, 2022, 119 p.  V. 2. 2022, 160 p)

Mrs Quinn's Rise to Fame by Olivia Ford

 Jenny Quinn is 77 years old and a great fan of the Britain Bakes TV show.  She is, herself an accomplished baker, and so decides to apply to be on the show. She has been a stay-home wife of Bernard for almost 60 years, and is embarrassed to tell him that she has applied.  Instead she makes excuses for trying out new and ever more complex recipes.  As her journey toward fame goes forward, the old family recipes she bakes bring up memories of a single devastating mistake from her past. Will her success in the kitchen give her the courage to face the bitterness of the past?

A friend recommended this to me and I really enjoyed it.  After all the shallow, self-centered characters of the previous book, the deep rich relationships in this one are as sweet and Jenny's treacle tarts. The writing is lovely, and Bernard is the most unlikely but likeable of all love interests.  I also enjoyed the "behind the scenes" view of being in a televised baking show.  I wonder if the author was allowed to visit and research what it is like to be on the British Baking Show (for that it what it was) or if she just has a very vivid imagination. The book was very sweet and poignant, but also delightful. I will be recommending this one to a lot of friends who like clean reads. (284 p. 2024)

The Secret of Platform 13 by Eva Ibbotson

 Kings Cross Station has a magical door between the world of the humans and the world of the Fey.  Every nine years it opens for just one week.  One year four creatures of the Fairy Realm come through the door looking for their prince who was lost through the door nine years earlier.  Ghosts direct them to a horrible boy named Raymond who is unkind and thoroughly spoiled. Duty bound, and with the help of the servant boy, Ben, they try various tactics to try to convince the boy to return to his native land and his royal parents who have mourned him for so long. 

I thought I had read this book years ago, but as I went through it, I had either totally forgotten it, or I never read it in the first place.  Ibbotson is a wonderful storyteller. This is classic children's literature at its best.  The conflicts are straightforward and there is a healthy heap of humor in every chapter.  Good is good and evil is evil and you are always sure right will win out in the end. Raymond is deliciously horrible and one can't help but wonder if he was a model for Dudley Dursley when Rowling wrote Harry Potter three years later. Odge is also an endearing character. I enjoyed it and now I am tempted to go back and read more Ibbotson. (256 p. 1994)

Winter in Paradise by Elin Hilderbrand

 Irene is spending New Year's Day alone because her affectionate but often absent husband is away again for work. Then she receives a call that he has been killed in a helicopter crash. She calls her two grown sons and together they rush to the Caribbean island of St John.  There they discover that their father/husband owns a villa where he kept a young local woman for company, who was also killed in the same accident.  As they piece together the mystery of their fathers/husband's death, they start to be charmed by the local culture, and people. Abandoning the search for truth, they instead each go on the hunt for romance and companionship.

This book was recommended to be by one of my patrons, but I will admit that I only got through 4/5th of it.  It was not only too spicy for my taste, but I also realized that all the main characters where pretty shallow and I didn't really like any of them. Even though I was mildly interested in what actually happened to the husband (it was clear that he wasn't really dead, but that he had faked his death to get out of some kind of trouble with the law), the author wasn't focusing on the mystery at all, but instead on how quickly the mother and both brothers (one of which was married with a child) abandoned their whole prior life to go chasing after people they had just met. Maybe if I had spent the final two hours to see how it turned out I might have liked it better, but after I had to skip several steamy pages a second time, I decided it wasn't worth it. Sorry, Ms Hilderbrand, you are going on my "Authors to avoid" list. (2019, 336 p)

The Camel Club by David Baldacci

 Oliver Stone spends much of his time watching the White House.  He and four friends meet together weekly as the "Camel Club" to discuss anything strange and to chase conspiracy theories. Then one night, by chance, they witness a brutal but very professional murder.  Each of them have a checkered past with the government or the military, and therefore don't believe they will be taken seriously if they come forward with what they saw. Instead, they decide to try to solve the mystery of the murder on their own.  Meanwhile, one of the President's CIA guards, Alex, is assigned to investigate the death, but is taken off the case when he refuses to accept the FBI ruling that it was a suicide.  He and a DOJ agent team up with the Camel Club to dig deeper and by doing so expose a plot that may threaten the peace of the entire world.

Here is another political thriller by Baldacci.  Like the other books by him that I have read, it is relatively clean but contains a fair amount of language and violence. Baldacci is good at intricate plotting with a large host of characters, and as you are reading you have to stay on your toes to keep track of all the different names and backstories. Baldacci gives each one a personality and motivation. He also sneaks in a fair bit of social commentary. (At one point I skipped to the end of a chapter because I got a little tired of it.) The book is old, so the politics it deals with are dated. Also, the series of events at the end of this book are pretty improbable.  As I was reading, I thought to myself, this is a fantasy as much as  a realistic fiction. Still it was fast paced, mostly engaging, and interesting, and I am glad to have another book to recommend for our middle-age-plus male patrons. (2006, 624 p)

Grace and the Preacher by Kim Vogel Sawyer

 Grace is an orphan but helps her widowed uncle with his duties as the minister of a small Iowa town. When her uncle decides to retire he picks from the stack of applicants from the divinity school a single man in hopes that Grace will find a long awaited match.  Grace corresponds with the new minister, Reverent Rufus Dille, for several months before his scheduled arrival and their relationship develops through their letters. Theophil Garrison works in a livery station in Missouri and lives with uncaring relatives.  When he discovers that his hateful cousins are getting out of jail, he decides he is in danger and must flee. On the way, he finds Reverend Dille sick by the side of the road and takes him to a doctor.  When Dille dies, Theo decides, in order to be safe from his murderous cousins, that he will take on the preacher's identity and go to Iowa. He soon discovers he knows nothing of how to be a proper preacher.  Grace, thinking Theo is Rufus, is surprised by his unpolished manners, but she, along with the rest of the town, comes to recognize he has a good heart. Theophil soon has everything he ever wanted--a good job, people who respect and care for him, and a beautiful girl who loves him--so why does he feel so bad?

I haven't read something by Sawyer is quite a while, and I had forgotten how overtly religious her books are. There is a lot of preaching going on in the book, and not all by the minister. Neither Grace or Theophil has any degree of wit or even intelligence.  I usually don't like reading about people who are stupid, but even though Grace and Theophil aren't particularly intelligent, they are not stupid.  They are making good choices based on their knowledge. They are simple souls trying to make their way in the world and everyone is trying very hard to do what they think God wants them to do. The book has a different kind of vibe from most of the historical romances I read, but I enjoyed it nonetheless. I am, myself, pretty overtly religious and I was Ok with them spouting scripture and repeating
admonition to turn to the Lord. I would not want to read this style of book every week. It is not great literature, but it suited my mood this week. I will probably read more from this author when I again need a break from the grit I find in other books. (2017, 352 p.)

Harry Potter and the Cursed Child by J.K. Rowling, Jack Thorne, John Tiffany

 Harry and Ginny's youngest son, Albus, is starting at Hogwarts. He has never been close to his famous father, and when he makes friends with Scorpius Malfoy, the gap between them widens. One day he overhears his father talking with Mr. Diggory who is pleading for Harry to use a time twister to go back in time to save Cedric. Albus decides to go back himself and right some of the wrongs he believes his father has committed. With the help of Scorpius, they go back to the year of the Tri-Wizard tournament and try to keep Cedric from winning, but their meddling has disastrous results. Once again Harry, Ron and Hermione must jump into action and try to put the timeline back before it is too late. 

When this play script was first released as a book I made a decision not to read it.  I had heard that it wasn't that good, and I didn't want to mar my memories of the series with a below par sequel.  Recently, however, I heard that they were considering making a movie of the script so I decide I better read through it. I actually think the plot wasn't too bad.  The plot had some of the feel of the books, and some of the interpersonal relationships were in keeping with might be suggested in the books.  The thing that wasn't so great was the characterizations of the original characters.  They felt counterfeit.  Harry was kind of like Harry but not quite. Ron was a caricature of Ron, instead of the real Ron. Draco Malfoy was perhaps the worst.  He was one of the really deep and complex characters in the book, but in the play he is almost comic relief. 

After I read the play I found out that the rumors about the  movie are false.  The original cast is not willing to come back as their adult selves, and it wouldn't really work without them. After reading the script, if they had made the movie, I would have gone to see it. (2016, 343 p)

The Princess Protection Program by Alex London

 Rosamund has been asleep in a tower, surrounded by thorns for 100 years.  Then suddenly she is awakened by someone with body odor and chapped lips kissing her, Yuck!  Prince Percy proclaims his undying love in a carefully prepared speech, but Rosamund isn't ready to commit to marrying someone she just met. She runs to the castle bathroom, where she finds a magic door that leads to a place where fairytale princesses can escape the unpleasant parts of their stories.  At first, it seems like a great place.  She gets to know Cinderella, the Little Mermaid, Snow White and other princesses (and one prince) who didn't like the choices their stories where giving them.  The head mistress is a fairy godmother, and seems to have the fairytale refugee's best interests a heart. Outside the gates of the "school" is another story.  There are teenagers who spend their whole time eating pizza or looking at the cell phones but also monsters that want to return the royals to their stories. Although Rosamund knows the dangers, her natural curiosity compels her to explore this other world, and as she does, she learns things that suggest her new sanctuary is not all that it appears. 

This is a story aimed at the kids who like the "Whatever After" series or the "Descendants" books. It is cute, but also deals with serious questions like, "what if following your dreams means hurting someone else?" and "How much freedom are you willing to give up to be safe?"  Some elements of the story make it appropriate for fairly young readers.  For example, nobody actually gets hurts or kills anyone, and their is a pretty strong idea that no one is truly evil, they are just misguided. One of my favorite parts of the book is a battle between some unicorns and a dragon. The unicorns are the sparkly kind with brightly colored manes whose flatulence smells like freshly baked cookies.  Protective parents should be aware, however, that the reason there is one prince at the academy is because he prefers to find another prince, rather than a princess, for his happily-ever-after.  If you are not ready to expose your third grader to that concept, then you might want to avoid this book.  Otherwise, it is a fun addition to the fractured fairytale genre. (224 p, 2024)

Faith by Beverly Watts

 Faith third of the many Shackleford sisters.  The other two have married well above their station, but Faith doesn't have her sister's stunning looks or vivacious personalities.  When her father finds he needs time to recover from an injury, Faith agrees to accompany him to Torquay for his recovery.  While there she meets sees a light bobbing around the derelict mansion next door to the one they are renting.  When her father finds out about it, he is sure there is a treasure there, and convinces Faith to go and search for it.  What she finds is a ring, still on the previous owner's severed finger.  The discovery plunges her and the owner of the house, a recently returned sea captain, into dire trouble. As they try to solve the mystery of the ring, they reluctantly admit their attraction to each other. 

When I checked this book out, I forgot that the first one in the series had more sexual element than I was comfortable with.  The true was the same with this book.  98% of the book was just fine, but one chapter suddenly depicts them jumping into bed together.  The description was at a level some might not object to, but it was too much for me. Actually, the references to sextual arousal, though pretty tame, were throughout the book.  I think I need to start a companion list to my "clean romance writers" list.  This one will be "Not so clean romance writers to avoid."  Watts will be my first addition. (2021, 254)