Review: The Woman in the Photo by Mary Hogan + Giveaway

Posted on June 20, 2016June 18, 2016 by Marlene Harris | Author : Marlene Harris | B- Reviews> blog tours> book reviews> Giveaways

The Woman in the Photo: A Novel by Mary Hogan
Formats available: paperback, library binding, ebook, audiobook
Pages: 432
Published by William Morrow Paperbacks on June 14th 2016
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org
Goodreads

In this compulsively readable historical novel, from the author of the critically-acclaimed Two Sisters, comes the story of two young women—one in America’s Gilded Age, one in scrappy modern-day California—whose lives are linked by a single tragic afternoon in history.
1888: Elizabeth Haberlin, of the Pittsburgh Haberlins, spends every summer with her family on a beautiful lake in an exclusive club. Nestled in the Allegheny Mountains above the working class community of Johnstown, Pennsylvania, the private retreat is patronized by society’s elite. Elizabeth summers with Carnegies, Mellons, and Fricks, following the rigid etiquette of her class. But Elizabeth is blessed (cursed) with a mind of her own. Case in point: her friendship with Eugene Eggar, a Johnstown steel mill worker. And when Elizabeth discovers that the club’s poorly maintained dam is about to burst and send 20 million tons of water careening down the mountain, she risks all to warn Eugene and the townspeople in the lake’s deadly shadow.
Present day: On her 18th birthday, genetic information from Lee Parker’s closed adoption is unlocked. She also sees an old photograph of a genetic relative—a 19th century woman with hair and eyes likes hers—standing in a pile of rubble from an ecological disaster next to none other than Clara Barton, the founder of the American Red Cross. Determined to identify the woman in the photo and unearth the mystery of that captured moment, Lee digs into history. Her journey takes her from California to Johnstown, Pennsylvania, from her present financial woes to her past of privilege, from the daily grind to an epic disaster. Once Lee’s heroic DNA is revealed, will she decide to forge a new fate?

My Review:

In The Woman in the Photo there are two stories. One is the story of Elizabeth Haberlin in the May of 1888 and the critical May of 1889. She’s the wealthy daughter of a doctor. Most important for this story, she’s the daughter of the private physician to all of the rich “bosses” who have their second homes at the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club on Lake Conemaugh. The dam and the lake are perched ominously, and eventually disastrously, above the town of Johnstown, Pennsylvania.

Until the fateful day, May 31, 1889, Elizabeth Haberlin led a privileged, if restricted, life. She chafed at those restrictions but didn’t often challenge them, at least not until the flood, when she took a horse and attempted to warn the citizens of Johnstown before the dam gave way. In the face of the disaster wrought by the sheer selfishness and greed of her peers, Elizabeth chose to take up a life of purpose, assisting Clara Barton and her newly established Red Cross in their disaster relief efforts.

Her family never took her back. And she never forgave them for their callous self-centeredness.

In the 21st century, Elizabeth Parker, called Lee by her adopted mother, sees a picture of Clara Barton and an unknown woman who looks like her when her closed adoption file is pried open to give her limited genetic information.

Lee begins a quest through libraries, databases and finally back to the scene of that long ago tragedy, in her attempt to find out who she is and where she came from. Only to discover that while her family history is interesting, she is who she has always been, the daughter of the woman who loved and adopted her.

Escape Rating B-: I don’t believe that I have ever read a story that buried the lede as deeply as the author has in this book.

To “bury the lede” in journalistic parlance is to begin a story with details of secondary importance to the reader while postponing more essential points or facts.

Throughout most of the story in the past, Elizabeth Haberlin is a self-absorbed and vain young woman who has nothing better to do than choose which dress to wear and how to escape her mother’s suffocating expectations for her.

And we get to read a whole lot of that, to the point where it drags, in order to get to the incredibly fascinating parts of her life. After the terrible tragedy, Elizabeth becomes an entirely new person, finding joy in purpose and throwing off the expectations of her family. That’s the person I wanted to read about and follow along with, and it is that part of this story that gets the fewest number of pages and the least amount of time. I wanted to see who she became, and how she felt about it. Her life as a debutante was so pointless and boring that it bored even her.

I loved the parts about Elizabeth Haberlin after she chose to become her own person, and that’s what I got the least of in this story.

The 21st century parts also suffered from too much setup and not enough payoff. We get a lot of exposure to Lee’s current circumstances, which pretty much suck. The fascinating part of Lee’s story is her search and eventual discovery of her blood relations, and that is the shortest part of her story with the least emphasis.

I want the book I didn’t get – the story of Elizabeth Haberlin’s life after the Flood. I want to know so much more about the person she became, the life she led, and how she felt about turning her back on her old life and its old expectations. That’s not the book I got. Damn it.

GIVEAWAY

The publisher is giving away a copy of The Woman in the Photo to one lucky US/CAN commenter:

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This post is part of a TLC book tour. Click on the logo for more reviews and features.

The Sunday Post AKA What’s on my (Mostly Virtual) Nightstand 6-19-16

Posted on June 19, 2016June 18, 2016 by Marlene Harris | Author : Marlene Harris | Giveaways> The Sunday Post> Virtual Nightstand> Winner announcement

After having reviewed a book about magical libraries this week, it seems totally appropriate to be heading off to the American Library Association Annual Conference next week. Just as there is an L-space that connects all the great Libraries of the multiverse, I am convinced that there is also a C-space that connects all the Convention Centers, and imposes a uniformity on all the spaces. Having attended ALA for a number of years, one exhibits floor looks pretty much like another. The booths move around, and the contents change, but an overhead photo looks fairly similar from year to year. The support beams are just in slightly different places in each hall.

This year, the ALA Annual Conference is in Orlando, the site of so much recent tragedy. I was torn about mentioning the location, because I just wasn’t sure what to say about recent events. But in Galen’s post yesterday, “Naming and Responding to Hate –YAPC::NA and ALA Annual in Orlando“, he said it all so much better than I could. In closing, one more comment. It’s true in a sense that “guns don’t kill people, people kill people”, but people with guns, especially military assault rifles, can generally kill a lot more people a lot faster than people without guns. Why is this so hard? Why does this keep happening?

Coming Next Week:

The Woman in the Photo by Mary Hogan (blog tour review)
Midsummer’s Eve Giveaway Hop
Riverbend Road by RaeAnne Thayne (blog tour review)
Absinthe of Malice by Rhys Ford (review)
Louisa by Louisa Thomas (review)

Stacking the Shelves (189)

Posted on June 18, 2016June 17, 2016 by Marlene Harris | Author : Marlene Harris | Stacking the Shelves

When the Fatal series first came out, I remember being interested in reading it, but never got a round tuit. By the time I thought of it again, it was several books in and I just didn’t feel like playing catch up. So when TLC Book Tours was looking for reviewers who hadn’t read the series, I jumped at the chance to get in at the beginning.

Likewise, I’d heard good things about Annie Bellet’s Twenty-Sided Sorceress series, but hadn’t gotten the chance to read it. Now there’s an omnibus edition of the first four books in the series, and I’m looking forward to one glorious reading binge.

unsportsmanlike conduct by jessica luther

For Review:
Closed Casket: The New Hercule Poirot Mystery by Sophie Hannah and Agatha Christie
The Dollhouse by Fiona Davis
Fatal Affair (Fatal #1) by Marie Force
Fire Brand by Diana Palmer
Level Grind (Twenty-Sided Sorceress #1-4) by Annie Bellet
Lowcountry Book Club (Liz Talbot #5) by Susan M. Boyer
Unsportsmanlike Conduct by Jessica Luther

Purchased from Amazon:
Hostage to the Stars (Sectors SF #7) by Veronica Scott

Borrowed from the Library:
The Sound of Gravel by Ruth Wariner

Review: Maggie Dove by Susan Breen

Posted on June 17, 2016June 16, 2016 by Marlene Harris | Author : Marlene Harris | book reviews> C Reviews

Maggie Dove: A Mystery by Susan Breen
Formats available: ebook
Pages: 236
Published by Alibi on June 14th 2016
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo
Goodreads

Susan Breen introduces a charming new series heroine in this poignant and absorbing cozy mystery with a bite. Maggie Dove thinks everyone in her small Westchester County community knows everyone else’s secrets. Then murder comes to town.
When Sunday School teacher Maggie Dove finds her hateful next-door neighbor Marcus Bender lying dead under her beloved oak tree—the one he demanded she cut down—she figures the man dropped dead of a mean heart. But Marcus was murdered, and the prime suspect is a young man Maggie loves like a son. Peter Nelson was the worst of Maggie’s Sunday School students; he was also her late daughter’s fiancé, and he’s been a devoted friend to Maggie in the years since her daughter’s death.
Maggie can’t lose Peter, too. So she sets out to find the real murderer. To do that, she must move past the grief that has immobilized her all these years. She must probe the hidden corners of her little village on the Hudson River. And, when another death strikes even closer to home, Maggie must find the courage to defend the people and the town she loves—even if it kills her.

My Review:

If this cozy mystery were any cozier, it would knit itself a sweater. Or perhaps crochet an afghan. And as much as I occasionally love a good cozy (Marty Wingate’s Potting Shed AND Birds of a Feather series for example) this one just didn’t work for me.

In spite of the contemporary setting, there’s something slightly old-fashioned about both the heroine and the story. Although the story isn’t strictly first person singular, it is definitely written from protagonist Maggie Dove’s point of view. And a lot of the time her point of view is small and self-absorbed.

I don’t mean that Maggie is vain or egotistical. But her daughter died 20 years ago in an automobile accident, and Maggie has isolated herself in her house and her small town and her grief, and hasn’t ever moved on. Neither has her daughter’s boyfriend Peter, who was luckily thrown from that car all those years ago.

Peter is now the Assistant Police Chief, and in very big trouble. First a hated villager dies on Maggie’s lawn. Then a beloved old woman, and Maggie’s best friend, dies in a nursing home, both of the same cause – an overdose of Ecstasy that Peter has easy access to. And a substance that has gotten him in trouble before.

Maggie finally shakes herself out of her 20 year depression in order to prove Peter’s innocence, because he’s too sunk into his own morass of despond to take care of his own business his own self. But then that’s part of what his and Maggie’s functions are in each other’s lives. They take care of each other and they keep the memory of the late, lamented Juliet alive. So that neither of them has to move on.

Until Maggie is forced to make an irrevocable choice – either to surrender to the same forces that brought her best friend down, or to step forward and finally make something of the rest of her life.

Escape Rating C: This book is very slow going, right up until the end, then it’s a race for the finish. It’s also very clearly the setup for a series, as Maggie takes the entire book to make us wallow in her grief and passivity, introduce us to her town and her friends (and frenemies) and finally, finally get up and move on.

Maggie is a terribly nice person, but she also congratulates herself on her niceness just a bit too much, and beats herself up unmercifully when she acts or even merely feels human.

Also, part of Maggie’s persona and her self-judgement revolves around her faith and her attachment to her church and its activities. She’s been a Sunday School teacher there for years, and that has clearly provided a sense of stability and a circle of friends. Her faith is very important to her, and she thinks about it often. So often, in fact, that readers who are not expecting this story to have an inspirational tinge to it may wonder what they have wandered into.

But about the mystery. One of the things that is done well in this story is to peel back all the layers of everyone in this small town. No one is quite what they appear to be, and Maggie has been oblivious to much of what lies beneath the surface for many years. The investigation that she throws herself into is a big and much needed wake up call.

As far as the murderer goes, the author manages to scatter an entire net full of red herrings, and I did nibble at most of them. In the end, I figured out whodunnit right about the same time Maggie did, and only because there were no other suspects left. The author leads us readers on quite the chase. The last 10% wraps things up at a furious pace as Maggie and the reader finally see what has been successfully hiding in plain sight all along.

Review: The Champion of Baresh by Susan Grant + Giveaway

Posted on June 16, 2016June 15, 2016 by Marlene Harris | Author : Marlene Harris | B+ Reviews> blog tours> book reviews

The Champion of Barésh (Star World Frontier #1) by Susan Grant
Formats available: paperback, ebook
Series: Star World Frontier #1
Pages: 348
on May 27th 2016
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo
Goodreads

RITA-winner Susan Grant is back with an all-new, stand-alone tale of two improbable lovers, their daring secret, and the gamble destined to alter the course of their worlds forever.
A desperate woman in need of a miracle—A bad-boy prince in need of redemption
She was playing with fire...
Jemm Aves battles to keep her dreams alive on a dead-end world. Working for the mines by day, she’s a successful bajha player at night, disguised as a male to be allowed to compete in the colony’s dangerous underworld where club owners will go to extremes to retain the best players. Every win puts her one small step closer to her goal: saving enough to escape Barésh with her family. When a nobleman from one of the galaxy’s elite families recruits her to be a star player for his team, it's because he doesn't know her secret. Her ruse proves to be her most perilous game yet when it puts both their lives—and her heart—at risk.
Prince Charming he was not...
Prince Klark is eager to reverse his reputation as the black sheep of the Vedla clan, a family as famous for its wealth and power as it is for being a bastion of male-dominated tradition. If his bajha team can win the galactic title, it would go a long way toward restoring the family honor that his misdeeds tarnished. He travels to Barésh to track down an amateur who’s risen to the top of the seedy world of street bajha, offering the commoner a chance of a lifetime: a way off that reeking space rock for good. But his new player comes with a scandalous secret that turns his plans and his beliefs upside down. He sets out to win a very different prize—his champion’s reluctant heart.

My Review:

Because I kept conflating this story with the excellent Empress Game by Rhonda Mason, I was kind of expecting that the stakes in The Champion of Baresh would be slightly bigger than they are. And then they actually are, but not quite in the way I thought. And that’s always a good thing. I also kept wondering if this story linked at all to Grant’s Star series. It turns out that it does, but it is not necessary to have read, or to remember in my case, the details of the earlier series to enjoy The Champion of Baresh.

Baresh is a dead-end world, and Jemm Aves has a dead end job – but then all the jobs on Baresh are pretty much dead end, if not downright deadly. Not deadly as in dangerous per se, but deadly as in the working conditions are so totally awful that the job will kill you one way or another if you live long enough, and if you quit the poverty will kill you even quicker.

Think about all the diseases that miners have been proven to get on this planet, and then multiply that by an entire manufactured world that is completely dependent on mining a deadly and necessary ore. That’s Baresh.

And Jemm Aves wants off.

But the only chance she has for getting herself and her family – mother, brother, niece – is to pick up her dad’s old sens-sword and compete in barroom bajha. And the only way to make her way into the bajha circuit, even on a backwater world like Baresh – is to pretend to be a man. Or at least a boy.

The more she wins, the more that the local gangleaders want to tie her down to an exclusive contract. The better she does, the more she earns – and the more dangerous it gets.

Until she’s presented with a once-in-a-lifetime chance to play in the professional leagues. But that’s only possible if she can keep her secret – or find someone else to keep it with her.

Escape Rating B+: In the end, The Champion of Baresh is a love story about breaking down barriers.

The initial barrier that needs to be broken is the custom that says that women can’t play bajha. Think of bajha as a real-life version of the arena fighting video games, with a few changes. Matches are fought blindfolded, and all contestants use the same weapon, a sens-sword that administers a shock rather than a slice. Although there are professional teams, matches are fought one on one. But it’s the combined score of the whole team that leads to the championship.

Of course, the barroom circuit on Baresh is a LOT less formal. There’s only two individuals, and a whole lot of crowd noise. When Jemm, fighting as Sea Kestrel, steps into the ring, she’s the best that Baresh has ever seen. She’s living proof that women can play bajha, and play it well. But she has to compete as a man. Not just because of the social conventions, but because it is way safer for her and her brother/manager if no one knows who she really is.

Prince Klark Vedla has a whole lot of barriers to jump over, many of them all by himself. He has to convince himself that this street rat is capable of making the jump to the big leagues, a difficult feat all by itself. Then he has to decide to become complicit in Jemm’s secret, defying not just social convention but his own moral code. He wants to win the Championship for his family to erase the stigma of his own intemperate actions in The Star Princess.

And then Jemm and Klark have to bridge the barrier between street rat and prince-not-so-charming. Two people who have never fallen in love fall for each other, each believing that it can’t possibly work. It takes a wise and somewhat scary old man to get Klark’s head out of his ass on that score.

But as much fun as the romance is in this book, the fun is in breaking down the wall that prevents women from playing bajha. When Jemm’s secret is finally revealed, after a series of stunning victories, the powers-that-be in the sport try to bury everything under the rug, and attempt to keep Klark and his team silent with vague but menacing threats.

Watching Jemm and Klark set their entire sporting world on its ear, by proving that women not only can play bajha, but that they want to play bajha, and that encouraging them to play bajha is good for the sport. In the end the score is Neanderthals 0 and Opening Doors to Opportunity a very satisfying 1.

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Review: The Space Between Sisters by Mary McNear

Posted on June 15, 2016June 13, 2016 by Marlene Harris | Author : Marlene Harris | A- Reviews> blog tours> book reviews

The Space Between Sisters (The Butternut Lake Series, #4) by Mary McNear
Formats available: paperback, ebook
Series: Butternut Lake #4
Pages: 336
Published by William Morrow Paperbacks on June 14th 2016
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org
Goodreads

Return to Butternut Lake with the newest from Mary McNear, whose heartfelt and powerful stories have made her a New York Times and USA Today bestselling author. Here, the complicated bonds of sisterhood are tested, long-kept secrets are revealed, and love is discovered…all during one unforgettable summer at the lake.
Two sisters couldn’t be more different. Win organized and responsible; Poppy impulsive and undependable. Win treads cautiously and plans her life with care; Poppy bounces from job to job and apartment to apartment, leaving others to pick up the pieces. But despite their differences, they share memories of the idyllic childhood summers they spent together on the shores of Butternut Lake. Now, 13 years later, Win, recovering from a personal tragedy, has returned to Butternut Lake, settling into a predictable and quiet life.
Then, one night, Poppy unexpectedly shows up on Win’s doorstep with all her worldly possessions and a mysterious man in tow. And although Win loves her beautiful sister, she wasn’t expecting her to move in for the summer. Still, at first, they relive the joys of Butternut Lake. But their blissful nostalgia soon gives way to conflict, and painful memories and buried secrets threaten to tear the sisters apart.
As the waning days of summer get shorter, past secrets are revealed, new love is found, and the ties between the sisters are tested like never before…all on the serene shores of Butternut Lake.

My Review:

Second-chance lake strikes again. So far, in all of the books in the lovely Butternut Lake series (Up at Butternut Lake, Butternut Summer, The Night Before Christmas and Moonlight on Butternut Lake) someone in the story gets a second chance at love. In the case of Butternut Summer it’s even a second chance at the same love as the first time around, but hopefully with much better results.

In The Space Between Sisters there are several kinds of second chances that finally come true. For sisters Winona and Poppy Robbins, it’s a second, or possibly one hundredth, chance to bridge their strained relationship, now that they are both, at least theoretically, adults.

Win is a teacher at Butternut K-8. She has the sometimes insane job of teaching social studies to 7th and 8th graders, just as their teenage hormones start kicking in. Win loves her job, and loves living on Butternut Lake in their grandparents’ cabin. But she’s lonely and still grieving the loss of her young husband to cancer after only three years of marriage. Win is nearly 30, and her life has only sort of gone on. In her OCD way (and she is, a bit) she keeps rearranging the mementos of her marriage into little memorials around the house, never letting go.

Poppy is Win’s opposite. Where Win is organized to the point of obsession, Poppy lets everything and everyone slide. Including jobs, apartments and relationships. She drops debris wherever she lands, and seems to expect someone else to pick up the pieces. That someone has usually been Win. But in Poppy’s entire life, there are only two people that she has ever been able to count on. One is Win, and the other is her 16-year-old cat Sasquatch.

Their parents have never been responsible parties. Their dad is a not-very-functional alcoholic, and their mother is such a complete “free spirit” that she neglected the girls and left them to raise themselves. To say that their parents are totally uninvolved with their lives, and always have been, is an understatement of epic proportions.

So when Poppy quits her latest job, she surprises Win by moving in with her at Butternut Lake, dragging all her possessions and Sasquatch up from Minneapolis in the care (and car) of a nice guy she met on her morning coffee breaks when she was still working.

Poppy doesn’t even know Everett’s last name. And Win thinks that Everett agreed to give Poppy a lift because he was interested in her incredibly beautiful sister. But like so many other things that happen in Butternut Lake, nothing about Poppy’s retreat to Win, Everett’s reasons for giving Poppy a lift, or even the truth behind the dynamics of Win’s and Poppy’s relationship, are exactly what they seem.

And the truths that are finally revealed set them both free.

Escape Rating A-: At first, everything in this story seems so obvious, and then it suddenly isn’t. Win and Poppy act out a dynamic that happens so often in real families, one becomes super responsible, and the other becomes super irresponsible. The good girl and the bad girl. One makes messes, the other cleans up. And that seems like a natural response to the way they weren’t brought up. Poppy imitates their parents (minus the drinking) and Win goes 180 degrees the opposite direction. And of course they drive each other bananas.

Win is tired of cleaning up after Poppy and taking care of her messes. Poppy is tired of Win’s obsessive need for order. (When someone starts fuming about the “right” way to load a dishwasher, the reaction of not wanting to help is not a surprise). But Win has a point about Poppy’s fecklessness and Poppy has a point about Win needing to let her grief take its course instead of continuing to create shrines to it.

But they can’t really reach each other until a crisis finally breaks Poppy out of the fog she’s been living in for the last 15 years. Until she lets go of her old traumas, she can’t deal with the new ones that have come barreling toward her.

She falls in love for the very first time. And is too frozen with suppressed PTSD to act on it. And the one person who has always been there for her, dear old Sasquatch, has used up his 9th life.

While the nature of Poppy’s suppressed trauma was all too easy to figure out before the big reveal, once it all finally comes out every character has to reassess their relationship with Poppy, and Poppy has to reassess their relationship with her. It’s only when she lances the boil in the past that she is able to heal and grow into herself in the present.

Both Poppy and Win find love. For Poppy, it’s her need to finally enter into an adult relationship that makes her open up the memories she has ruthlessly (and also rootlessly) suppressed. For Win, it’s a chance to look at her life and what’s holding her back from living it. And she nearly screws it up. Which is what makes them both so human and so likeable.

And poor Sasquatch. He was a good cat, and Poppy gave him a good life. He was there when she needed him, and at the end, she’s there when he needs her to make the hard decision. Particularly for those of us who have had a companion animal at a critical part of their lives, the scenes with Sasquatch and her memories of all the times he was there for her require a box of tissues.

This post is part of a TLC book tour. Click on the logo for more reviews and features.

Review: June by Miranda Beverly Whittemore + Giveaway

Posted on June 14, 2016June 17, 2016 by Marlene Harris | Author : Marlene Harris | B Reviews> blog tours> book reviews> Giveaways

June by Miranda Beverly-Whittemore
Formats available: hardcover, ebook, audiobook
Pages: 400
Published by Crown on May 31st 2016
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org
Goodreads

From the New York Times bestselling author of Bittersweet comes a novel of suspense and passion about a terrible mistake made sixty years ago that threatens to change a modern family forever.
Twenty-five-year-old Cassie Danvers is holed up in her family’s crumbling mansion in rural St. Jude, Ohio, mourning the loss of the woman who raised her—her grandmother, June. But a knock on the door forces her out of isolation. Cassie has been named the sole heir to legendary matinee idol Jack Montgomery's vast fortune. How did Jack Montgomery know her name? Could he have crossed paths with her grandmother all those years ago? What other shocking secrets could June’s once-stately mansion hold?
Soon Jack’s famous daughters come knocking, determined to wrestle Cassie away from the inheritance they feel is their due. Together, they all come to discover the true reasons for June’s silence about that long-ago summer, when Hollywood came to town, and June and Jack’s lives were forever altered by murder, blackmail, and betrayal.
As this page-turner shifts deftly between the past and present, Cassie and her guests will be forced to reexamine their legacies, their definition of family, and what it truly means to love someone, steadfastly, across the ages.

My Review:

June is two stories that run kind of in parallel, but finally come together at the end. The two stories themselves are fascinating, but how much the reader will enjoy this story may come down to how you end up feeling about the house having, and providing, dreams to its inhabitants.

In 2015 Cassie Danvers inherits the shambling, decaying mansion of Two Oaks in small-town Ohio from her late grandmother, June. When Cassie holes herself up in the crumbling pile, she is suffering from a deep depression and a truckload of survivor’s guilt.

Cassie’s grandmother raised her after her parents were killed in an alcohol-fueled automobile accident when Cassie was 8. The last time Cassie and her grandmother spoke was at Cassie’s exhibition of her photographic recreation of that accident. June was incensed at the wanton display of her life’s greatest tragedy. Cancer took her before enough time passed to heal both their wounds.

Into Cassie’s grief-stricken wallow, comes Hollywood actress Tate Montgomery and her entourage. Tate is Hollywood royalty, her parents, Jack Montgomery and Diane DeSoto, were big Golden Age stars, who, once upon a time, filmed a movie in Cassie and June’s tiny little town of St. Jude. Jack has just died and left his entire considerable fortune to Cassie – but no one knows why.

As the story unfolds, and as Cassie, Tate and her assistants Nick and Hank investigate that long-ago summer, truths are revealed that change the lives of all involved. And some history repeats itself, just a tiny bit.

But when the revelations poke every bit as big a hole in both Cassie’s and Tate’s identities as the giant hole that opens in the mansion’s roof, they both have to go back and figure out who they really are, and what they really feel about the world that has so suddenly changed.

And Cassie has to decide whether she loves Nick enough to forgive him for choosing his job over his life. And hers.

Escape Rating B: The two stories themselves are absorbing. In 1955 we see June and her friend best friend Lindie as the entire town is captivated by the stars that come to their little town. Because the perspective is mostly Lindie’s we also feel her heartache. Lindie, who is 14 when this story opens, loves her friend June, even it she isn’t ready to acknowledge exactly what she feels or what that means about her and her future. June is 18, and has no clue. She expects to live a conventional small town life, marrying the man who has been chosen for her and making her own kind of happiness.

Instead, the events surrounding the movie shoot change both their lives forever. Whether for the better or the worse is something that the reader has to judge for themselves. But Cassie’s discovery of the events of that long-ago summer change her life in 2015.

In the present, Cassie, Tate and Tate’s half sister Esmeralda become caught up in the hunt for the truth about that long-lost summer. It is only after the facts are finally revealed and the Hollywood invasion is long gone that Cassie discovers that the truth has been living across the street from her all along.

As I read June, it also felt a bit reminiscent of Nora Roberts’ Tribute. Parts of the setup are similar – granddaughter inherits house from grandmother, discovers that grandmother’s past with the movie business was different and more dangerous than she was ever told. The difference is that the past in June wants to be revealed, and the past in Tribute contains evil that still wants to be concealed.

Back to June – I found the events in the past more compelling reading than the present. But it’s Lindie’s story at the end that is really sticking with me. What I’m still having a difficult time coming to terms with is the whole thing about the house dreaming and revealing the truth of the past to Cassie through dreams as a plot device in what is otherwise a fairly straightforward – but fascinating – family saga.

GIVEAWAY

I am giving away a copy of June to one lucky (US/Canada) commenter on this post:

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This post is part of a TLC book tour. Click on the logo for more reviews and features.

Review: The Invisible Library by Genevieve Cogman

Posted on June 13, 2016June 11, 2016 by Marlene Harris | Author : Marlene Harris | A- Reviews> book reviews

The Invisible Library (The Invisible Library #1) by Genevieve Cogman
Formats available: paperback, ebook, audiobook
Series: Invisible Library #1
Pages: 352
Published by Roc on June 14th 2016
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org
Goodreads

Collecting books can be a dangerous prospect in this fun, time-traveling, fantasy adventure from a spectacular debut author. One thing any Librarian will tell you: the truth is much stranger than fiction... Irene is a professional spy for the mysterious Library, a shadowy organization that collects important works of fiction from all of the different realities. Most recently, she and her enigmatic assistant Kai have been sent to an alternative London. Their mission: Retrieve a particularly dangerous book. The problem: By the time they arrive, it's already been stolen. London's underground factions are prepared to fight to the death to find the tome before Irene and Kai do, a problem compounded by the fact that this world is chaos-infested—the laws of nature bent to allow supernatural creatures and unpredictable magic to run rampant. To make matters worse, Kai is hiding something—secrets that could be just as volatile as the chaos-filled world itself. Now Irene is caught in a puzzling web of deadly danger, conflicting clues, and sinister secret societies. And failure is not an option—because it isn’t just Irene’s reputation at stake, it’s the nature of reality itself...
FEATURING BONUS MATERIAL: including an interview with the author, a legend from the Library, and more!

My Review:

If Thursday Next (from The Eyre Affair) and Flynn Carsen, or if you prefer Jake Stone, Ezekiel Jones or even Jenkins (from the TV show The Librarians) had a love child, with Alexia Tarabotti (Parasol Protectorate), The Librarian from the Discworld (Ook!), Isaac Vainio (Libriomancer) and Dr. Skye Chadwick (Displaced Detective) serving as godparents, you’d get something like The Invisible Library.

Yes, I’ll explain this. Sort of.

This isn’t exactly a story about a magical library, even though the magical library is at the heart of the story. It’s more of a quest story, and a finding yourself story, with a bit of a coming of age story thrown in. There’s also an aspect of a Sherlock Holmes pastiche just to make things really, really interesting, as if the above wasn’t enough.

Our intrepid Librarian is Irene. (All Librarians take nicknames when they are inducted) That Irene named herself for “the Woman” in the Sherlock Holmes stories, Irene Adler, is no accident. Irene, like so many of us, has a penchant for Sherlock Holmes stories. She also seems to have a thing for Sherlock Holmes’ analogs in the alternate universes she visits on behalf of the Library.

The Library sends its Librarians out on missions to recover unique books from all the alternate worlds. As we and Irene discover in this tale, the reason for recovering said book is not always made apparent to the agent. For that matter, most of the things that the agent really, really needs to know to survive the mess they are about to be thrown into are often not revealed to the agent beforehand.

So Irene is sent to a chaos-infested alternate of Victorian London. The chaos infestation manifests with the presence of things that shouldn’t really be but do obey logical, if occasional farcical, rules. So there are vampires and werewolves in this London, along with all the dirigibles that any steampunk heart could desire. And it seems as if the Fair Folk, the fae, are controlling both scientific development and adding to the chaos.

Irene is tasked with begging, borrowing or if necessary stealing this world’s own particular copy of a collection of the Brothers Grimm. There is a story in there that the Library wants very badly. And so, seemingly, does everyone in that world, including the Library’s great arch-enemy and traitor, Alberich.

All that Irene has to aid her in her quest are her considerable wits, her apprentice Kai, who is definitely much more than he appears, and the aid of the local Sherlock, the Earl of Leeds. The very forces of chaos themselves are arrayed against her.

She’s not quite sure whether she’s been thrown out as mere cannon-fodder, or if there is a traitor behind it all. And if chaos consumes her mind and soul, she may not even care about the resulting destruction of worlds.

Escape Rating A-: The Invisible Library is the wildest of wild rides. Just like the chaos forces that Irene battles, the story often feels like it is in danger of careening off its tracks, only to right itself and race to the next potentially deadly crisis..

At the same time, a reader of fantasy will be able to see some of the bones behind this story. Because most of those bones are pretty damn awesome in their own rights, that’s not necessarily a bad thing at all.

Just like “The Library” in The Librarians, the Invisible Library is a place that has access to anywhere it needs at any time. Its doors open anywhere and anywhen in all of the multiverses. Speaking of multiverse libraries, the Librarian in the Discworld has access to “L-space” the vast network of books where all great libraries are ultimately connected. It does feel a LOT like that, especially since Irene can use ANY library on the world she is visiting to connect to the Invisible Library as a temporary branch.

In the Displaced Detective series by Stephanie Osborn, her heroine creates a device that can explore those very same multiverses, and she also has a penchant for Sherlock Holmes. Skye Chadwick finds an alternate universe where Holmes was always a real person, and drags him to our 21st century to keep him from falling to his death at Reichenbach. Vale, the Earl of Leeds, is a living Holmes with his same methods, but just a bit more charm.

In Thursday Next’s world, books have power, and changing the words in those books can change the world. Irene’s mission is to find a book that either links the Library to this world, or has the power to change the nature of the world, the Library, or both. The world of the Parasol Protectorate is also a steampunk Victorian London filled with incredible adventures that includes dirigibles, vampires and werewolves. Alexia would be right at home on Irene’s mission. They’d probably get along like a house on fire – and might possibly set one on fire to aid in their escape from one disaster or another. And let’s just say that Isaac Vainio and Irene have pretty much the same job, and leave it at that.

But in all of those worlds, as well as the world of The Invisible Library, the story plunges from one desperate escape to another, always on the knife-edge of falling into chaos. And all along its madcap journey, it shimmers, shines and sparkles.

Hopefully, I’ve told you everything you need to know about why you should read this book, without actually spoiling a thing. But if you love books about the power of words and the power of books, The Invisible Library is well-worth checking out.

Reviewer’s Note: I have seen some places where The Invisible Library is categorized as a Young Adult Book. After having read it, I have zero clue as to why. Because it isn’t. Not that young adults who love any of the cited fantasy works won’t love this book, but this book is no more a YA book than they are.

The Sunday Post AKA What’s on my (Mostly Virtual) Nightstand 6-12-16

Posted on June 12, 2016June 10, 2016 by Marlene Harris | Author : Marlene Harris | Giveaways> The Sunday Post> Virtual Nightstand

Along with all the usual things that happen, this week I’m finishing up an article for Library Journal about trends in military romance. I need to include both some “must haves” and some upcoming books. If you can think of a military romance book that’s on your “desert island keeper shelf” or one that’s coming up this summer that you just can’t wait to read, please share! I have my own favorites, but I’d love to hear what other readers find irresistible.

The Life’s a Beach Giveaway Hop only has hours left, so be sure to enter for your chance at a $10 Book or $10 Gift Card.

Current Giveaways:

$10 Book or $10 Gift Card in the Life’s a Beach Giveaway Hop
$25 Gift Card from Marta Perry and Harlequin
$25 Gift Card from Diana Palmer and Harlequin

Blog Recap:

B Review: The Summer Guest by Alison Anderson
A+ Review: Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman
B Review: How Secrets Die + Excerpt + Giveaway by Marta Perry
B Review: Defender by Diana Palmer + Giveaway
A- Review: Uncharted by Anna Hackett
Stacking the Shelves (188)

Coming Next Week:

The Invisible Library by Genevieve Cogman (review)
June by Miranda Beverly Whittemore (blog tour review)
The Space Between Sisters by Mary McNear (blog tour review)
The Champion of Baresh by Susan Grant (blog tour review)
Maggie Dove by Susan Breen (review)

Stacking the Shelves (188)

Posted on June 11, 2016June 10, 2016 by Marlene Harris | Author : Marlene Harris | Stacking the Shelves

I got a virtual ton of books this week. At first, there was nothing on the list, and then it snowballed. I think this is a reflection of the September and October books appearing on NetGalley and Edelweiss. Summer is a slow publication season, and then BOOM!

Also literal snowball. Snowfall on Haven Point is a Christmas book! Ten yard penalty for rushing the season.

Although most of these are ebooks or eARCs, I do still get a ton of print books as well. And I am thrilled to say that Half-Price Books has finally opened a store in the Atlanta metro area. If you are lucky enough to have an HPB near you, check them out – especially if you need to offload some books. Unlike many used book stores, HPB buys books for CASH! I absolutely adore them. They keep my office from sinking into the earth.