Review: Look Before You Leap

Look Before You Leap by Virginia Heath
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I received this book for free, this does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review

Miss P had seen something in her to handpick her. Her! Lottie Travers! Tomboy extraordinaire. 

Look Before You Leap is second in the Miss Prentice's Protegees series but you could start here easily, like I did. Lottie was the tomboy who was raised on a farm with four brothers and lost her mother at a young age, young woman trying to smother her wild streak in order to make it as a governess. She has a leg up by having been trained at the lofty Miss Prentice's but after two failed governess jobs, she was busted sneaking out and riding horses in the morning, along with kneeing a bent on assault heir, her marketability is lessening. She winds up getting placed as a companion to an older “dragon” lady, who also winds up being the aunt to a man she accidentally unhorsed when she ran into him during one of her wild gallops. 

Except the sea was now poisoned and he had learned his lesson well that love was for fools. 

Lord Guy Harrowby is a Viscount who much prefers to remain isolated on his farm in Kent, where Lottie is originally from. He made a fool of himself when he was twenty-one over a woman who was only using him to attract a duke and has let the shame fester in him over the years. He lost his father when he was younger and now his mother is guilt tripping him hard to let her throw him a thirtieth birthday party because she wants grandkids. It's all shenanigans as Guy's mother and aunt conspire to throw a house party, instead of the one dinner party he agreed to, and rope Lottie into it all. Guy's still angry at Lottie for the unhorsing incident and how she reprimanding him for it but by 40% they've both made their apologies to each other and you can see their friendship start to develop. 

He had been engaged in a full-scale war between what his sensible, battle-scarred head and his clearly still reckless but equally battle-scarred heart wanted. 

There's physical attraction to go along with that building friendship, a lot of bonding over horses, and some steamy, but interrupted, foreplay (there's an open door scene later on). I was not a fan of how much it was iterated how shallow, dumb, and annoying all the other woman were that were invited to the house party. It becomes very tiring that a chunk of the way you lift your main female character up is to constantly put down the majority of the other woman characters. The series seems to be tied together by a group of friends Lottie had at Miss Prentice's but we don't see a ton of them together, which I missed. 

The menace hadn’t just seduced him, she’d thoroughly bewitched him because nothing would shift her from his mind. 

The third act breakup had Guy going completely off the rails with how mean he is verbally to Lottie and ended up feeling forced to me. I know he's still dealing with his issues of betrayal from his first love but Lottie so clearly didn't deserve the harsh blame. It had been built and layered that Guy was this man of the little people, had visited her father's farm and had her talking to him about how she sent money back home for them, so readers have been reading about a character that by all accounts understood Lottie couldn't lose her job and would feel compelled to do what her employer told her to do. Instead we get a forced to disregard those building blocks in favor of a snapping Guy. It caused drama but the scene and his actions just didn't feel true to me. 

She grabbed a fistful of his cravat. “Just shut up and kiss me.” Lottie dragged his mouth to hers as she simultaneously yanked him inside. 

The ending has Guy making that public move he never would have been able to in the beginning but since we've seen him fall in love, doesn't think twice of it for Lottie. Lottie had charm in her stubbornness and I liked Guy until I really didn't when he blew up on Lottie, and with a very abrupt ending, they got their HEA.

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TBRChallenge Review: Seize the Fire

Seize the Fire by Laura Kinsale
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Tl;dr: Imperfect characters who made awful and heroic choices and a second half that was mostly about war PTSD 

*This is a #TBRChallenge review, there will be spoilers, I don't spoil everything but enough, because I treat these reviews as a bookclub discussion. 

June's TBRChallenge theme was Road Trip, so I headed to my tbr feeling historical and glancing at reviews to see which ones had people talking about traveling. When I saw this Laura Kinsale's fit the bill, I happily jumped in. I read the first 50% of this in one sitting and then my reading mojo hit a major (for me) snag and I couldn't concentrate enough to read for five days straight. I'm mentioning this because I'm going to, mostly, blame my mojo, but I do also think the second half had some major pacing problems, just tough to parse from own issues. My brain can be a sieve, so that first half I raced through, EONS ago!, I guess I'm saying this review/talking about is going to probably read disjointed and foggy, enjoy! 

If you've read Kinsale before, you know you're in for an emotional ride. Sometimes it rips my guts out (The Prince of Midnight) and sometimes I get left on the dock watching the emotions drift away from me (Shadowheart). This one had my eyes filling up and at other times dry eyed wanting to skim, my scatterbrained undecided review, enjoy! 

"I loved you." Her voice trembled into a squeak. "I loved you…and you…betrayed me."

I'm going to start this with the author dedication, This book is dedicated to the combat veterans of Vietnam With respect, and love, and hope for healing. While you'll see the beginning of this from our lead Captain Sheridan Drake in the first half, your enjoyment of the whole second half is going to be if you remember this dedication and read it with the understanding that the story is now all about it. Your enjoyment is also going to hinge on if you want/can handle your leads being deliciously, frustratingly not perfect, because boy howdy do both Sheridan and Olympia fuck it all the way up numerous times. 

The hero she'd loved with all her being had not died. He'd simply never existed. 

The first half has Olympia, our sheltered princess of a small country but has lived all her life in England, setting out to meet her new neighbor, Sheridan. She's heard all about his bravery on his ship and wants to enlist him to use his contacts(???) to help her get to Rome. Why Rome you ask? She's going to appeal to the Pope to stop her betrothal to her uncle (I'd hurry my ass there too!). Her grandfather currently leads the country but he's old and the people have been grumbling for an overthrow to set up a democracy, which Olympia is fully for and plans to help happen. She is the completely young and naive do-gooder that knows the right destination but has no idea what it takes to get there. Readers know Sheridan isn't quite what the papers make him out to be and that he is completely destitute after his father who loved to pull pranks (incredibly dangerous and mean “jokes”) had him invest all his money in a train venture that went bankrupt. There's also the added connection that Sheridan's father's ex-mistress is/was Olympia's governess and tells Sheridan that his father's will gives him nothing, unless he does what she says to do(???). This leads to Sheridan offering marriage to Olympia to save her from her uncle, at ex-mistress' behest and somehow an English ambassador is also involved in telling Sheridan what to do, but she refuses having been poisoned by ex-mistress that she's too fat and unattractive. Sheridan decides to set-up his own plan and agrees to take Olympia to Rome, he sees how jewel rich she is, and then pretend to be kidnapped/killed by a secret assassin group that is after him(???) and steal her jewels riding richly off into the sunset, leaving her behind. 

He laughed bitterly. "God, they were idiots. They'd ask how many ships I'd sunk and how many men I'd killed hand to hand…as if I kept a damned running account. They always wanted to know how it felt…" His voice had begun to shake. "But I never told them. They didn't want to know the truth. Not really." 

It's a bit of a convoluted set-up, especially since Olympia's country drama winds up being like 10% of the story and doesn't come in at all until again at the end. By 20% we have them going on their road (ship) trip and then it's all on with them getting captured by pirates, shipwrecked, living on a island for months, saved, captured by pirates again, sold into slavery, and surviving a blood drunk mob. Late '80s historical romances aren't to be trifled with! There are dated terms in this and Sheridan's manservant/frenemy Mustafa is a bad characterization, so content warnings abounding again. While I enjoyed the meat of how the author allowed Sheridan and Olympia to make bad and wrong choices, they betray one other more than once, I could see how they would ultimately work together but I'm not sure I'd recommend this for the romance. I liked how Kinsale had Sheridan trying to warn Olympia off of him and how even though he thinks he's not worthy, Kinsale even has him do unworthy things (I'm not talking heinous things here), he always remained redeemable to me, which I think can be a good message. The juxtaposition of broken down tattered Sheridan and the bright shiny heroic younger captain that comes in later to be a romantic wedge between him and Olympia was perfect, especially since the shiny guy turned out to be under it all not so great, which YES, give us readers these emotions to wrestle with! The second half is more of a deep dive into how soldiers can be so lost after coming home from war. 

That she would not hate him. That she was glad he was on her side. That he could keep them safe without violence, without hurting anyone. He tried to believe those things. He repeated them to himself. But he was afraid. 

Sheridan is a broken man after all he had to survive. As the reader, it broke me how he was a boy who wanted to make music but after a “joke” by his father gone wrong, ends up on a ship in his preteens and is thrust into trying to survive war. I couldn't help thinking of all the current kids who just want to make music and instead have these awful circumstances thrust upon them; Kinsale did a really great job showing and articulating through Sheridan the scars such a life can leave. There was also an eye watering scene where Sheridan had finally let himself love Olympia only for her to betray him and oof, the emotions he went through here: 

He should have known. He should have realized. It had been so hard for him to believe it was happening. That she could come to know him for what he was, fully, and understand what he'd done by opening the circle of himself and including her. They'd fought together, survived together, shared the miseries and the laughter and the disasters, and each small morning victory of waking up alive. He'd thought that meant something. That was love, that was the only name he had to give it. Last night, when in the midst of his whining concern for his own skin she'd said she loved and trusted him, he'd been so certain of it. He would have died for her then, he would have killed every man on board to protect her—except this was civilization, not a battle, and all he'd been able to do was make some brainless joke to cover the raw surge of emotion and then retreat before he embarrassed himself beyond recovery. She loved him. It had been hard to believe that; it had gone against every instinct built up in years of solitude, but he'd convinced himself. Aye. And he was wrong. 

The love, the betrayal, the pain, just, the THE of it all! Meaty characters. 

"Princess." His voice had a plea in it. "Do you understand? I don't know why the world is like this; I don't know why we go out to fight something that's wrong—something so much bigger than we are, something that ought to be fought—and end up creating a thousand little horrors to stop a huge one. Slavery's wrong. Tyranny's wrong. You weren't stupid or naive or trivial to believe that. You're right. Maybe your revolution was right. You just…didn't understand how real it would be." 

The end has Olympia experiencing some trauma of her own and realizing her own naivety and a reveal for Sheridan that changes some things. This does end in an HEA but I felt a bit too rung out to have that high lovey dovey feeling for them, it's more of a gritty solemn one. The first half read fast for me but some convoluted set-up while the second half seemed to get lost and repetitive stagnate paced (could have been my no mojo brain!). However, if you remember that dedication and realize this whole story was a cover to talk about war induced PTSD you'll feel Sheridan's pain and probably think of the women and men in your own life who never fully make it back from war. These leads lied to each other, fought and survived together, were mean to each other, saved each other, and loved each other, they weren't perfect characters which honestly felt deliciously meaty to me at times. 

"I'm here," she said into his shoulder. "I'm here, and I love you. I love you no matter what."

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Review: Sour Cherry

Sour Cherry by Natalia Theodoridou
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

A critic said, “Gothic tales rely on distant pasts and faraway lands full of people unlike us,” except he was wrong, because the land of this story is everywhere. The people are us, the time is always. 

I buddy read this over on a horror Discord. 

Quick thoughts and comments: 

I'm a big fan of folklore, Gothic, horror, and Bluebeard reimaginings/retellings, so I was pretty much the ideal audience for this. I don't know how, but this felt like a fast read and one that dragged all at the same time. The synopsis/marketing copy talked about it being a feminist take but it takes until the second half for the focus to really be on the wives of the tale. That and the different pov and tense changes feeling needlessly challenging and confusing to try and create a mysterious creepy vibe, was mostly why I had a problem with this. Also, some aspects of the story were focused on (Tristan) that felt  counterintuitive and interruptive  to the story's messaging of how abusive men get societal protection and how women get placed in and manipulated into caretaker and shield roles in abusive relationships. 

The first half felt super wonky with how it was structured but the second half read better to me, even though I was annoyed at how it sped through the wives, except for Eunice where I thought the story really settled into what it wanted to be. The focus on the last “special” wife Cherry was back to annoying to me because I think the story lost it's focus again and seemed to want to end the story with stating that Cherry was just as bad as the abusive man, which ok, but then what is this story really about, not what I showed up for based on the synopsis. 

I liked this and was annoyed with it, the atmospheric wonky structured folklore parts mostly didn't work for me but since I'm a fan of that type of storytelling, I still found parts I liked, I think a good chunk of readers will struggle with it, though. The first half felt like it focused on everything and nothing and when I finally found the story working for me in the second half, it sped through it to get to the final wife, a character that did nothing for me. I liked how it showed the systems that protect abusers but not sure this retelling did anything new or attention catching.

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Review: Sterling Hearts

Sterling Hearts by L. Speckhals
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I received this book for free, this does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review 

Sterling Hearts was a first person point-of-view contemporary story of a young woman trying to find her footing in life. Evie has broken up with her emotionally abusive boyfriend and decided to move to the Appalachian area after she fell in love with a town her and the ex had passed through during a vacation. It's a small town but alive enough that she thinks an independent bookstore can be successful, her dream. Evie works to stay walled off, she wants to have a professional persona as a business owner and is still recovering from her abusive relationship, but when a man she dubs “The Cowboy” buys a children's book from her store, she can't help but let him a little. 

This had sweet and cute moments but so much of what kept Evie and Blake (the cowboy) apart was misunderstandings that extremely easily could have been cleared with one simple asked and answered question. This read like a slice of life story with a romantic thread as Evie is very focused on getting her store running and worrying about her business persona in town. When her bestfriend comes to stay with her, we get a more livened up version of Evie as the friend pushes her to get out more and give Blake a chance. 

There's a little bit of a mystery plot with some mysterious person who, through a sort of broker, Evie lets sell jewelry in her bookstore, that will have readers guessing and more than likely know the identity before any reveals. Evie and Blake spend some moments together with helping each other fix cars and redo a bathroom but they talk about everything but Blake's life, his secrets felt needlessly drawn out and ultimately made his character feel kind of blank to me. This was closed door with some hot and heavy making out but the way Blake's character never really revealed things about himself, kept him and his trying to build relationship with Evie feel distant and I never felt emotionally drawn to it. 

The so easy to clear up misunderstandings Evie had that could have been taken care of with one question asked to Blake made Evie's reluctance feel dragged out and kept a large part of their relationship from developing. This was a slice of life with a very to be continued feeling ending that unfortunately didn't develop as much emotional depth in characters and relationships that typically pull me into stories.

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The voices said No

I'm just going to say what I did on Bluesky:

If you've been involved with democratic causes in the last decade in MN, you knew Speaker Hortman and her tireless work to make life better for every Minnesotan. I'm devastated that a continued to not be reckoned with domestic terrorism American ideology has led to the political assassination of her and her husband and the attempted assassination of Sen. Hoffman and his wife. 

The St. Paul rally went forth because our AG Ellison said he was still showing up. Other rallies closer to Brooklyn Park and Champlin were canceled. 

The way some of you almost, gleefully, repost information that has yet to be confirmed, fix your hearts too. Personal bias and acceleration thirst helps no one. I don't want any of that along with thoughts or prayers. I will take your courage and body out in your own communities doing the work. 

Today, I'm not getting out of my jammies, decompressing, grieving, uplifting with all the pictures and videos posted from yesterday, and only accepting to add a few things to a schedule I previously cleared for the week. 

Do the work, take the rest, get back to it

Love and solidarity

Reading Update: Page 1

 

Creamsicle season! This summer I went with cookie form and paired it with a contemporary romance. 

Evie's opened a bookstore that everyone's warned her will be a challenge but she's throwing herself into the adventure. 

There's also the guy who keeps visiting that she thinks of as "The Cowboy" who might turn out to be her biggest adventure of all. 

A contemporary closed door with a cowboy and bookstore? Diving in!

Sterling Hearts by L. Speckhals purchase link

could only find for sale on Amazon

Creamsicle Orange Cookies recipe

Review: Lady or the Tiger

Lady or the Tiger by Heather M. Herrman
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

1.5 stars 

I received this book for free, this does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review 

You aren’t going to like me. 

Lady or the Tiger was about a young girl surviving in the American wild west and trying to come into her own. Told, mostly, all from her point-of-view with numerous back and forth time jumps, readers travel with her from the beginning at fifteen years old forced to kill a man to nineteen years old and about to be hung as the Seamstress, a serial killer. This was tagged as young adult but I'd go more new adult, there's nothing completely explicit with the sex and violence but with a first husband who is a sadist in the bedroom, I often felt the messaging of don't give up being yourself for men was stylistically written more for adult thinking; I'm a big Judy Blume fan and I couldn't help comparing the two. The “supporting women's wrongs” with claiming fierce feminism when our lead Alice/Belle lures men with her physical wiles to murder them, just wasn't groundbreaking or entertaining for me, your mileage may vary. 

For a ghost, he looks very much alive. 

Alice gets sent to an asylum after she murders a man and her mother is killed. From there she is forced to marry Reginald, a cop, as a means of escape. She becomes useful to him by helping him cheat while gambling and they travel the west and Europe but he's the sadist in the bedroom and when Alice locks eyes with a boy in Texas, they spend a night together and escape Reginald. Alice then becomes Belle and travels the west and Europe with the carnival of The Damned, falling in love with Cal, the Texas boy, and taming a tiger to dance with. One night things unravel and Belle runs while Cal saves her from a dire situation, but eventually at nineteen Belle turns herself in for the Seamstress murders and wants to be hung because she thinks/knows she's done wrong. Her plan gets ruined when Reginald shows up and says she's crazy, citing the asylum stay, and tries to save her. 

And though I have shot two men, kissing a boy here in the fading light, without last night’s irresistible spell to carry me away or my shadow to guide me, feels like the bravest thing I have ever done. 

Like I said, the timeline is cut and spliced wildly, Alice/Belle starts off ready to be hung, then you'll go from how she escaped Reginald, her murderous time as the Seamstress, time with Cal, how she married Reginald, and the time at the asylum. There's some unreliable narration going on and an ending that takes a page from the short story it's title is inspired by (The Lady or the Tiger). If you can handle non-linear stories, telling you feminism is simply doing what you want, cool real women historical figures shout-outs, a good message (lost in the story for me most the time) of don't change yourself for love or chance at it, and an open-ended ambiguous ending, then this was something different along those lines.

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Reading Update: 50%

After leaving Lady Isadora, Elizabeth went to her room to fetch her pelisse and the small pistol that her father had given her to protect herself. 

‘I do not think you will have cause to use it,’ Sir Edwin had told her when he taught her to shoot straight as a young girl. ‘But it is possible, Elizabeth. You like to walk alone and I would not have you afraid—but if you should be attacked, shoot the rogue and be damned to the consequences!’

Happy early Father's Day to Sir "be damned the consequences!" Edwin

Review: The Compound

The Compound by Aisling Rawle
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

3.5 stars 

I received this book for free, this does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review 

I’ve always been a passive kind of person; it is both my worst quality and the thing that people like most about me. 

If you've ever watched the tv show Big Brother and wished it had a darker vibe, then you're going to want to read The Compound. Told from contestant Lily's point-of-view readers wake up with her in a house in the desert. As she finds nine other younger women scattered throughout the house we learn that the ten men who will join them will come from the surrounding desert. They will be filmed constantly, Lily's watched and been a fan of the show, and have to complete tasks as a group for rewards and be able to complete personal tasks for goodies. The goal is to be the last one house-guest, when you'll be able to ask for anything you want and get it, provided you still remain in the house. It all sounds like a fun break to win prizes but as the story went on, competitiveness and darker personalities began to seep in through the cracks. 

I was there because I thought that this was what I was supposed to want: the house and the rewards and all the nice things. 

As the narrator, you'd think your sympathies will be solidly with Lily, and they are at times, but she works as a mirror to hold up to yourself, consumerism, and influencer culture. Lily's honest with us readers and as someone who works a retail job, lives at home at twenty-five, and has a father she hasn't seen in years because he's off fighting a war, she's on the reality tv show to “take a break” and win prizes she would otherwise never be able to afford. Part of the show's concept is that each night the men have to pick a woman to sleep with in bed, if someone doesn't have a partner the next morning they are banished. This creates competition between the women and sets up a heteronormative dynamic. There is a lot being said in this story and while I think the author started some conversations that need to be had, I'm not sure they all stuck the landing, especially towards the end. There wasn't much outerworld building, it's vague future dystopian with climate change and wars, but if you're here for discussions on some of the topics I mentioned, the microcosm world in the house provides enough different personalities and situations.

He looked around him, his face pinched in sadness. “Do you really want to live here, in this…wasteland?” 

“It’s no worse than what’s out there! Is that what you want to go back to? Constantly living on the periphery of disaster, just waiting and waiting and waiting for it to finally reach us, doing stupid, dull work to pass the days until then? We’re safe here— we’re removed from all of it.” 

“It’s still there, Lily. It’s still happening. You think that because we can’t see it, it’s not going on?” 

With so many characters the beginning was a little tougher to get a handle on but it becomes clear fairly early who are the contestants to keep an eye on. I liked how Lily had some personality components that we all probably have and don't necessarily like about ourselves and following along with the choices she made works to confront some of those indoctrinated lines of thought. This had some thriller vibes that I enjoyed, the threat of violence was always prevalent. This often felt poised to say something, it got there at times and never quite reached it at others for me. Coated in the bleakness of late stage capitalism, this dark vibed Big Brother starts a lot of conversations on the ever fascinating topics of societal structures and human nature.

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TBRChallenge Review: Evvie Drake Starts Over

Evvie Drake Starts Over by Linda Holmes
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

After all this time, he would wonder, why now? He wouldn’t know that, today exactly, Evvie had been with him for half her life. 

In continuing to limp my way to completing SuperWendy's TBRChallenge, I finally finished May's Older Couple theme book. Now, when I was looking for a book for this theme Evvie Drake was on numerous lists for older couples, it was at my local library, so I could use it for a bingo square for another game I'm playing, and it has been on my tbr for more than five years. Y'all, I think Evvie is in her early to late thirties and I'm guessing Dean is in the mid to late thirties range. Older couple. I feel like dust. Anywhooooooooo 

“I do think we should have a deal.” 

She looked at him expectantly. 

“You don’t ask me about baseball,” he said, “and I don’t ask you about your husband.” 

On the day that Evvie is packing her car to leave her highschool sweetheart husband, he gets into a car accident and dies. This leaves her as the “grieving” widow, stuck in a role that doesn't fit. I'd put this in the women's fiction with romance category and while I enjoyed Evvie and Dean's interactions and chemistry, it was all about that living in quiet desperation with a supposed golden boy who is emotionally and physically abusive. Exploring Evvie's character as she goes through life and interactions trying to maintain her composure, keeping up a facade that she not only can't physically or emotionally do anymore, she's learning that she doesn't need or should have to. I liked how the author showed the nefarious ways it's easy to slip into this role and dynamic, Evvie met her husband while still in highschool and felt “lucky” to be noticed by him, all the while learning (emotional abused) how to keep him happy at the expense of herself (She was the one, after all, who had graduated second in her class, right behind him, after tanking her math final because she knew how much it meant to him to be valedictorian.). Along with emotional abuse there are physical abuse content warnings, this shows how as their relationship went on and her husband felt more comfortable, the abuse was ramping up. Evvie didn't have the language or emotional maturity to fully understand what was happening to her, especially since her abuser was so apt at keeping it hidden and the culture of shame kept her quiet. It's what makes this story/book so important, giving space to talk out and name these abuses. 

They wouldn’t have believed that the reasons she rarely felt like dancing with him had to do with the way he was at home. She knew the way he sort of glowed for most people. She probably knew it better than anybody, because she’d traded away more than anybody in return for it. 

Dean did have his own issues, he got the yips during his major league pitching career, which ultimately ended it. Evvie's bestfriend Andy is friends with Dean and he pairs them together with Dean renting out an apartment in Evvie's house so he can get away from the spotlight. It's summer so I loved the baseball additive and enjoyed some of the baseball history and lore but the ending to this thread of his was kind of meh, which I guess is another life lesson but meh all the same. This took place over a year, so you could say their relationship was a slow burn and again, I enjoyed them together but not the main reason I gave this four stars. 

“Who knows you?” he asked. 

The other main relationship was Evvie and her bestfriend Andy and how by her not telling him the truth about her marriage made Andy feel not as close or as important to her as he felt she was to him. It's a great look/discussion in all the ways people work to hide themselves and keep up an image by trying to protect themselves emotionally but end up only hurting themselves more. Also, a great look at how friendships can change over time as romances enter the picture. This was languid at times, insightful, emotional, funny, sweet, and hurt so good. The way it showed and called out a particular form of hidden abuse and how Evvie eventually built up the strength to call it so and work to emotionally navigate through it, will make you want to donate a copy to every library.

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