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Book Logging (Paper, ebook)
I genuinely can't tell which of my grumbles about these books are due to me having been migrainy and/or cranky for other reasons and which are due to the writing/plotting/characterization. So take my negatives here with a grain of salt.
Alexander, Zeno. Rebel in the Library of Ever - Overdrive ebook. Book 2 in the Library of Ever series. I think this volume worked better than the first book in the series did. It was still somewhat disjointed, but the throughline of the plot was clearer. The Library is being downsized. Books are being destroyed. Creatures from the outer darkness are trying to obliterate human knowledge; their human frontman is pretty clearly a Trump clone (I'm seeing those a lot in middle grade books right now). I read book one as an audiobook; I think that may have had an impact in how I viewed the two volumes.
Andrews, Donna. Owl Be Home for Christmas - Overdrive ebook. Murder mystery. The protagonist and her family get snowed in at a hotel while helping her grandfather run a convention of owl researchers. Murder occurs after there's too much snow for anyone to be able to get through to them physically. I wasn't 100% convinced by the idea of a 2019 snowstorm powerful enough that there was no cell or internet or landline connection for anyone in several states. There were a handful of 'satellite phones,' and the hotel had a local set up for the concierge to be able to text the staff. Anyway, I pretended the story was set in an alternate universe where all of that made complete sense and quite enjoyed the story. Meg (the protagonist) is an engaging narrator. The researchers had petty (and not so petty) fights over the sorts of things that such people do fight about. Most of the humor worked.
Andrews, Ilona. Burn for Me - I like that the emergence of powers here actually changed the course of history. A lot of things about the setting are familiar, but a lot of others reflect different events and technology and so on. I'm not sold on the central romance as a romance; I can see the characters working as a couple but not as-- Even if the heroine's magic makes her technically equal (which I'm sure later books will show it does), her experience with high level politics is zilch. Her experience with having money and power and all of that is zilch. I'm not sure there will ever be a point in the relationship when she's not-- at least potentially-- at a serious disadvantage. I never got the impression that the guy understood any of that. I didn't find him attractive as a romantic prospect for anyone I actually like. He was a fun character, just... Run away, far and fast.
Andrews, Ilona. Iron and Magic - Overdrive ebook. I am slightly boggled by the idea that enemies wouldn't believe in the reality of an alliance without seeing it as due to a love match marriage, but I'll handwave that. This book is a side story to the Kate Daniels series (which I haven't read but now think I will eventually).
Babson, Marian. No Cooperation from the Cat - This is a cozy mystery of the type where the mystery elements all feel like a distraction from the actual interesting bits. It's one of Babson's books about former silent movie actresses Evangeline and Trixie and the ridiculous (and engaging!) people around them. I finished the book with the sense that murders only mattered as mechanisms to make sure that some extremely unpleasant people went to prison. I enjoyed the book, overall, but I'm still frustrated by Babson's mid-career decision that all of their mysteries had to have cats in the titles. There is a cat in this, and there's a plotline involving the cat, but it's kind of not at all connected to the murder mystery, not even as a viable red herring.
Babson, Marian. Please Do Feed the Cat - This is another book where the mystery plot felt entirely irrelevant to most of what was going on in the book. The protagonist didn't really care much about it, and the murderers weren't even named characters. Also, the murder was the hit and run death of a 10 year old who I don't think ever even got a name. Some bits of the book were very funny (including some cooking disasters), but Babson once again leaned hard into the idea that people who dislike cats are automatically Evil (which is what made me take a long break from her books before). Most of the characters are writers, and those bits tended to be funny.
Bourne, Joanna. Beauty Like the Night - Overdrive ebook. This is part of the author's series of romances set around the time of the Napoleonic wars. The heroine was a spy for the British in Spain. The hero's backstory is more complicated and a bit more muddled. The mystery and espionage elements of the story were reasonably solid. The romance elements were fine. I just finished the book and thought that the hero hadn't adequately groveled in apology to his 12 year old daughter (legally his but possibly not biologically so) who seriously deserved vastly better than having been ignored for more than a decade and left in the hands of an abusive mother and an embezzling financial manager. The hero is very upset about having allowed it to happen, but he never, ever checked.
Bourne, Joanna. The Forbidden Rose - Overdrive ebook. This book is about the adoptive parents of the heroine in Beauty Like the Night. Reading this immediately after that one was a little weird because I recognized the much younger versions of several characters. Reading Bourne's books, I feel like I'm reading something set in a secondary world more than in our world's history. I'm not 100% sure why that is, and it's not something that makes me want to stop reading. Possibly it's just the sense that, from within the narrative, upcoming historical events might go a different direction.
Bujold, Lois McMaster. Knife Children - This is set in Bujold's Sharing Knife universe. It's novella length. I have mixed feelings about the story, and I'm pretty sure I'd be less ambivalent if the backstory weren't rape and if the POV character weren't the now repentant rapist. I didn't disbelieve his regret or his choices, and I didn't want his daughter to find out how it happened, but... Given the setting and the cultures, the whole thing could have happened without the beguilement as a bit of consensual teenage bad judgment. There was a point near the end of the book when I wanted to bang heads together because Bujold made the choice to have the daughter's step-father have always known that she wasn't his and not have considered it important. That part was fine. The part that made flames on my face was that he never once told his wife that he knew and that it was okay. She's spent the last fifteen years terrified that that secret could destroy her entire life. It wasn't necessary. At all. On the plus side, it was Bujold's normal level of readability in terms of the prose. I'm not sorry to have read it and might choose to reread it some day. Just... Why those backstory choices?
Bujold, Lois McMaster. The Orphans of Raspay - I saw someone describe this book as slavery tourism which... Well, Penric is the series main character, so he had plot armor. I just didn't think that his magic meant he was never really at risk. He couldn't cross water magically and didn't know how to sail any of the vessels available. He couldn't kill anyone magically because his god would kill his demon, Desdemona. There were also physical repercussions for him if he used certain magics. The end of the book required a sort of deus ex machina rescue by people who he didn't expect to know he was in trouble. It was that ending that irritated me as a reader because it really felt pasted on yay. Bujold wrote herself into a corner.
Carter, Ally. Uncommon Criminals - 2nd book in the Heist Society series. I read this one from both ends toward the middle (which is my preferred approach to novels but not something I can conveniently do with ebooks or audiobooks), so I missed the fact that there were two heists in this book until fairly far in. That threw off my sense of plot rhythm a bit. I kind of wish that I had the ability to write this sort of story with the nested schemes and deceptions and so on, but it doesn't fit with how I write. I can manage such things in tabletop games but not in fiction. I like reading about competent characters being competent and clever and creative.
Charles, KJ. An Unsuitable Heir - Overdrive ebook. I generally enjoyed this romance because I liked Pen and Greta, but I found the love interest frustrating because he was truely terrible at actually explaining things. The great betrayal in the middle of the book wasn't plot necessary or emotional arc necessary. Getting Pen and Greta into a meeting with everyone else could have been managed without that just by having what's-his-name pass on the ultimatum. I also found Pen's distress (Pen is genderfluid and being forced into a position where he can't show it in any way) anxiety provoking in a way that wasn't fun because it was too close to killing him. That is, I quite firmly believed, as I read, that being forced to accept the title he was due to inherit would drive him to suicide. I worried more about that aspect than I did about the serial killer. I think that's part of why the betrayal as written bothered me so deeply; the love interest never really acknowledged that this was also potentially lethal.
Farrant, Natasha. A Talent for Trouble - This middle grade book is about three kids, Alice, Jesse, and Fergus, becoming friends at boarding school. The first hundred pages is all introductory set-up. Much of the rest is the trio on an orienteering challenge with Alice and Fergus planning a side trip to meet Alice's father. There are some small adventures along the way that would, I suspect, feel bigger if I was eight or even twelve. There's a tiny bit of serious danger near to the end that doesn't really feel organic to the plot because it's too abruptly introduced and too easily ended. The kids felt like real kids, and the prose was perfectly good. It just wasn't the book I was looking for right then.
Gannon, Nicholas. The Doldrums - Overdrive ebook. This kids' book straddles a weird border between wanting to go wildly weird and being quite a mundane friendship story. That is, nothing ever quite happens that goes far off the rails, but it always feels like the story is straining to break the leash and dive into serious Roald Dahl territory. Even the things that get weird just kind of don't go anywhere at all. If it had been longer, I'd probably not have finished it. If I had been reading in paper rather than as an ebook, I'd probably not have finished either because I'd have flipped to the end and confirmed that nothing much was going to change. The illustrations are excellent, though.
Harper, Molly. Fledgling - Overdrive ebook. This is book 2 in the Sorcery and Society series. As far as I can tell, there isn't yet a book 3 (at least, Amazon doesn't think there is) which is frustrating as this book ends without resolving much of anything. The library doesn't have book 1 in any format, so I haven't read that, but I was able to follow the plot just fine. This is a middle grade fantasy. My best summary of the premise is that the author looked at Harry Potter and wondered what the present day world would look like if the Wizards hadn't hidden but instead had taken over all government. Which... It's fairly dystopian, but the text distances much of the everyday of aspects of that by just kind of... not looking at the implications straight on. Everyone without magic is somewhere on the slave-serf spectrum, and those from that group-- officially-- are never born with the ability to do magic. The protagonist was born to non-magical parents and then adopted by their owners when it became clear that she could do magic. (Her being killed is a real option if the wrong people find out.) Her guardians have sent her to a boarding school. There's a necromancer and background politics and a quest to rescue other 'changelings.' I enjoyed this enough to want to read book 1 and to hope that there will be a book 3.
La Sala, Ryan. Reverie - I read three quarters of this as an Overdrive ebook but ran out of time on the loan before I could finish. Getting a paper copy from the library was likely to be a lot faster than trying to get the ebook again, so that's what I did. I found the first 10-20% of the book difficult to get through; I think it's because the POV character was so very lost and frustrated that I felt lost and frustrated rather than entertained or sympathetic. Once I got past that, the book went quickly. The story becomes less anchored in standard reality as it goes along and stops before it quite feels done. It's not that the ending's unsatisfactory. It's simply that the ending is a choice that will lead to many other choices. As a reader, I could see the vague shape of them and rather wanted to see more.
Lackey, Mercedes. Spy, Spy Again - Another Valdemar book. This one has a nice little adventure with everything ticking along exactly as expected. Nothing spectacular, nothing terrible. I was a bit distracted, though, by trying to figure out how Karse continues to exist. I just... I don't believe in them as a thing that lasts centuries, unchanging.
Milford, Kate. Ghosts of Greenglass House - Overdrive ebook. This is set a year after Greenglass House. Once again, the inn ends up hosting an unusual number of guests and some interlocking mysteries. There are more hints about the ways in which this world is different from ours and more indications of the ways in which it isn't.
Milford, Kate. The Left-Handed Fate - I discovered after the fact that I read this out of order. Bluecrowne comes before it, and I now know a thing or three I'd rather not about what has to happen in that book. This one frustrated me because I was sure, early on, that the various protagonists were trying to grab a tiger's tail and really ought to step back and spend some time in their rooms reflecting on what they did wrong. Trying to reassemble an ancient device because you think it's a superweapon that can end all war forever is just... That was never going to end well. The book is set during the Napoleonic Wars, shortly after the United States officially entered the war. A good portion of the book takes place in the fictional (and politically neutral) town of Nagspeake which is where the other Greenglass House books have been set. Nothing in Nagspeake works quite the way it does in the rest of the world, not even physical laws.
Quick, Amanda. Close Up - Overdrive ebook. The heroine is a photographer. The hero is hired (not by her) to protect her from people who're trying to murder her. She puts up with him because people very clearly are trying to kill her. They solve both layers of the mystery and fall in love. That last sentence kind of sums up every one of the books Quick/Castle/Krentz has written in the last twenty years. This one is part of her Burning Cove series which is set in (I think) the 30s.
Roberts, Nora. Born in Fire - Overdrive ebook. This is a fluffy romance. I quite enjoyed it.
Valente, Dominique. Starfell: Willow Moss and the Lost Day - Overdrive ebook. This is a kids' book. Willow has a small magic, the ability to summon lost things. One of the great witches of the land approaches her because the previous Tuesday has been lost.
Vo, Nghi. Empress of Salt and Fortune - Overdrive ebook. I really liked this a lot. It had a gentle flow that gave the impression of small bits of history being unearthed. Each bit made sense, and none were overwhelming in the moment. I think the history related would have been unbearable if it had been presented as more immediate. I put this on my wishlist to buy immediately after I finished reading it.
Wells, Martha. Network Effect - I don't remember if I read this on paper or as an Overdrive ebook. I neglected to record that information earlier. That aside, I had a grand time reading this book. Murderbot is always a pleasant protagonist for me to spend time with. I liked the way that this book opened up more information about the universe that Murderbot lives in.
Started but not finished:
Hastings, Samantha. The Invention of Sophie Carter - Overdrive ebook. This is a Victorian era romance (set in 1851). Sophie and Mariah are twins, orphans. Sophie gets a chance to go and stay with their aunt in London, and she and Mariah both go and take turns being Sophie. Each falls for a different guy. Each takes steps toward a career. Apart from the fact that there's romance, the book reads a lot like the girls are twelve, and the romance doesn't get beyond handholding and kisses. I paged forward and read the ending because I was curious, but I wasn't sufficiently interested to read the middle of the book.
Johnston, E.K. The Afterward - Overdrive ebook. I think I was simply in the wrong mood for this book. It looks at two young women for whom the after part of the world saving quest isn't at all better than the before part. (The during bits seem to have been excellent.) I think that part of my not being in the right mood for this book was that the characters seemed to be very stubbornly attached to avoiding compromise. Maybe that would have changed in the remaining 2/3 of the book; maybe it wouldn't. I hope for the former as there's no room for a happy ending for them without it. I want to know the ending; I don't want to read the book to get there.
Levy, Joshua S. Seventh Grade vs. the Galaxy - Overdrive ebook. I found the first person narrator here extremely irritating. Readers in the target age group might not, but I found it Diary of a Wimpy Kid levels of whininess and not particularly funny. I can't tell if the 'not funny' part is just me or if the book was reaching for something it didn't attain.
Stewart, Paul & Chris Riddell. Barnaby Grimes: Curse of the Night Wolf - This looked like it should be a quick read, but I kept wandering away and not caring about picking the book up again. I gave up halfway through. It's a kids' book, vaguely Victorian setting, werewolves and mad science. Werewolves aren't generally my thing, so that may have been a factor.
Alexander, Zeno. Rebel in the Library of Ever - Overdrive ebook. Book 2 in the Library of Ever series. I think this volume worked better than the first book in the series did. It was still somewhat disjointed, but the throughline of the plot was clearer. The Library is being downsized. Books are being destroyed. Creatures from the outer darkness are trying to obliterate human knowledge; their human frontman is pretty clearly a Trump clone (I'm seeing those a lot in middle grade books right now). I read book one as an audiobook; I think that may have had an impact in how I viewed the two volumes.
Andrews, Donna. Owl Be Home for Christmas - Overdrive ebook. Murder mystery. The protagonist and her family get snowed in at a hotel while helping her grandfather run a convention of owl researchers. Murder occurs after there's too much snow for anyone to be able to get through to them physically. I wasn't 100% convinced by the idea of a 2019 snowstorm powerful enough that there was no cell or internet or landline connection for anyone in several states. There were a handful of 'satellite phones,' and the hotel had a local set up for the concierge to be able to text the staff. Anyway, I pretended the story was set in an alternate universe where all of that made complete sense and quite enjoyed the story. Meg (the protagonist) is an engaging narrator. The researchers had petty (and not so petty) fights over the sorts of things that such people do fight about. Most of the humor worked.
Andrews, Ilona. Burn for Me - I like that the emergence of powers here actually changed the course of history. A lot of things about the setting are familiar, but a lot of others reflect different events and technology and so on. I'm not sold on the central romance as a romance; I can see the characters working as a couple but not as-- Even if the heroine's magic makes her technically equal (which I'm sure later books will show it does), her experience with high level politics is zilch. Her experience with having money and power and all of that is zilch. I'm not sure there will ever be a point in the relationship when she's not-- at least potentially-- at a serious disadvantage. I never got the impression that the guy understood any of that. I didn't find him attractive as a romantic prospect for anyone I actually like. He was a fun character, just... Run away, far and fast.
Andrews, Ilona. Iron and Magic - Overdrive ebook. I am slightly boggled by the idea that enemies wouldn't believe in the reality of an alliance without seeing it as due to a love match marriage, but I'll handwave that. This book is a side story to the Kate Daniels series (which I haven't read but now think I will eventually).
Babson, Marian. No Cooperation from the Cat - This is a cozy mystery of the type where the mystery elements all feel like a distraction from the actual interesting bits. It's one of Babson's books about former silent movie actresses Evangeline and Trixie and the ridiculous (and engaging!) people around them. I finished the book with the sense that murders only mattered as mechanisms to make sure that some extremely unpleasant people went to prison. I enjoyed the book, overall, but I'm still frustrated by Babson's mid-career decision that all of their mysteries had to have cats in the titles. There is a cat in this, and there's a plotline involving the cat, but it's kind of not at all connected to the murder mystery, not even as a viable red herring.
Babson, Marian. Please Do Feed the Cat - This is another book where the mystery plot felt entirely irrelevant to most of what was going on in the book. The protagonist didn't really care much about it, and the murderers weren't even named characters. Also, the murder was the hit and run death of a 10 year old who I don't think ever even got a name. Some bits of the book were very funny (including some cooking disasters), but Babson once again leaned hard into the idea that people who dislike cats are automatically Evil (which is what made me take a long break from her books before). Most of the characters are writers, and those bits tended to be funny.
Bourne, Joanna. Beauty Like the Night - Overdrive ebook. This is part of the author's series of romances set around the time of the Napoleonic wars. The heroine was a spy for the British in Spain. The hero's backstory is more complicated and a bit more muddled. The mystery and espionage elements of the story were reasonably solid. The romance elements were fine. I just finished the book and thought that the hero hadn't adequately groveled in apology to his 12 year old daughter (legally his but possibly not biologically so) who seriously deserved vastly better than having been ignored for more than a decade and left in the hands of an abusive mother and an embezzling financial manager. The hero is very upset about having allowed it to happen, but he never, ever checked.
Bourne, Joanna. The Forbidden Rose - Overdrive ebook. This book is about the adoptive parents of the heroine in Beauty Like the Night. Reading this immediately after that one was a little weird because I recognized the much younger versions of several characters. Reading Bourne's books, I feel like I'm reading something set in a secondary world more than in our world's history. I'm not 100% sure why that is, and it's not something that makes me want to stop reading. Possibly it's just the sense that, from within the narrative, upcoming historical events might go a different direction.
Bujold, Lois McMaster. Knife Children - This is set in Bujold's Sharing Knife universe. It's novella length. I have mixed feelings about the story, and I'm pretty sure I'd be less ambivalent if the backstory weren't rape and if the POV character weren't the now repentant rapist. I didn't disbelieve his regret or his choices, and I didn't want his daughter to find out how it happened, but... Given the setting and the cultures, the whole thing could have happened without the beguilement as a bit of consensual teenage bad judgment. There was a point near the end of the book when I wanted to bang heads together because Bujold made the choice to have the daughter's step-father have always known that she wasn't his and not have considered it important. That part was fine. The part that made flames on my face was that he never once told his wife that he knew and that it was okay. She's spent the last fifteen years terrified that that secret could destroy her entire life. It wasn't necessary. At all. On the plus side, it was Bujold's normal level of readability in terms of the prose. I'm not sorry to have read it and might choose to reread it some day. Just... Why those backstory choices?
Bujold, Lois McMaster. The Orphans of Raspay - I saw someone describe this book as slavery tourism which... Well, Penric is the series main character, so he had plot armor. I just didn't think that his magic meant he was never really at risk. He couldn't cross water magically and didn't know how to sail any of the vessels available. He couldn't kill anyone magically because his god would kill his demon, Desdemona. There were also physical repercussions for him if he used certain magics. The end of the book required a sort of deus ex machina rescue by people who he didn't expect to know he was in trouble. It was that ending that irritated me as a reader because it really felt pasted on yay. Bujold wrote herself into a corner.
Carter, Ally. Uncommon Criminals - 2nd book in the Heist Society series. I read this one from both ends toward the middle (which is my preferred approach to novels but not something I can conveniently do with ebooks or audiobooks), so I missed the fact that there were two heists in this book until fairly far in. That threw off my sense of plot rhythm a bit. I kind of wish that I had the ability to write this sort of story with the nested schemes and deceptions and so on, but it doesn't fit with how I write. I can manage such things in tabletop games but not in fiction. I like reading about competent characters being competent and clever and creative.
Charles, KJ. An Unsuitable Heir - Overdrive ebook. I generally enjoyed this romance because I liked Pen and Greta, but I found the love interest frustrating because he was truely terrible at actually explaining things. The great betrayal in the middle of the book wasn't plot necessary or emotional arc necessary. Getting Pen and Greta into a meeting with everyone else could have been managed without that just by having what's-his-name pass on the ultimatum. I also found Pen's distress (Pen is genderfluid and being forced into a position where he can't show it in any way) anxiety provoking in a way that wasn't fun because it was too close to killing him. That is, I quite firmly believed, as I read, that being forced to accept the title he was due to inherit would drive him to suicide. I worried more about that aspect than I did about the serial killer. I think that's part of why the betrayal as written bothered me so deeply; the love interest never really acknowledged that this was also potentially lethal.
Farrant, Natasha. A Talent for Trouble - This middle grade book is about three kids, Alice, Jesse, and Fergus, becoming friends at boarding school. The first hundred pages is all introductory set-up. Much of the rest is the trio on an orienteering challenge with Alice and Fergus planning a side trip to meet Alice's father. There are some small adventures along the way that would, I suspect, feel bigger if I was eight or even twelve. There's a tiny bit of serious danger near to the end that doesn't really feel organic to the plot because it's too abruptly introduced and too easily ended. The kids felt like real kids, and the prose was perfectly good. It just wasn't the book I was looking for right then.
Gannon, Nicholas. The Doldrums - Overdrive ebook. This kids' book straddles a weird border between wanting to go wildly weird and being quite a mundane friendship story. That is, nothing ever quite happens that goes far off the rails, but it always feels like the story is straining to break the leash and dive into serious Roald Dahl territory. Even the things that get weird just kind of don't go anywhere at all. If it had been longer, I'd probably not have finished it. If I had been reading in paper rather than as an ebook, I'd probably not have finished either because I'd have flipped to the end and confirmed that nothing much was going to change. The illustrations are excellent, though.
Harper, Molly. Fledgling - Overdrive ebook. This is book 2 in the Sorcery and Society series. As far as I can tell, there isn't yet a book 3 (at least, Amazon doesn't think there is) which is frustrating as this book ends without resolving much of anything. The library doesn't have book 1 in any format, so I haven't read that, but I was able to follow the plot just fine. This is a middle grade fantasy. My best summary of the premise is that the author looked at Harry Potter and wondered what the present day world would look like if the Wizards hadn't hidden but instead had taken over all government. Which... It's fairly dystopian, but the text distances much of the everyday of aspects of that by just kind of... not looking at the implications straight on. Everyone without magic is somewhere on the slave-serf spectrum, and those from that group-- officially-- are never born with the ability to do magic. The protagonist was born to non-magical parents and then adopted by their owners when it became clear that she could do magic. (Her being killed is a real option if the wrong people find out.) Her guardians have sent her to a boarding school. There's a necromancer and background politics and a quest to rescue other 'changelings.' I enjoyed this enough to want to read book 1 and to hope that there will be a book 3.
La Sala, Ryan. Reverie - I read three quarters of this as an Overdrive ebook but ran out of time on the loan before I could finish. Getting a paper copy from the library was likely to be a lot faster than trying to get the ebook again, so that's what I did. I found the first 10-20% of the book difficult to get through; I think it's because the POV character was so very lost and frustrated that I felt lost and frustrated rather than entertained or sympathetic. Once I got past that, the book went quickly. The story becomes less anchored in standard reality as it goes along and stops before it quite feels done. It's not that the ending's unsatisfactory. It's simply that the ending is a choice that will lead to many other choices. As a reader, I could see the vague shape of them and rather wanted to see more.
Lackey, Mercedes. Spy, Spy Again - Another Valdemar book. This one has a nice little adventure with everything ticking along exactly as expected. Nothing spectacular, nothing terrible. I was a bit distracted, though, by trying to figure out how Karse continues to exist. I just... I don't believe in them as a thing that lasts centuries, unchanging.
Milford, Kate. Ghosts of Greenglass House - Overdrive ebook. This is set a year after Greenglass House. Once again, the inn ends up hosting an unusual number of guests and some interlocking mysteries. There are more hints about the ways in which this world is different from ours and more indications of the ways in which it isn't.
Milford, Kate. The Left-Handed Fate - I discovered after the fact that I read this out of order. Bluecrowne comes before it, and I now know a thing or three I'd rather not about what has to happen in that book. This one frustrated me because I was sure, early on, that the various protagonists were trying to grab a tiger's tail and really ought to step back and spend some time in their rooms reflecting on what they did wrong. Trying to reassemble an ancient device because you think it's a superweapon that can end all war forever is just... That was never going to end well. The book is set during the Napoleonic Wars, shortly after the United States officially entered the war. A good portion of the book takes place in the fictional (and politically neutral) town of Nagspeake which is where the other Greenglass House books have been set. Nothing in Nagspeake works quite the way it does in the rest of the world, not even physical laws.
Quick, Amanda. Close Up - Overdrive ebook. The heroine is a photographer. The hero is hired (not by her) to protect her from people who're trying to murder her. She puts up with him because people very clearly are trying to kill her. They solve both layers of the mystery and fall in love. That last sentence kind of sums up every one of the books Quick/Castle/Krentz has written in the last twenty years. This one is part of her Burning Cove series which is set in (I think) the 30s.
Roberts, Nora. Born in Fire - Overdrive ebook. This is a fluffy romance. I quite enjoyed it.
Valente, Dominique. Starfell: Willow Moss and the Lost Day - Overdrive ebook. This is a kids' book. Willow has a small magic, the ability to summon lost things. One of the great witches of the land approaches her because the previous Tuesday has been lost.
Vo, Nghi. Empress of Salt and Fortune - Overdrive ebook. I really liked this a lot. It had a gentle flow that gave the impression of small bits of history being unearthed. Each bit made sense, and none were overwhelming in the moment. I think the history related would have been unbearable if it had been presented as more immediate. I put this on my wishlist to buy immediately after I finished reading it.
Wells, Martha. Network Effect - I don't remember if I read this on paper or as an Overdrive ebook. I neglected to record that information earlier. That aside, I had a grand time reading this book. Murderbot is always a pleasant protagonist for me to spend time with. I liked the way that this book opened up more information about the universe that Murderbot lives in.
Started but not finished:
Hastings, Samantha. The Invention of Sophie Carter - Overdrive ebook. This is a Victorian era romance (set in 1851). Sophie and Mariah are twins, orphans. Sophie gets a chance to go and stay with their aunt in London, and she and Mariah both go and take turns being Sophie. Each falls for a different guy. Each takes steps toward a career. Apart from the fact that there's romance, the book reads a lot like the girls are twelve, and the romance doesn't get beyond handholding and kisses. I paged forward and read the ending because I was curious, but I wasn't sufficiently interested to read the middle of the book.
Johnston, E.K. The Afterward - Overdrive ebook. I think I was simply in the wrong mood for this book. It looks at two young women for whom the after part of the world saving quest isn't at all better than the before part. (The during bits seem to have been excellent.) I think that part of my not being in the right mood for this book was that the characters seemed to be very stubbornly attached to avoiding compromise. Maybe that would have changed in the remaining 2/3 of the book; maybe it wouldn't. I hope for the former as there's no room for a happy ending for them without it. I want to know the ending; I don't want to read the book to get there.
Levy, Joshua S. Seventh Grade vs. the Galaxy - Overdrive ebook. I found the first person narrator here extremely irritating. Readers in the target age group might not, but I found it Diary of a Wimpy Kid levels of whininess and not particularly funny. I can't tell if the 'not funny' part is just me or if the book was reaching for something it didn't attain.
Stewart, Paul & Chris Riddell. Barnaby Grimes: Curse of the Night Wolf - This looked like it should be a quick read, but I kept wandering away and not caring about picking the book up again. I gave up halfway through. It's a kids' book, vaguely Victorian setting, werewolves and mad science. Werewolves aren't generally my thing, so that may have been a factor.