Bookfriend83

A look back and a look in the mirror

Reviewed: 06-22-24

I wouldn’t say this book was “enjoyable“. But I definitely think it was worth reading. Gregory has carefully drawn here a picture of the nearly millennium long curtailment of the rights of women, and how in the last 150 years or so women have begun to reclaim those rights. She has also carefully sketched places where women were able to carve out rolls and spaces for themselves despite the broader societal backdrop that slowly stifled them and limited their political and social agency. It’s a timely book, given the state of the geopolitical landscape. For those like me who came of age straddling the line between Gen X and millennials, it’s a reminder that the lives we grew up expecting (and expected) to live as women were, on the one hand, portraits painted on a canvas spread across the framework of centuries of socially imposed expectations and limitations on women, and were, on the other hand, simultaneously reflective of the efforts of women to reshape their roles in society into something more expansive, inclusive and individual.

The book is divided into chronological sections, and within each section Gregory examines various aspects of the female experience over time across societal strata including education, employment and earning potential, leisure, and legal status. She also takes a look at topics such as rape, prostitution, societal views on sex, gender and female/female relationships.

I came away from this book smarter. As a cis-gender female from a traditional middle-class protestant home who has worked for two decades in the female-dominated world of early childhood education, I took a lot for granted about what it meant to be “a successful woman“. What’s even more insidious is that while I have done the intellectual work over the years to closely examine my understanding of race, sexuality, and gender, I was never strongly compelled to examine my own perception of myself. I am female, therefore, I assumed I knew what it meant to be female. This book made me re-examine that, and so was a valuable read both on an intellectual and personal level. Definitely worth the credit.

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DNF, I really tried

Reviewed: 06-16-24

I almost never DNF a book, but I just could not get through this one. Plot holes, words misused (and I mean a lot, not just one or two)… it read like a B-minus 10th grader wrote it, and while I’m all for B-minus 10th graders trying out their writing skills, this is why the publishing industry invented editors. There are lots of high heat, enemies to lovers romances out there, skip this one. The narrators were good, I’ll give them that. They did the best they could with less than mediocre material, but there was just no saving this book.

Examples:
People’s eyes kept “slinking“ all over the place. Eyes don’t slink. They dart, they flick, a gaze can even slide, but eyes can’t slink.

Sentences like: “I glimpsed at her.” No dear, you glanced at her. You caught a glimpse of her. you can’t “glimpse at“ someone.

“I teemed” as a synonym for “I seethed“. This is a classic thesaurus error. Teeming is a word that you would use to describe movement within a space, For example, “the reef teemed with fish”, or “the corridors were teeming with students”. It doesn’t carry the connotation of high intensity or anger that “seethed” does. Their meanings are similar, like glimpse and glance above, and so the lazy use of a thesaurus would lead one to think you can substitute one for the other, but you can’t. .

One of my all-time favorites of poor writing “my face jumped to him.“ Really, like a Jim Carrey movie? Your face literally jumped off? Did you turn your face to him? Did you snap your head around to face him? Did your gays even flash to him? Your face can’t jump. Sorry.

I’ve written many, many reviews, and in quite a few of those I’ve called out an author for vocabulary and sentence structure errors. Most of those reviews are positive overall, I ordinarily wouldn’t pan a listen just because of these kinds of errors in moderation . But this book takes the cake. And this is before we even get to the second string quarterback suddenly magically, ending up in the NFL, or a lawsuit being settled in under a year, when anyone knows anything about the real world knows that such things take years. I bought this book on sale for five dollars. I’m glad I didn’t waste a credit, and I hope you don’t either

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Fun start to… a new series?

Reviewed: 06-02-24

A twisty mystery, good side characters, cameos from old friends, as well as MCs with well-drawn personalities, believable challenges and room to grow? What’s not to enjoy? I’m glad there will be at least one more book following this one, although I think James has left herself room to go beyond a Duet with the back-stories she’s given these characters. Worth a credit for sure!

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Worth the credit

Reviewed: 05-19-24

I’m sorry to see that this seems to be the only book this author ever wrote. I looked her up both on Audible end on Kindle and couldn’t find anything else. This book was funny, sweet, engaging, and clever. The main character is extremely likable and it’s fun to see the world through his completely oblivious eyes. It’s a skilled author who can write in such a way that the audience sees what’s going on even though the POV character hasn’t got a clue, without stepping out of the POV character’s head. Enjoy this one, it’s worth a credit and a reread.

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Timely

Reviewed: 04-14-24

On her website, KJ Charles has an essay called “characters, politics, fish, and you“ in which she gives tips to writers about building characters and worlds in historical fiction by paying attention to the backdrop of the times.

“Consider the water your fish swim in. Then you can decide how clear or turbulent you want it to be.”

In Death In The Spires, Charles paints her world and characters with tremendous skill. Not only does she place the events of the book within a vivid historical context, she does so in such an easy, digestible, transparent way that you never feel confused or jarred by period details,

In addition, many of the themes in this book are very timely for those of us living now and watching the news. I can’t say more without spoilers, but, be prepared to have events from 1905 resonate with the world of 2024 in a resounding way.

This author is hands-down the best writer of historical romantic suspense on my bookshelves. If this is your first book by her, get ready to enjoy yourself.

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Light and sweet

Reviewed: 02-15-24

Not too angsty, but setting up for what looks to be a terrific series. It’s the side characters and their entanglements and potential complications that made this book more than mediocre. I enjoyed it and will reread, and am looking forward to the next book in the series!

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Think holiday novella, not crime busting. 

Reviewed: 12-17-23

I love this series, and have reread most of them. I gave this book 5 stars because it’s a very cute holiday story. Also because I love these characters and all of the peripheral characters that have made this series so much fun. However, the reality is that this book probably could’ve been condensed Because there’s an awful lot of fluff.  there’s no great mystery here, because trying to figure out who has who for the department secret Santa, and figuring out what each person should get their secret Santa, does not count as a mystery. A tremendous amount of time is spent with the MCs as they negotiate picking wedding invitations, a wedding cake, wedding clothing, a wedding venue… You get the idea. All against a cozy Christmas backdrop. Cute but not very substantive compared to the other Valor and Doyle novels.

That said, Nicky James does dig a little deeper into some side characters, and introduces an interesting new character, so I’m hoping there’s either going to be a spin off series or at least one more book in this one, because she definitely left some loose ends dangling on purpose.

If you’re a fan of this series, go ahead and read this book. It’s charming and it’s fun to revisit such lovable characters. Don’t expect a suspenseful mystery, well, any kind of mystery at all, really, and you’ll enjoy yourself.

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A valiant effort

Reviewed: 09-03-23

Both of these authors are in my top five. I eagerly await their new releases, and i have reread most of their books. I really enjoyed the first book in the series, and was eagerly anticipating this release. Unfortunately, even with all that I can’t quite bring myself to give a five star review.

First, here’s what was good. Don’t let the length put you off. The story develops well across the entirety of the text, with time and attention given to both internal character growth and external story events. The book spans several months in the lives of the main characters, and so the length makes sense. There are moments of humor, moments of heartache, and moments of sweetness, all of which kept me engaged and not feeling like things were dragging.

Also, Michael Farraiuolo is an amazing narrator. He could literally read the phonebook and I would probably listen. He does a good job with the accents, reads within flexion, without being overly dramatic, and keeps a good pace.

Furthermore, I really appreciate the way the authors took on the topic of ace phobia. As an asexual person, I have experienced pushback and marginalization from both the straight and LGBT+ communities as I have become more open about my identity. I really appreciated the authors taking time to lay this out and make it part of the plot, and I hope that if more authors do this, the growing awareness and visibility will make things easier for people like me.

Now for the problems. For whatever reason, despite the overall well crafted story, I just couldn’t believe in these characters 100%. Something about their conflicts just didn’t ring quite true to me and to my life experiences. Nisha’s terrible parents were extremely one-dimensional. The story would have been more emotionally captivating If there were glimmers of feeling from them, which were subsequently overshadowed by the alcohol use and patterns of abuse. Just making them run-of-the-mill paper cut out bad guys was too trite and simplistic, especially from two authors I know are both capable of greater depth. Also, Nisha’s estranged brothers just magically appeared in the epilogue, and for a story this long, we should have seen some of the reestablishment of that relationship on the page.

And then there was Elias. I am an asexual person who engages regularly in kink activities. I was absolutely thrilled at the prospect of seeing someone like me in a book. Unfortunately, what I saw didn’t mirror me at all and that was incredibly disappointing. Asexuality is a spectrum, so not all aces are the same. But even though Elias kept saying he was asexual over and over, once he and. Nisha entered into a sexual relationship, it’s like the evidence of Elias’ asexuality just vanished.
I really wish the authors had devoted more time to developing Elias’ interest in kink. For me, kink is a way of engaging in physical intimacy on terms that I can be comfortable with, and that aren’t necessarily sexual but are very emotionally profound. This part of the plot got dropped in right at the end, and wasn’t developed, which I think took away from an opportunity for representation.

These two authors are always worth the credit. This book had a lot of great qualities, but there were definitely areas where it could have soared higher.

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Excellent, except…

Reviewed: 09-01-23

This author was new to me, and after listening to the sample, I took a chance on this book. The characters were great, and their development was realistic. I teach in an urban, low income school district, and although the story was set in a small town, the challenges the characters faced (an alcoholic parent, a brother who was incarcerated, an abusive relative) all rang very true and were relatable to me as I have seen all of these things and then some in the lives of my students. Even the supporting characters in this book had depth and were relatable. Additionally, I speak fluent Spanish, and not only was the Spanish included as people would actually say it, rather than sounding as though it was being pulled off Google translate, the narrators made an effort to pronounce it correctly, so it actually sounded like real dialogue, instead of being butchered. For all of these reasons, I would highly recommend.

And now, my one criticism. It was a big enough criticism, however that it made me take away a star. Note: if you are not a person who is bothered by the incorrect use of standard English vocabulary, don’t worry about this criticism. The thing that made me crazy about this book won’t bother you at all so go read it, it’s good. However, if you are someone who goes crazy, when words are misused, this book will very likely make you nuts. For example, people keep wiping tears from the crook of their eyes. Folks, eyes have corners, not crooks. And there were a whole bunch of these throughout the text. Places where it almost seems as though the author reached for a thesaurus and grabbed any of the synonyms without actually thinking through or understanding the nuances of those synonyms. Again, if you’re not a language troll, this won’t bother you and it’s a good book. if you are a language troll like me, still read it, but be prepared to grit your teeth.

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1 person found this helpful

New to me

Reviewed: 08-30-23

For me, this story was a window, not a mirror. I am neither a Muslim nor a person of South Asian descent. I am not remotely qualified to review the specifically cultural aspects of this story, but I do read an awful lot of romance novels. With regard to that genre, I’m happy to say that this book is very well done. The characters were engaging, the story had complexity, and parts of the book were downright funny. The description of the novel points out that it is written as an homage to Jane Austen‘s Persuasion. That’s one of my favorite romances of all time, and while the influence of that novel is evident, down to a few places where the author has actually used direct quotes modified into modern English, The storyline doesn’t follow the exact same plot, so enjoying this book is not a case of retreading old ground. I definitely think this book is worth a credit, and if like me, the culture depicted here isn’t your own, the author provides enough context to help you understand, and enough information to help you feel like you’ve come away having learned something as well as having been entertained.

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