christianreader | January Book List (Reply)

* = Didn't finish

Feather Castles by Patricia Veryan

Rachel Strand tags along with a nun who used to teach her on a rendezvous after the battle of Waterloo. Just before they meet the Sister's contact, a band of ruffians attacks them and threatens Rachel. A wounded soldier nearby finds strength enough to fight them off and protect her, then collapses. When he wakes up they find he has amnesia. Rachel and the soldier fall in love, but she's already engaged to a powerful and dangerous Frenchman named Claude Sanguinet and feels that she must keep her promise to marry him.

Patricia Veryan is always good. That's all I have to say about this one.

The Demon’s Lexicon by Sarah Rees Brennan

Alan and Nick and their mum have been on the run for as long as they can remember. A magician named Black Arthur is hunting them to get back a powerful charm their mother stole from him before Nick was born. So Nick feels they have enough problems to worry about without Mae and her brother Jamie coming to them for help. Jamie's been marked by a demon, and it's only a matter of time before it possesses him. Then Alan strikes a bargain with another demon to take part of Jamie's mark on himself and buy some time, and soon they're all on the run together - this time to find Black Arthur and his magicians themselves.

It took me pretty much the whole book to get interested in this one. Nick is the main character, and he's very cold and emotionless, so seeing things through his eyes can be disturbing at times. There's a good reason for it, which you find out by the end of the book, but that doesn't make getting into it any easier. What I did like were the relationships - there's some romance, but it's mostly about siblings, and then the relationship between Nick and his mom that holds the key to why Nick is the way he is. And though I say it took me a while to get interested, what kept me reading was the way it's written: very fast-paced, a lot of witty banter, and plot twists that don't give away the whole story all at once. It was a challenge to care about what was happening, but I was still absorbed in the story...if that makes any sense.

The Demon’s Covenant by Sarah Rees Brennan

It's been a few weeks since their adventures with the Ryves brothers, and Mae is worried about Jamie. He's sneaking out to meet Gerald, the new leader of Black Arthur's circle, even though everyone they know told them magicians are uniformly evil. Mae herself is feeling bored and reckless, and jumps at the excuse to call Alan and Nick and get their advice about Jamie. Alan and Nick are having problems of their own: since the big revelation at the end of book 1, which I can't tell you about for obvious reasons, their relationship has been strained. Nick asks Mae for help figuring out how he can act more the way Alan would want, and even though Mae knows Alan really likes her, and that falling for Nick is a bad idea anyway, she can't help it.

The switch in main character made all the difference for me. Where Demon's Lexicon had me reading just to find out what happened next, in Demon's Covenant I finally felt connected to the characters and emotionally invested in what was happening. Through Mae's eyes the story comes to life. And she's such a great character - strong, brave, funny, sweet, instantly likeable. I'm really excited for book 3 this summer.

*Mistwood by Leah Cypess

There's a kingdom where the king is protected by a Shifter - a creature that appears to be a young woman but can change shape at will to defend the king. Something mysterious happened with the last king, and the Shifter ran off into the forest. Now she's been found by the new king, with no memory and no ability to shift. She has to navigate the political intrigue of the court and try to protect the king as best she can while hiding her vulnerability from his enemies.

This has a really gorgeous cover, and since Sarah Rees Brennan recommended it and I had just finished two of her books, I thought I might like it. But it was really boring. The whole concept was weird, and there was a lot of hinting about Mysterious Former Events that I didn't really care about. Maybe if I'd read the whole thing I'd know what those Events were, but I wasn't interested enough to find out.

*Sunshine by Robin McKinley

Sunshine works in a coffee shop, making amazing cinnamon rolls. She has a quiet, uneventful but mostly happy life - a job she likes, a tiny little place of her own, a great boyfriend - but one night, feeling restless, she drives down to the lake and winds up being offered to a vampire for dinner.

EVERYONE raves about this book. Everyone. And about Robin McKinley in general. For about 100 pages, I was pretty sure I was going to, too. Then all of a sudden I just lost interest, and I had no desire to finish it. I'm not really sure why. I looked in my journal and it just says "too gross", so there must have been something I didn't like that made me put it down.

Kiss Me Deadly, compiled by Trisha Telep
Read 2 stories: The Spy Who Never Grew Up by Sarah Rees Brennan and The Hounds of Ulster by Maggie Stiefvater

For an anthology called "Kiss Me Deadly", none of the stories actually seemed to be about kissing. The Spy Who Never Grew Up was about Peter Pan being asked to spy for England, with ninja fairies and Wendy's great-great-great granddaughter, and it was mildly funny but mostly pointless. The Hounds of Ulster seemed like a teaser for a much longer story, and ends just when it's getting interesting.

The Eternal Kiss, compiled by Trisha Telep
Read 1 story: Undead is Very Hot Right Now by Sarah Rees Brennan

Another "kissing" anthology that had nothing to do with kissing. The story I read (I skimmed some of the others) was about a vampire who is recruited to be in a boy band, and the manager wants him to play up the "dark, gothic" side of vampirism, even though there's nothing particularly dark or gothic about him.

To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis

Time travel. Cats. A boat trip down the Thames with a Victorian gentleman, his bulldog, and an Oxford don. The Bishop's Bird Stump, a hideous Victorian vase. I've tried to write a summary six times and can't come up with a way to describe it. Please read it!

Bellwether by Connie Willis

Sandra is a scientist studying trends - specifically, what causes them. A misdelivered package introduces her to Bennett, who's hoping to get funding for a research project studying monkey behavior. When their boss becomes obsessed with a million dollar grant he wants one of his employees to win, Sandra and Bennett combine their projects and hope for the best.

Okay, that was a terrible summary, but Connie Willis's books are really hard to sum up in just a few sentences! There are always fourteen things going on at once that complicate the main plot, and minor plot threads that niggle at the edges of your brain until in the end you realize how important it was to the outcome. It's fun to read but hard to describe to someone later.

*Shades of Milk and Honey by Mary Robinette Kowal

Jane is very plain and quiet, but extremely talented at magic. Her sister is very pretty but not so good at magic. Jane is envious of her sister, and spends a lot of time being miserable because she's not pretty, and apologizing for existing whenever anyone has to help her or talk to her. I assume eventually there was a plot, but I'm not sure what it would have been.

The book advertises itself as "the book Jane Austen would have written if she'd lived in a world where magic existed". Do not be fooled: it is NOTHING like Jane Austen's books. Well, except that it is, in that the basic plot is a mishmash of Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility, and Persuasion. That doesn't mean it's well done or deserves to be compared to Jane Austen. The main character spends all of her time thinking about how plain she is, her father despairs of her ever finding a husband because of how plain she is, her sister treats her like dirt because of how plain she is - it's hammered home so many times that THIS CHARACTER IS NOT A BEAUTY that I started to feel like the author was ashamed of her, too.

*Stormswift by Madeleine Brent

Lalla used to be a spoiled young English girl named Jemimah Lawley, until her parents were murdered in Kabul and she was sold to a minor pasha who believed a white wife would give him a son. When she didn't get pregnant he cast her aside and took a new wife. Since then Lalla has worked as a servant to the doctor of the village, a half-Greek, half-French fellow prisoner. When the pasha trades Lalla to a neighboring ruler for yet another bride, she makes a daring escape with an Afghan trader who comes to the village. But when she finally gets back to England, proving that she is Jemimah Lawley isn't as easy as she'd assumed it would be.

I liked this a lot more than the last Madeleine Brent book I read, but you'll notice that I didn't finish it and I'll tell you why: I ruined it for myself. About 2/3 of the way through I was starting to get antsy, wondering when the hero was going to come back. So I flipped to the end to make sure he and Jemimah were going to get back together, only to find that they didn't. He dies and she marries the strange annoying guy she'd been traveling around England with. It irritated me so much that I couldn't read any more. I might go back to it someday - maybe there's something that would help me resign myself to the ending - but for now I'm too disgruntled.

Dear Dumb Diary: Let’s Pretend This Never Happened by Jim Benton
Dear Dumb Diary: My Pants Are Haunted! by Jim Benton
Dear Dumb Diary: Am I the Princess or the Frog? by Jim Benton

Jamie Kelly keeps a diary of all the things that happen to her, and swears that it's all true...or at least as true as it needs to be. Between the school's deadly meatloaf, beautiful archnemesis Angeline, diabolical best friend Isabella, and useless old beagle Stinker (not to mention Hudson Rivers, eighth cutest boy in her grade), Jamie's life is rarely boring.

You know, I was planning to read all 11 books in the series and then tell you how hilarious they are, and recommend them highly. I see them all the time when I'm at work and I've skimmed through quite a few of them out of curiosity. It turns out that when you sit down to actually read them, they're not as great. Oh, they're funny, but there's not a whole lot of plot. They're just very silly. And even though the characters are in middle school the books themselves are more suited to young elementary school kids.

This Rough Magic by Mary Stewart

On holiday in Corfu, Lucy Waring anticipates a few weeks of sunbathing and exploring ancient ruins and keeping her pregnant sister company. Then a dead man washes ashore, and another local boy goes missing, and Lucy stumbles right into the heart of the mystery.

Oooh, Mary Stewart, how I love you! I don't know how she does it. The setting comes to life, the characters jump fully-formed off the page, and before you know it you're completely absorbed in the story and surprised to look around you and not see the Greek countryside or whatever place the story is set in. This Rough Magic is one of my favorites, though trying to pick a favorite Mary Stewart book is like trying to pick the best slice of pizza - they're all good, you just have to decide whether you want more pepperoni or that extra bit with the cheese that's gone all crispy on top of the crust, or - wow, that is an odd metaphor. Maybe I should have eaten a bigger breakfast.

Anna and the French Kiss by Stephanie Perkins

Anna Oliphant doesn't want to spend her senior year at a boarding school in Paris, but her father won't even give her a choice. She's packed off to France, leaving behind her best friend, her little brother, and the cute guy at the movie theater who might have been her boyfriend if she'd been allowed to stay and find out. It's not as bad as she expects - right away she makes friends, and exploring Paris is a lot of fun - but falling for one of her classmates, who already has a girlfriend and who is the longtime crush of one of her new friends, is a really bad idea.

You guys. This book. Is so good. I can't even talk about it in complete sentences. I was hooked pretty much from the moment Anna starts describing her dad's books and you realize that he's a parody of Nicholas Sparks. Anna is such a relatable character - she's a "good girl", but far from a goody two-shoes - and unlike Gossip Girl and those sort of books where boarding school is all about backstabbing and sleeping around and underage drinking and everyone's very cool and jaded and cynical, the characters seem very realistic. And if you don't swoon over Etienne St. Clair, there's probably something wrong with you. (Though I have to confess that like Janssen I had to ignore the parts about him being shorter than Anna, because a height difference like that just isn't appealing to me. Not everyone has my height complex, though.)