christianreader | April Book List

Lament: The Faerie Queen’s Deception by Maggie Stiefvater

Dierdre is a musically talented but socially awkward 17-year-old who meets a mysterious boy at a music competition. Luke is forced to work as an assassin for the faerie queen, and his newest target is Dierdre. Romance and angst ensue.

I’m always sad when I don’t like a book as much the second time around, but sometimes the magic just doesn’t work twice. I enjoyed the atmosphere of the story — if Maggie Stiefvater is good at anything, it’s creating atmosphere — but the characters felt a little blah to me, and I didn’t care so much about the romance.

A River in the Sky by Elizabeth Peters

Amelia Peabody Emerson, her husband, and their adopted daughter Nefret are home alone while son Ramses is on an archaeological dig in Palestine. Then the British secret service ask Emerson to follow a suspected German spy to Jerusalem under cover on an archaeological dig of his own, and a slightly cukoo houseguest invites himself along.

I think, sad to say, Elizabeth Peters is losing her touch. She still excels at comedic moments, but the plots are wearing thin and Amelia, Emerson, and the rest are becoming caricatures of their former selves. Worst of all, in this book nothing ever happens! It’s all about getting somewhere, getting somewhere, getting somewhere…only to turn around and go home. And since it takes place in between two previous books, you know nothing too bad can happen, anyway. I was disappointed.

Atithi (The Guest) by Rabindranath Tagore

A family meets a winsome young man on a river journey and convince him to come home with them, much to the chagrin of their spoiled daughter.

In the movie Vivah, Prem asks Poonam what her favorite books are. This is one of them — well, it’s really just a short story, but I guess she didn’t take “books” as literally as I would have. It’s so short that it’s hard to form an opinion about it. Tagore was a kind of Indian Mark Twain, and his stories that I’ve read all seem to be about Bengali village life, and the average, ordinary people. As I read I tried to decide why the writer of Vivah would have chosen this for Poonam’s favorite, and I finally settled on the romantic idea of this young man who can’t be tied down but just roams around, hopping on a boat to a new place when he starts to feel too settled. Like most short stories the ending isn’t an ending at all, just a place for the episode to end — what happens next is left to the reader’s imagination.

Keeping Corner by Kashmira Sheth

13-year-old Leela is pretty and hasn’t a care in the world beyond her upcoming marriage to a boy in the village. But when he dies and she’s forced to go through life as a widow, including an entire year where she’s not allowed to leave her house, she learns to care about more than just bangles and having fun.

I didn’t expect to like this as much as I did. I expected it to be a bit dreary and preachy, dwelling on the horrors of child marriage, like a Deepa Mehta movie. Instead it was charming and hopeful, exposing the sadness and unfairness of life as a teenage widow in a tiny Indian village in the 1930s without exaggerating or trying to shock the reader.

Motherland by Vineeta Vijayaraghavan

15-year-old Maya is sent back to India for the summer after her boyfriend is caught driving drunk and her mother thinks he’s becoming a bad influence.

Despite the age of the narrator this isn’t classified as a young adult novel, which might be why it didn’t have much success. I enjoyed it but no one else seems to have, maybe because they were expecting something more adult in subject matter. As it is, I liked the slow meandering through a summer spent at Maya’s family’s big house in the hills above Coimbatore where her uncle works on a tea plantation.

Set in Stone by Linda Newbery

Alternating chapters, a young art teacher and a governess/companion tell the increasingly scandalous story of the family who lives in a house called Fourwinds in the late 1800s.

I am still not sure what I thought of this, to be honest. At first I loved it, the atmosphere was spookily gothic and the author seemed to be channeling Charlotte Bronte…but then it delved into a sordid scandal that seemed too squicky for a young adult book. The same effect could have been achieved with a less disgusting revelation.

Samapti (The Conclusion) by Rabindranath Tagore

Newly returned from a university in the city, a man chooses the village tomboy for his wife, but she’s miserable trying to please him and his mother and keeps running away.

This is another book Poonam mentions in Vivah, and of the two I liked this one more. The only thing that bothered me was that the age of the girl was never mentioned, and at times I got the impression that she was only supposed to be 11 or 12 years old, which makes the ending less romantic and just plain gross. So for my own peace of mind I’m assuming she was at least 16.

Heist Society by Ally Carter

Raised in a family of art thieves, Katarina Bishop thought she’d escaped all that when she enrolled in a prestigious private school. But sooner than she’d like, she’s back in the game trying to clear her father’s name when he’s accused of robbing a very nasty mobster.

This was a lot of fun, a sort of teenage version of Oceans Eleven. I’m not sure if there are any sequels planned — the ending is open but not so much that you’re left desperate to know what happens next — but if there are I’ll be sure to read them.

Someday My Prince Will Come by Jerramy Fine

When five-year-old Jerramy decided that she was going to marry Queen Elizabeth’s oldest grandson, Peter Phillips, everyone thought it was cute. When twenty-one-year-old Jerramy moved to London in serious pursuit of her royal heartthrob, everyone thought she was crazy.

Pretty much as fluffy as the you’d expect. The author isn’t afraid to make herself sound like a ditz, and though I can’t relate to her at all most of the time, her adventures are enjoyable. I especially loved the part where she spends New Year’s Eve with a maharaja and his family in India. Near the end, though, the book jumps the shark when Jerramy heads off to a psychic medium who tells her a whole lot of gobbledygook about her past life during the time of Henry VIII, leading her to believe that Peter Phillips is the reincarnation of her lost love from that time. It gives her peace of mind and allows the book to end on a somewhat optimistic note, but she lost all credibility for me at that point, and I was cringing for her. I hope poor Peter never reads this book!

A Rather Lovely Inheritance by C.A. Belmond

Penny Nichols lives in the NYC equivalent of the starving artist’s garret. Her freelance work designing costumes and sets for historical docudramas barely pays the bills, but she enjoys it. And then Great Aunt Penelope dies, and Penny finds herself living in a posh London apartment, dining in fancy restaurants in the South of France, and trying to stay two steps ahead of her sneaky, sleazy cousin Rollo, who thinks he deserved a bigger part of Aunt Penelope’s estate.

So much fun, and if the writing had been better I’d be tempted to compare this to Mary Stewart. The descriptions of houses, hotel rooms, food, and vintage clothes are divine. The family secrets Penny unearths are a bit predictable, but the story is enjoyable and the characters come to feel like friends by the end. I liked it a lot.

Arabella by Georgette Heyer

Poor but beautiful Arabella is invited to London for a season by her godmother. A carriage accident along the way forces her to take shelter in the home of Mr. Robert Beaumaris, “The Nonpareil” of London society. When Arabella overhears Mr. Beaumaris complaining to his friend that she’s just another fortune-hunter, she makes up a fortune of her own but swears him and his friend to secrecy as she wants to be loved for herself, not her money. Of course word gets out, and Arabella becomes the most sought-after young lady in London…only she can’t accept any proposals, because then she’d have to admit to the truth!

While not up to the standards of my favorite Heyers, this one was fun — once Arabella starts forcing orphans and stray dogs on Mr. Beaumaris, and stops moping about having lied, that is. The Classic Heyer Subplot of a brother with gambling debts getting his sister into trouble rears its wearisome head, and the hero talks to the heroine the same way he talks to his dog, but overall, it’s one of the better Heyers I’ve read.

On the Edge of the Rift by Elspeth Huxley

After spending the war years in England, young Elspeth and her mother are heading back to Kenya and their farm at Thika, where her father has been since he got out of the army. After a series of unsuccessful ventures, the family moves to a new farm near the mountains.

The way Elspeth Huxley writes is so beautiful that it’s easy to forget how much of this was wrenchingly sad. Beloved pets die, sometimes in horrible ways, and you never see it coming. Even the boy Elspeth develops a crush on dies. The descriptions of Africa are exquisite, but I much preferred Flame Trees of Thika.

Eva Underground by Dandi Daley Mackall

On the eve of her senior year in 1978, Eva’s father announces that they’re moving to Poland to work with the resistance movement. Though at first Eva hates it, the friends she makes and her feelings for their interpreter slowly change her mind.

Hmm. It was okay, but I didn’t love it, mostly because the characters never develop much depth. The perspective shifts between Tomek (the interpreter) and Eva so quickly that you never get a good idea which one of them is thinking what, and the romance comes pretty much out of nowhere. It’s not a bad story, but there are better books to be read.