Review: Defender by Diana Palmer + Giveaway

Posted on June 9, 2016June 8, 2016 by Marlene Harris | Author : Marlene Harris | B Reviews> blog tours> book reviews> Giveaways

Defender by Diana Palmer
Formats available: hardcover, ebook, audiobook
Series: ,
Pages: 304
Published by HQN Books on June 28th 2016
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org
Goodreads

The man who shattered her trust is back to protect her… New York Times bestselling author Diana Palmer delivers a breathtaking story of second-chance love.
When Paul Fiore disappeared from Isabel Grayling's life, he told himself it was for all the right reasons. She was young and innocent, and he was her millionaire father's lowly employee. Three years on, Paul is the FBI agent assigned to Isabel's case. Too late, he realizes what life in her Texas mansion was really like back then—and how much damage he did when he left.
Once love-struck and sheltered, Isabel has become an assistant district attorney committed to serving the law, no matter how risky it gets. But right now, the man she can't forgive is the one thing standing between her and a deadly stalker. She knows Paul won't hesitate to protect her life with his own. But if she can't trust herself to resist him, how can she trust him not to break her heart all over again?

My Review:

If you look on Goodreads, Defender is listed as a “read alike” for yesterday’s book, How Secrets Die. Having read both of them, while I liked them both, I have to say that they are absolutely nothing like each other.

I picked up Defender because Diana Palmer is one of those romance writers that I’ve heard about forever. And although I read her brief foray into science fiction romance, The Morcai Battalion (written as Susan Kyle) I had never read any of the western romance that she is much better known for.

And I haven’t yet. Defender does not have any of the feel that I have come to expect from contemporary Western romances. Instead, it had more of a melodrama feel to it. I felt like I was reading a soap opera, complete with the over-the-top plots, heroes, villains and ingenues that seem emblematic of the genre.

So even though Defender is listed as the latest book in Palmer’s Long, Tall Texans series on her website, and even though it is set in rural Texas not far from San Antonio, it doesn’t feel like a western at all. There are no cowboys here, and there’s no ranch anywhere in sight. There is a bit of thoroughbred breeding, but that could easily have been transferred to the Kentucky Bluegrass without many changes.

Except that it was pretty clear that the areas that surround the Grayling estate in Defender are part of a much longer series. There were a lot of side characters whose history was hinted at, and who had important parts to play in Defender, but the way they were introduced led this reader to conclude that the major part of these characters’ history was elsewhere, in earlier books in the series.

It bothered me a bit, but not enough to keep me from liking Defender.

The story in Defender is closer to romantic suspense than anything else, crossed with the romantic trope of innocent heroine falls for experienced, heroic, slightly-older man who protects her.

Isabel and Meredith Grayling are the protected daughters of investment tycoon Darwin Grayling, or so it appears to their father’s Head of Security Paul Fiore. But looks are deceiving, and there is a whole lot of evil hidden under the Grayling roof.

As Isabel is about to graduate college, and Merrie is graduating high school, we get to see exactly how dangerous and restrictive that “fatherly protection” really is. But even though Fiore can tell that both girls are afraid of their father, he never lets himself think about what that fear really means. But he leaves the Grayling house after he realizes that the love Isabel feels for him is not nearly as innocent as he wanted to believe, and that his response is going to get him fired, or possibly killed.

He returns three years later as part of an FBI investigation into Grayling’s business dealings, only to discover the damage that he did when he left, and the true circumstances in which he abandoned Isabel and Merrie.

Even as Isabel forgives him, he can’t manage to forgive himself. Not for the harm he caused, not for the harm he ignored, and not his responsibility for the tragedy that brought him to Texas in the first place.

Escape Rating B: Upon finishing Defender, I discovered that it reminded me a bit of J.R. Ward’s The Bourbon Kings, even though I hated The Bourbon Kings but liked Defender. Some of the similarity is in the atmosphere – both stories mostly take place on very, very rich people’s private property, and the evil behavior of the father figure in both stories is a bit over the top. However, for this reader it did not feel like BK had any truly redeemable characters, where in Defender there are quite a few people doing the best they can in an extremely bad situation, and one wants to root for them to succeed.

The Grayling household is a prison, a fact that Isabel and Merrie are reminded of entirely too often, and all too frequently with whippings and scars. Every person within their orbit has to be kept in the dark about their true situation, or Darwin Grayling will make them disappear – into an early grave. He’s done it before and is all too willing to do it again. The first third of the book is actually fairly rough going – the more one feels for the girls, and the reader certainly does, the more difficult it is to read about what they suffered.

Daddy Grayling is also batshit crazy, in so many ways that it seems like much too much. But he is also crazy rich and crazy powerful, to the point where he can buy and sell anyone or anything. At the end, when we discover what was driving his insanity, half of it is no surprise, but the other half was way out of left field and again, over the top. Reason number 1 was explanation enough without reason number 2.

And the involvement of “the Mob”, even tangentially, on both sides of this equation adds to that feeling of “over-the-top”-ness. There was plenty of evil to go around without dragging gangsters or their 21st century equivalents into this mess.

There’s something about Isabel and Merrie’s extreme naivete that hearkens back to romances of yesteryear. They are both educated and intelligent, and have been deliberately kept in the dark about the ways of the world. In many ways, their innocence and their indoctrination into staying innocent would put them right at home in a much earlier era. They know that what their father has done to them is wrong, but they don’t have a way of striking back until the Feds come to town to arrest their dear old Dad for money laundering and racketeering. Dad turns out to have been a much bigger all-purpose louse than anyone expected.

It is good for their development that Isabel, now a newly minted Assistant District Attorney, is able to contribute to the investigation. She needs to conquer the villain to have a chance at moving on with her life. That she actually gets the man of her dreams turns out to be icing on the cake – but very tasty frosting indeed.

Think of Defender as a guilty pleasure kind of book. Everything is just a bit too much, but lots of fun to wallow in – make that read.

TOURWIDE GIVEAWAY

Diana and Harlequin are giving away a $25 Gift Card to one lucky entrant:

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

Review: How Secrets Die by Marta Perry + Excerpt + Giveaway

Posted on June 8, 2016June 8, 2016 by Marlene Harris | Author : Marlene Harris | B Reviews> blog tours> book reviews> Giveaways

How Secrets Die by Marta Perry
Formats available: paperback, ebook, audiobook
Series: House of Secrets #3
Pages: 384
Published by HQN Books on June 28th 2016
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org
Goodreads

As Laurel Ridge embraces a stranger hungry for answers, a sinister truth is awakened.
A hard-hitting reporter, Kate Beaumont unearths the deepest lies and brings harsh truths to light, but the story that lures her to the gentle town of Laurel Ridge, Pennsylvania, is closer to her heart than anyone knows. The details of her half brother's sudden death have never made sense. She owes him justice, yet the one man who can help her is the stubborn sheriff she can't stand.
Protecting his town is Mac Whiting's top priority. Everything else, including pacifying a beautiful crusader on a mission best left resting in peace, is secondary. But as Kate's search embeds her in his world and attracts a skilled criminal, she needs Mac's protection. Drawn together by deadly secrets, they must find a way to trust each other before a killer silences them both.

My Review:

I just plain liked this book. I think it may have been a case of the right book at the right time, but I definitely found myself slipping into the book, and the world of Laurel Ridge, very easily. And I say this in spite of this book being the author’s third trip to Laurel Ridge, after Where Secrets Sleep and When Secrets Strike, which I have not read and did not miss having read for the purpose of getting into How Secrets Die.

But I enjoyed this book so much that I plan to go back and read the first two.

How Secrets Die is a lovely small-town romantic suspense story. Reporter Kate Beaumont comes to Laurel Ridge to investigate the death of her brother the previous year. The local cops dismissed the case as an accidental death – a former drug addict who slipped off the wagon to an untimely end.

But Kate can’t let it go. Her brother Jason had had some trouble, but he had been clean and sober for years, and was doing well in college and seemed to be doing well at his internship at a local financial firm. Kate is certain that something must have gone seriously wrong to drive Jason back to his old, bad habits.

After endless viewings of Jason’s somewhat cryptic video journal, Kate just doesn’t see what drove him off the rails and to his death. So she comes to Laurel Ridge to search for herself, and runs right into the local police chief, Mac Whiting.

Kate blames Mac for the quick dismissal of her brother’s case. Mac is, at first, worried that Kate is just there to stir up trouble. But when that trouble strikes, Mac finds that he is just plain worried about Kate. And guilty that he didn’t look deeper into the case at the time. Because when the attacks on Kate escalate, it becomes clear that there must be something he overlooked.

If the case were as open and shut as it initially appeared to be, no one would feel threatened by Kate’s presence in town. But someone obviously is. And they’ll stop at nothing to make sure that whatever secret Jason uncovered, it stays dead with him. And if necessary, with Kate.

Escape Rating B: As I said at the top, I just plain liked this book. I was in the mood for a relatively familiar type of story, one with likable characters and a few interesting twists, and How Secrets Die fit the bill.

And although the romance is quite lovely, this is a surprisingly clean book. The author does a good job of portraying the heat between Kate and Mac while giving them plenty of logical reason for not indulging in that spark at first, second or even subsequent involvement. This is a story where postponing the romantic payoff until the very end made sense. Also you might see this book billed as “Inspirational”. After reading it, I can say that it does not fall into that genre. How Secrets Die falls squarely into romantic suspense.

Kate and Mac certainly have one thing in common – they are both dealing with a load of survivor’s guilt. Kate’s is pretty obvious from the outset – she feels guilty that she didn’t notice her brother’s cry for help. It isn’t until well into her investigation that she starts to realize that she didn’t respond because there wasn’t one. He never knew how much trouble he was in until it was far too late.

Mac’s heavy dose of guilt is both recent and long-term. As Kate shakes things up in Laurel Ridge, she often accuses him of being too protective of the local citizens to dive into things that need to be dove into. And she’s right. He dismissed Jason’s case much too easily, even though there were a whole bunch of loose ends that he never tied down. He knew too many people too well to question them the way he should have.

He also lives with an overwhelming need to protect his community, because he feels that he let so many people who depended on him down when he served in Iraq and Afghanistan. The people that he couldn’t save haunt him.

Kate and Mac do not start from a position of trust. Kate doesn’t much like cops – her stepfather was one and was a rigid taskmaster who insisted that his many rules be followed to the letter. While there was no abuse, there was also no love or respect. Instead, Kate found herself raising her younger half-brother, and trying to protect his very quirky nature from his by-the-book father.

While we never hear if Jason was diagnosed with anything in particular, it sounds like he might have been somewhere on the Asperger spectrum.

So the story in this romantic suspense story is Kate moving to Laurel Ridge to find out what happened to her brother. Along the way she falls for the police chief, who is tied to the community, while Kate plans to leave when her quest is over. Along the way they trip over several secrets that the owners would rather remain buried, and who would be happy to bury Kate right along with them.

At the end, the perpetrator finally reveals themselves in an attempt to kill Kate and cover their tracks one more time. And once we discover who it is, we see that it was obvious all along, but hidden just as well from the reader as from the community.

TOURWIDE GIVEAWAY

Marta and Harlequin are giving away a $25 Gift Card to one lucky commenter on this tour:

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

To read an evocative excerpt from How Secrets Die, check below the fold.

Continue reading “Review: How Secrets Die by Marta Perry + Excerpt + Giveaway” →

Review: Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman

Posted on June 7, 2016June 6, 2016 by Marlene Harris | Author : Marlene Harris | A+ Reviews> blog tours> book reviews

Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman
Formats available: hardcover, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Pages: 336
Published by William Morrow on July 7th 2015
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org
Goodreads

The #1 New York Times bestselling author’s ultimate edition of his wildly successful first novel featuring his “preferred text”—and including the special Neverwhere tale, How the Marquis Got His Coat Back.
Published in 1997, Neil Gaiman’s darkly hypnotic first novel, Neverwhere, heralded the arrival of this major talent and became a touchstone of urban fantasy. Over the years, a number of versions were produced both in the U.S. and the U.K. Now, this author’s preferred edition of his classic novel reconciles these versions and reinstates a number of scenes cut from the original published books.
Neverwhere is the story of Richard Mayhew, a young London businessman with a good heart and an ordinary life, which is changed forever when he is plunged through the cracks of reality into a world of shadows and darkness—the Neverwhere. If he is ever to return to the London Above, Richard must join the battle to save this strange underworld kingdom from the malevolence that means to destroy it

My Review:

I’m not sure whether I first went to Neverwhere by reading the book or watching the TV miniseries. Needless to say, even though the TV series actually came first, the book is better. And I was thrilled to have the opportunity to reread it for this tour.

Neverwhere is one of those stories that stuck with me long after I read it. I’ve even written about it before. There’s something about Neverwhere, with its concept of London Below, that has always reminded me of Simon R. Green’s Nightside, which also creates an otherworldly version of London that exists alongside and underneath the great city.

But Neverwhere is a different kind of story. It doesn’t have to be set in London Below, although the setting does give its some of its resonance and charm as well as its flights of fancy. Who would have thought there would actually be an Earl at Earl’s Court? On the other hand, why isn’t there? And what if there was?

Neverwhere is the story of what happens to someone who takes the red pill, although in this case it’s not that our hero Richard Mayhew sees the painful truth of reality so much as that he sees that there is a deeper reality lying underneath our own. The humdrum world he comes from is just as real as London Below, but without that red pill, he can’t see it. And unlike takers of the blue pill in The Matrix, when Richard comes back, he still remembers everything. Only to discover that, as Mr. Spock once said, “After a time, you may find that having is not so pleasing a thing after all as wanting. It is not logical, but it is often true.” At the end of his harrowing adventure, Richard Mayhew wants his safe, normal world back. Only to discover that he has changed too much to fit back into the life he once found so satisfying.

The story of Neverwhere is relatively straightforward in its plot, but complex in its setting. Richard Mayhew, a young and somewhat insecure securities analyst in London, rescues a young woman he finds bruised and bleeding on the streets of London.

By rescuing Door, he finds himself outside the life of the normal world, and an unwitting denizen of “London Below”. He is lost and confused and completely out of his depth. All that he knows is that if he is to get his own life back, he must find Door in the confusing maze of the world he never knew was under London, and travel with her, like the Cowardly Lion, the Scarecrow and the Tinman, until he reaches the wizard, in this case the Angel Islington, and he can finally go home.

Just like the journey through Oz, Richard and Door face trials and monsters, and also as in Dorothy’s journey, the angel, just like the wizard, is not what he appears to be. But in this case what they find is not a benign trickster – the angel is the greatest monster of them all. And nothing in the journey turns out to have been quite what it appeared to be.

After passing all his tests, Richard is able to receive what he thinks is the greatest wish of his heart. Only to discover that he has grown too much or too big to be contained in his old life.

Escape Rating A+: The story of Neverwhere was just as magical upon re-reading as it was the first time around. Or even the second, which I think was viewing the TV series. And even though the special effects are often laughable, and some of the horror is reduced by the necessity of filming things that are best left in the imagination, the TV show holds up too.

This time, I listened to parts of Neverwhere from an unabridged audiobook recorded by the author. And unlike many authors who read their own works, Gaiman does an excellent job voicing all the characters, to the point where I was still hearing his voice in my head a couple of weeks ago when I was reading The View from the Cheap Seats.

The story here is of a mythic journey, and there are lots of parallels to The Wizard of Oz, a fact which does get lampshaded in Neverwhere. While Richard is journeying to find his way home, he is also taking a trip through a long, dark night of the soul. And as a result, he becomes more than he was.

So many of the characters he meets seem more than a bit odd on first meeting. The Marquis de Carabas is a trickster. He always has his eye on the main chance, and does not suffer fools or incompetents within his orbit. He does not seem to ever warm up to Richard, who he always sees as the ultimate babe in the very deadly woods. But in the end he always keeps his word. And he always collects his debts.

The villains of this piece are Mr. Croup and Mr. Vandemar, and while they often sound incredibly campy, the more they appear in the story the easier it is to see them as creatures that would make the monsters under the bed and in the closet run for cover. (But their scariness works better in print than on the screen, where the reader is able to feel the creepiness rather than see the joke.)

Neverwhere is one of the ultimate urban fantasy wild rides. If you have ever dreamed that there is a beautiful, terrible, magical world existing just out of reach, take your own journey to London Below. And always remember to “mind the gap”.

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

Review: The Summer Guest by Alison Anderson

Posted on June 6, 2016June 5, 2016 by Marlene Harris | Author : Marlene Harris | B Reviews> blog tours> book reviews

The Summer Guest by Alison Anderson
Formats available: hardcover, ebook, audiobook
Pages: 400
Published by Harper on March 8th 2016
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org
Goodreads

Blinded by a fatal illness, young Ukrainian doctor Zinaida Lintvaryova is living on her family’s rural estate in the summer of 1888. When a family from Moscow rents a cottage on the grounds, Zinaida develops a deep bond with one of their sons, a doctor and writer of modest but growing fame called Anton Pavlovich Chekhov. Intelligent, curious, and increasingly introspective as her condition worsens, Zinaida keeps a diary chronicling this extraordinary friendship that comes to define the last years of her life.
In the winter of 2014, Katya Kendall’s London publishing house is floundering-as is her marriage. Katya is convinced that salvation lies in publishing Zinaida’s diary, and she approaches translator Ana Harding about the job. As Ana reads the diary, she is captivated by the voice of the dying young doctor. And hidden within Zinaida’s words, Ana discovers tantalizing clues suggesting that Chekhov—who was known to have composed only plays and short stories—actually wrote a novel during his summers with Zinaida that was subsequently lost. Ana is determined to find Chekhov’s “lost” manuscript, but in her search she discovers it is but one of several mysteries involving Zinaida’s diary.
Inspired by fragments of historical truth, The Summer Guest is a transportive, masterfully written novel about an unusual, fascinating friendship that transcends the limits of its time and place. It’s also a contemporary story about two compelling, women, both of whom find solace in Zinaida and Chekhov as they contemplate all that’s missing in their own lives.

My Review:

“She had dared to believe in the truth of the imagination.” But the question that echoes after the book is done is whose imagination? And even more tellingly, whose truth?

This is a story of three women, spread across two eras and three countries, and the commonality they find, or are found to have, over their love of the work of Anton Chekhov.

In 1888, Chekhov and his family spend that summer, and the following summer as summer guests of the Lintvaryov family in Luka, in what is now Ukraine. At that point in his life, he was known but not yet famous, and still making his reputation. But his writings, rather than his medical practice, were the economic support of his family. His parents, his sisters and his brothers. Their support was both a joy and somewhat of a distracting burden.

They took him, or he took them, to Luka, so that he could write and relax. Or the other way around.

He became friends with the oldest daughter of the Lintvaryov house, a doctor like himself, But Zinaida Mikhailovna was no longer practicing medicine. She had been struck down by illness, most likely a brain tumor. In 1888 she was already blind, and her world was closing in.

To keep the internal darkness at bay, Zinaida kept a diary, by writing in a special box designed to keep her lines apart and legible. In 2014, Katya Kendall sends Zinaida’s diary, in the original Russian, to translator Ana Harding.

Katya’s small publishing company, a joint effort between herself and her somewhat distant husband Peter, is failing. Their business of publishing translations of Russian and Eastern European works has never recovered from the recession of 2008, especially as it was followed by so much political unrest in the countries that were their biggest customers.

Katya and Peter hope that the publication of Zinaida’s diary, illuminating as it does a documented but little known piece of Chekhov’s life, will allow them to recover their fortunes. Ana, captivated with the voice of the woman in the diary she has received, hopes that the publication of her translation will make her reputation, and in a way, justify the choices she has made in her life.

But Zinaida takes her under her spell, bringing those long-lost summers to life. In Zinaida’s words, Ana finds truths that captivate her to the point of visiting Luka herself, now in a brief calm between wars, in order to find the truth of the most surprising revelation of the diary – that Chekhov, the master of the play and the short story, left behind one novel, entrusted to the care of his dying friend.

Or did he?

Escape Rating B: The Summer Guest is a story of fiction as the lie that tells the truth. Ana and Katya both find themselves enraptured by Zinaida’s writing across the years, although in much different ways and for completely different reasons.

They both find the long-ago diarist a kindred spirit – a woman who still reached out to the world, even as her own was closing in. As both Katya’s and Ana’s lives seem to be, although not in the same way.

In the end, it is Zinaida’s voice that shines most clearly in the story, in spite of the way that it comes to be. And it is Ana’s search for meaning and purpose that provides the resolution at the end. Even though the diary turned out to be a lie, it still told Ana a truth that she needed to see.

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

Review: The View from the Cheap Seats by Neil Gaiman

Posted on May 31, 2016May 30, 2016 by Marlene Harris | Author : Marlene Harris | A Reviews> blog tours> book reviews

The View from the Cheap Seats: Selected Nonfiction by Neil Gaiman
Formats available: hardcover, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Pages: 544
Published by William Morrow on May 31st 2016
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org
Goodreads

An enthralling collection of nonfiction essays on a myriad of topics—from art and artists to dreams, myths, and memories—observed in Neil Gaiman’s probing, amusing, and distinctive style.
An inquisitive observer, thoughtful commentator, and assiduous craftsman, Neil Gaiman has long been celebrated for the sharp intellect and startling imagination that informs his bestselling fiction. Now, The View from the Cheap Seats brings together for the first time ever more than sixty pieces of his outstanding nonfiction. Analytical yet playful, erudite yet accessible, this cornucopia explores a broad range of interests and topics, including (but not limited to): authors past and present; music; storytelling; comics; bookshops; travel; fairy tales; America; inspiration; libraries; ghosts; and the title piece, at turns touching and self-deprecating, which recounts the author’s experiences at the 2010 Academy Awards in Hollywood.
Insightful, incisive, witty, and wise, The View from the Cheap Seats explores the issues and subjects that matter most to Neil Gaiman—offering a glimpse into the head and heart of one of the most acclaimed, beloved, and influential artists of our time.

My Review:

“Fiction is the lie that tells the truth” – This is a quote that Neil Gaiman seems to have adapted from Albert Camus’ version: “Fiction is the lie through which we tell the truth.”

A good bit of this collection is about the creation of that fiction, not just his own, but also other people’s. So we get a look into how the writer does his craft, but even more of a peek at what the writer thinks about other writers’ books that he has known and loved. And sometimes that’s about the books, and sometimes that’s about the writer, and most often it’s about the love.

As a librarian, I have to say that the entire first section of this collection just warms the proverbial cockles of my book-loving and book-pushing heart. Because in it, Gaiman basically lays out his love of books and bookstores and libraries for the entire world to see. And his expression of that love is absolutely lyrical. It’s a paean to libraries and a clarion call to save them all wrapped into one beautiful ball.

He also talks a lot about the books that shaped him, both as a person and as a writer. If the “Golden Age of science fiction is twelve” or thirteen, as the age varies depending on what story he is telling, then Gaiman was exposed at just the right moment. But even if you are not a lover of science fiction, his story of escaping into books as a child will resonate for any adult who has spent their life escaping from it in books. We all started out young.

As a writer, Gaiman began as a journalist (not unlike his friend, the late, much lamented Terry Pratchett) and moved from writing for other people to writing the stories that, as he says, he couldn’t keep inside. And the stories that he wanted to read. Along the way, he passed through comic books, fantasy, science fiction and horror. As many of the languages of myth-making as he could manage. In various pieces of this collection, there are essays that speak to one or more of those interests, with digressions into movies and music.

But whatever he is, or was, writing about (or in some cases speaking about) the author’s voice shines through. And that love. Love for the genre, love for the medium, and especially love for the power of words and the worlds they create.

Escape Rating A: Because this is a collection of essays and whatnot, I don’t actually need to read the entire thing to write a credible review. But I had so much fun reading it that I could not make myself stop.

Also, I recently listened to the beginning of Neverwhere, read by the author. As I read The View From the Cheap Seats, I could hear the author’s voice in my head, especially reading the speeches. It’s a very distinct authorial voice, and a surprisingly excellent voice for reading.

(Some authors are notoriously bad at reading their own work. Gaiman is emphatically not one of them.)

As an essay collection, while I wouldn’t say that it is uneven the way that last year’s short story collection, Trigger Warning, was, I would say that the appeal of the collection will depend on how closely the reader’s interests match the author’s.

Anyone who loves books and reading AT ALL will enjoy the first section, Some Things I Believe. Because the author believes A LOT about the joy of reading to move us and the importance of bookstores and libraries and of simply READING.

But other parts of the collection reflect different tastes and interests. As someone who reads a lot of science fiction and fantasy, the essays in those sections, including the speeches, had plenty of resonance for this reader. The stories within the stories, the tropes that are referred to, the people being honored, are all ones that I am not just familiar with, but frequently also love. And occasionally have my own stories about.

And his writing about science fiction and fantasy and being both a reader and a writer echo my own experiences in the SF fan community.

His speech about Tulip Mania as it relates to the Comic Book Industry (Good Comics and Tulips: A Speech) should probably be read by anyone interested in the economics of fads and/or the bursting of false-demand economic bubbles.

At the same time, the sections where I’m not as invested, aren’t as interesting to me. My taste in music is different from the author’s. So while I find his essays on music interesting, they don’t move me in the same way that the ones on SF and fantasy do. They are excellently written, but don’t touch a place in my heart.

But so much of this collection does.

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

Review: Out Rider by Lindsay McKenna + Giveaway

Posted on May 5, 2016May 4, 2016 by Marlene Harris | Author : Marlene Harris | B- Reviews> blog tours> book reviews> Giveaways

Out Rider by Lindsay McKenna
Formats available: paperback, ebook, audiobook
Series: Jackson Hole #11
Pages: 368
Published by HQN Books on April 26th 2016
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org
Goodreads

With her return to Jackson Hole, Wyoming, New York Times bestselling author Lindsay McKenna shows how love can find a way out of the darkness…
A fresh start—that's all Devorah McGuire wants. As a former Marine and current Ranger with the US Forest Service, she's grown accustomed to keeping others safe. But when the unthinkable happens, she can only hope that a transfer to Jackson Hole, Wyoming, will allow her to put the past behind her for good.
Dev's mentor at Grand Tetons National Park is fellow canine handler and horseman Sloan Rankin. He shows Dev the spectacular trails, never knowing the terror that stalks her every move. Despite her lingering fear, Dev feels an attraction for Sloan as wild as their surroundings.
With Sloan, Dev can envision a new life—a real home. Unless a vengeful man fresh out of prison succeeds in finishing what he started…

My Review:

I picked up Out Rider because I enjoyed the previous book in this series, Night Hawk. But Night Hawk was book 10 in the Jackson Hole series, and Out Rider is book 11. While I didn’t feel that I was missing anything in Night Hawk by not having read the rest of the series, Out Rider has a lot of very lovely involvement with previous couples and other characters in the series, and I did feel a bit left out.

I also had some mixed feelings about the plot, but not enough to keep me from enjoying the story.

The community near Jackson Hole is just outside Grand Teton National Park, and has featured Park Rangers before. Both the heroine Devorah McGuire, and the hero, Sloan Rankin, are Park Rangers with the U.S. Forest Service. But both of them are just slightly different from most of the Rangers.

Dev is a tracking specialist, aided and abetted by her beautiful yellow labrador, Bella. Sloan is the Rangers’ farrier, shoeing and caring for all of the horses and mules used by the Park and its Rangers at Grand Teton and Yellowstone. Sloan has been at Grand Teton for about three years, after a disastrous marriage and divorce. Also after serving in Iraq as part of a partnership with his combat trained Belgian Malinois, the utterly inappropriately named Mouse.

When Dev and Sloan meet on the road heading for Jackson Hole, they have a lot in common. Both are ex-military (Dev was in the Marines), both are dog handlers, both are Rangers. But Dev has just arrived at Grand Teton for a fresh start, after she was attacked at her previous posting in the Great Smokies by another Ranger.

Dev is hoping that her change of venue will leave her stalker, now ex-Ranger Bart Gordon, as well as all the good-old-boys who ignored all of her warnings and defended her attacker, in her rearview mirror.

It turns out that she’s left the good-old-boys, but not the stalker. Or there wouldn’t be a story.

But first, Dev has the chance to settle into her new job, and to start shaking off the fear and mistrust left behind by not just the attack, but they way that all of the people who should have listened to her ignored her and failed her on every level. It’s the story that we all fear, that a clever man will descend into abuse and violence, but no one believes the woman because the guy is a friend. It’s sad and sick but all too common.

Bart comes to Jackson Hole to get revenge on the woman who turned him in. And it’s a revenge that he does not intend for Dev to survive. But this time, both the Park and the law have her back, and the hunter becomes the hunted much, much faster than he planned on.

Dev has finally found a new life worth living for, if she can just manage to survive the shadows from her old life.

Escape Rating B-: The romance in Out Rider is a slow burn, and that’s as it should be. At the beginning of the story, Sloan is just thinking that he might be ready to stick his toe into dating again, but he isn’t interested in getting into a long-term relationship. He’s still very gun-shy after his disastrous marriage.

Dev is in an even worse case than Sloan. The attack by her stalker is barely six months in the past, and it has shaken her faith in men and in her own judgement very badly. Perhaps a bit too badly.

Dev keeps beating herself up that she didn’t see just how twisted her stalker was before he finally attacked her. The depth of her questioning her own judgement seems a bit too much. She was not dating the bastard. She recognized very early on that something wasn’t quite right about the guy, and avoided him as much as possible. She reported his behavior to their supervisor, and to the police, who both did nothing except laugh it off and blame her for overreacting. But her judgement was spot on from the very beginning. The system failed her, but she did not fail herself. And when push came very much to shove, she rescued herself as well, and pursued charges. That the bastard got a slap on the wrist is on the system that protected him and not on her.

I realize that it is easy to rationalize in this situation, but it still felt that the depth of her self-doubt would have felt more congruent if she had dated the guy, which she intelligently did not.

And as much as I liked Dev, the whole side business of her being an empath of some kind did not fit in with the story, except as a way to make her suffer even more. I do enjoy a bit of paranormal woo-woo in my stories, but it didn’t feel right here. Your esper rating may vary.

Sloan is almost too good to be true. Not that that’s a bad thing in a romantic hero.

The characters that stand out the most in this story, and always steal the scene, are the animals, especially the dogs Bella and Mouse. Bella is such a sweetheart, while still being Dev’s first and fiercest protector. And Mouse, well, Mouse helps to save the day.

But in the end, Dev rescues herself. And that was the best way to bring this adventure to a heartwarming conclusion.

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Review: Wilde Lake by Laura Lippman

Posted on May 3, 2016May 2, 2016 by Marlene Harris | Author : Marlene Harris | A- Reviews> blog tours> book reviews

Wilde Lake by Laura Lippman
Formats available: hardcover, ebook, large print, audiobook
Pages: 368
Published by William Morrow on May 3rd 2016
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org
Goodreads

The bestselling author of the acclaimed standalones After I’m Gone, I’d Know You Anywhere, and What the Dead Know, challenges our notions of memory, loyalty, responsibility, and justice in this evocative and psychologically complex story about a long-ago death that still haunts a family.
Luisa “Lu” Brant is the newly elected—and first female—state’s attorney of Howard County, Maryland, a job in which her widower father famously served. Fiercely intelligent and ambitious, she sees an opportunity to make her name by trying a mentally disturbed drifter accused of beating a woman to death in her home. It’s not the kind of case that makes headlines, but peaceful Howard county doesn’t see many homicides.
As Lu prepares for the trial, the case dredges up painful memories, reminding her small but tight-knit family of the night when her brother, AJ, saved his best friend at the cost of another man’s life. Only eighteen, AJ was cleared by a grand jury. Now, Lu wonders if the events of 1980 happened as she remembers them. What details might have been withheld from her when she was a child?
The more she learns about the case, the more questions arise. What does it mean to be a man or woman of one’s times? Why do we ask our heroes of the past to conform to the present’s standards? Is that fair? Is it right? Propelled into the past, she discovers that the legal system, the bedrock of her entire life, does not have all the answers. Lu realizes that even if she could learn the whole truth, she probably wouldn’t want to.

My Review:

Wilde Lake is a book about stories. The ones that last. The stories that we tell each other. The stories that we tell ourselves.

And what happens when someone finally unravels all of the stories that people have told her about her life.

This is, after all, Lu’s story. Lu is Luisa Frida Brant, and at first it seems like she lives a mostly charmed life. She’s just been elected the first female State’s Attorney for Howard County Maryland.

Howard County is a real place, as is Columbia, the planned community that Lu grew up. Even the history of Columbia is pretty much as described in the book. Even Wilde Lake is a real feature of the town. I’ll admit to being completely surprised that Columbia and Wilde Lake exist. They are so planned that I thought they must be fictional, but they are not.

But hopefully not the events that unfold in this story. Even though, or perhaps especially because, they feel typical of suburban life in the 1960s and 1970s.

But the story is Lu’s story. While it begins at the point of Lu’s greatest triumph, it also begins at the point where her whole life begins to unravel. As she relates the story of her childhood, while dealing with her life in the present, we see where all the stories that Lu has been told, and all the stories that Lu has told herself, converge and rewrite the past as she once knew it.

At first we see an almost typical American family. Lu, her brother AJ, and their father, AJ Senior. Lu’s mom isn’t in the picture – she died a week after Lu was born. And AJ Senior is the State’s Attorney, instilling in Lu both her competitiveness and her desire to practice law.

AJ Junior is the one who seems to have the truly charmed life. AJ is charismatic, and everyone seems to love him. At least until he and his charmed circle of friends are violently attacked at their high school graduation party, leaving one young man dead and another paralyzed from the waist down.

In the aftermath, the world goes on. AJ and his friends go their separate ways. But when Lu herself becomes State’s Attorney, the truth about that long ago night, and the events that led up to it, all explode into the light.

And in the end, Lu discovers that nothing that she believed, about herself, about her family, about her life, was remotely true.

Escape Rating A-: I will say that this story builds slowly over much of its length. We are mostly inside of Lu’s head as her version of events travels back and forth from the here-and-now to her memories of her childhood and adolescence and all the stories that she was told. Also, because it is entirely Lu’s perspective, the other characters in the story feel a bit one-dimensional. We don’t really get to know them. Which in its own way makes sense in this story, as Lu discovers that all the things and all the people she thought she knew are not what she believed them to be.

All families tell stories. Sometimes because a child is too young to understand the truth, and sometimes because there is a guilty secret to be hidden. Sometimes both. And sometimes the one morphs into the other as the child becomes an adult and no one wants to air the proverbial dirty laundry now that it has finally been washed, folded and put away.

There was one such story in my own family, not nearly as explosive as what Lu uncovers. But I remember my own sense of shock and the shifting and sifting of memories in light of the new and surprising information. For her, in this story, the revelations she uncovers would have been infinitely more profound, unnerving and identity-rattling.

In the end, the truths that Lu uncovers are like the ending of the movie The Sixth Sense. Once you know that the boy truly sees dead people, you are forced to re-evaluate everything you thought you saw in the film. Once Lu finds out the truth about her family and her past, she is forced to re-examine all of her own memories to see where the truth was hidden from her, and where she hid it from herself.

They say that the truth will set you free. This is a moving story of a woman who finds the truth, and it nearly destroys her.

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

Review: The Rivals of Versailles by Sally Christie

Posted on April 25, 2016April 24, 2016 by Marlene Harris | Author : Marlene Harris | B Reviews> blog tours> book reviews

The Rivals of Versailles (The Mistresses of Versailles Trilogy, #2) by Sally Christie
Formats available: paperback, ebook, audiobook
Series: Mistresses of Versailles #2
Pages: 448
Published by Atria Books on April 5th 2016
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org
Goodreads

And you thought sisters were a thing to fear. In this compelling follow-up to Sally Christie's clever and absorbing debut, we meet none other than the Marquise de Pompadour, one of the greatest beauties of her generation and the first bourgeois mistress ever to grace the hallowed halls of Versailles.
I write this before her blood is even cold. She is dead, suddenly, from a high fever. The King is inconsolable, but the way is now clear.
The way is now clear.
The year is 1745. Marie-Anne, the youngest of the infamous Nesle sisters and King Louis XV's most beloved mistress, is gone, making room for the next Royal Favorite.
Enter Jeanne-Antoinette Poisson, a stunningly beautiful girl from the middle classes. Fifteen years prior, a fortune teller had mapped out young Jeanne's destiny: she would become the lover of a king and the most powerful woman in the land. Eventually connections, luck, and a little scheming pave her way to Versailles and into the King's arms.
All too soon, conniving politicians and hopeful beauties seek to replace the bourgeois interloper with a more suitable mistress. As Jeanne, now the Marquise de Pompadour, takes on her many rivals - including a lustful lady-in-waiting; a precocious fourteen-year-old prostitute, and even a cousin of the notorious Nesle sisters - she helps the king give himself over to a life of luxury and depravity. Around them, war rages, discontent grows, and France inches ever closer to the Revolution.
Enigmatic beauty, social climber, actress, trendsetter, patron of the arts, spendthrift, whoremonger, friend, lover, foe. History books may say many things about the famous Marquise de Pompadour, but one thing is clear: for almost twenty years, she ruled France and the King's heart.
Told in Christie's witty and modern style, this second book in the Mistresses of Versailles trilogy will delight and entrance fans as it once again brings to life the world of eighteenth century Versailles in all its pride, pestilence and glory.

My Review:

Age and treachery beat youth and skill, set amid the long, twilight fall of France into the abyss of the Revolution.

Alternate possibility, there’s nothing new under the sun. Especially not Desperate Wives of Wherever and the Kardashians. And isn’t that a frightening thought?

The Rivals of Versailles is the second book in Sally Christie’s Mistresses of Versailles series. All of those titular mistresses were the mistresses, official or otherwise, of Louis XV of France. His predecessor Louis XIV was called “The Sun King” because the power of France was at its height during his rule. His great-grandson, Louis XV squandered all of the goodwill generated by his illustrious fore-bearer, and bequeathed a broke and humbled France to his grandson, Louis XVI. Who in his turn lost his throne and then his head in the Revolution.

But the story in The Rivals of Versailles follows not Louis, but the career of his most famous mistress, Madame de Pompadour. And what a career it was!

During her nearly 20 year reign as Louis’ official mistress, Jeanne Antoinette Poisson served as both Louis’ chief comforter and more importantly, seemingly his chief minister, even after she no longer filled what would otherwise seem to be the most important function of a mistress – she stopped sharing his bed. Instead, she shared his mind, or possibly served as the best part of it, and shared what heart he had left.

This is not a pretty story. Jeanne starts out as a young girl who is told she is destined to catch the eye of the king. Her family grooms her assiduously for the position, and when his favorite mistress, Marie-Anne de Mailly dies, Jeanne’s backers put her in the way of the grieving king.

(The story of Louis’ affairs with Marie-Anne de Mailly and nearly all of her five sisters is told in The Sisters of Versailles, but it is not necessary to read that book to get into this one, the stories are very different)

Unlike The Sisters of Versailles, where the five de Mailly sisters squabble over the king and share his bed in turns, The Rivals of Versailles follows de Pompadour and her rivals through the course of her life at court. Even when some younger woman thinks she has a chance to oust de Pompadour, all of their efforts, and the efforts of the various parties who back them, come to naught.

Even as the king sinks further into depravity in his over-indulged middle-age, it is always Madame de Pompadour that he turns to for comfort and counsel. She is the person that he rails to about the demands of Parlement and she is the one he consults on all decisions. It is Madame de Pompadour who fosters the French rapprochement with their old enemies, the Austrians, and it is de Pompadour who helps to determine the terms of the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, which led to France’s involvement in what is known to American history as the French and Indian War, and the loss of all of France’s North American colonies.

Her reach was long, her influence was wide. She was one of the most powerful women of Europe in the 18th century. The Rivals of Versailles is her story.

Escape Rating B: Although the period and setting are just as over-indulgent as The Sisters of Versailles, I found The Rivals of Versailles to be a more accessible book. In Sisters, while survivor Hortense begins and ends the story, the narration moves around among all the de Mailly sisters, and none of them make likeable protagonists.

Madame de Pompadour, portrait by François Boucher

In The Rivals of Versailles, Madame de Pompadour is the point of view character for most of the story. And even when she is not directly relating the action, she is still a very strong presence. Even the women who are trying to supplant her are forced to reckon with her power over the king.

One thing drove this reader just a bit nuts. The story begins with Jeanne as a young girl, and is from her childish and naive perspective. When she comes to court, we see her mature and harden into the woman who becomes Madame de Pompadour, and it’s a hard and frequently painful journey.

As political factions find young women to supplant her, we see their stories from their perspectives, and they are, to a person, very young, very naive and very selfish. Also in at least one case, uneducated and unintelligent into the bargain. Sometimes it is difficult to read from inside their heads, because there’s just no there, there.

However, one aspect of this progression is sad but also telling. As the king gets older, the women who are procured for him get younger and younger, also stupider and stupider. And the king is constantly indulged while the Revolution seems to literally brew around him. As the story continues, the storm to come feels more and more inevitable.

But what makes this book work better than Sisters is the voice of de Pompadour. She does her best to keep her king happy. And his happiness means that she takes as much of the burden of ruling as she can from behind the throne. She seems to truly love him, and to be truly doing her best to keep him happy, even as the deeds she must commit or at least condone get darker and darker.

This is the sad story of a woman who only wanted to be loved, but discovered that the accumulation power was addicting, and was the only way that she could survive.

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

Review: Aunty Lee’s Chilled Revenge by Ovidia Yu

Posted on April 20, 2016April 19, 2016 by Marlene Harris | Author : Marlene Harris | A- Reviews> blog tours> book reviews

Aunty Lee's Chilled Revenge (Singaporean Mystery, #3) by Ovidia Yu
Formats available: paperback, ebook, large print
Series: Singaporean Mystery #3
Pages: 368
Published by William Morrow Paperbacks on April 5th 2016
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org
Goodreads

Rosie “Aunty” Lee—feisty widow, amateur sleuth and proprietor of Singapore’s best-loved home cooking restaurant—is back in another delectable, witty mystery set in Singapore.
Slightly hobbled by a twisted ankle, crime-solving restaurateur Aunty Lee begrudgingly agrees to take a rest from running her famous café, Aunty Lee’s Delights, and turns over operations to her friend and new business partner Cherril.
The café serves as a meeting place for an animal rescue society that Cherril once supported. They were forced to dissolve three years earlier after a British expat killed the puppy she’d adopted, sparking a firestorm of scandal. The expat, Allison Fitzgerald, left Singapore in disgrace, but has returned with an ax to grind (and a lawsuit). At the café one afternoon, Cherril receives word that Allison has been found dead in her hotel—and foul play is suspected. When a veterinarian, who was also involved in the scandal, is found dead, suspicion soon falls on the animal activists. What started with an internet witch hunt has ended in murder—and in a tightly knit, law-and-order society like Singapore, everyone is on edge.
Before anyone else gets hurt—and to save her business—Aunty Lee must get to the bottom of what really happened three years earlier, and figure out who is to be trusted in this tangled web of scandal and lies.

My Review:

I was introduced to the Aunty Lee series by this book. When I decided to be part of this tour, I figured that book 3 of a series wasn’t so far in that I couldn’t manage to catch up, so I was able to sink my teeth into the first two books in this delicious series, Aunty Lee’s Delights and Aunty Lee’s Deadly Specials, and I’m glad I did.

Not that a newbie to the series couldn’t start with Aunty Lee’s Chilled Revenge. The author does a good job of catching readers up with the setting and cast of characters. But it does add a bit to the fun to see how everyone has changed from the beginning. Also how the writing has evolved. While I enjoyed both of the first two books, this is definitely the best one yet.

Aunty Lee is everyone’s favorite grandmother, although the reality is that she isn’t anyone’s actual grandmother. She was the late MK Lee’s second wife, and he already had two children. Aunty Lee never had any of her own, and her stepchildren have, so far, not managed to give her any grandchildren to spoil.

So Aunty Lee pretty effectively spoils the entire neighborhood, especially through her award-winning home-cooking restaurant, Aunty Lee’s Delights. Rosie Lee doesn’t need the money, but she needs the work to keep her occupied. And to help her get involved with solving murders.

With a sprained ankle keeping her on the sidelines, Aunty Lee is feeling depressed and slightly useless, until a murder walks into her restaurant.

Not exactly literally. Three old friends, including Aunty Lee’s business partner, are waiting at the restaurant to meet with the woman who is threatening to sue them. But she never arrives. Instead, the police come to say that the woman has been murdered, and the dead woman’s sister shows up a few minutes later, ranting and raving. As she generally does.

While Aunty Lee may be sorry that a woman is dead, and particularly sorry that her business partner is temporarily a suspect, she is energized by the thought of a murder she can help solve being delivered right to her doorstep.

She’s so happy, in fact, that she takes the dead woman’s sister home with her, hoping that in comfort and privacy the woman will reveal some of the secrets she is so obviously keeping. Meanwhile, Aunty Lee dives into the three-year-old incident that brought all the principals to her little cafe.

Back then, her partner Cherril was part of an animal rescue society, along with her friends Brian Wong and Jacqueline DelaVega. The woman who was planning to sue them, a British ex-pat, adopted a puppy from their rescue society. A few days later, when she decided that she didn’t want the poor puppy any longer, she had him euthanized instead of returning him to the shelter, as she had contracted to do. When Allison Fitzgerald went into repeated tirades at the police, the animal rescue society, and anyone else within earshot, she became the quarry of a horde of internet bullies. Not just because she killed a poor, defenseless little puppy, but also because she lied about it, violated a contract, and showed zero remorse. Allison and her family were hounded out of Singapore.

Now she’s back. And she’s dead. And her sister is accusing the animal shelter people she lied to three years ago. And the dead woman’s ex-husband. And anyone else she can think of.

It’s up to Aunty Lee to sort out the truth from layers and layers of lies and deceptions. Building a case is like putting together a new recipe – all the pieces have to fit just right. Aunty Lee is perfectly willing to tinker with all the flavors until they finally — do.

Escape Rating A-: Aunty Lee’s Chilled Revenge is the best book in the series so far. The recipe for the series has come together in a way that makes this dish especially flavorful. Or especially interesting, since we are, after all, talking about murder.

The title is a play on the old saying, “Revenge is a dish best served cold.” The case that Aunty Lee has to solve revolves around figuring out exactly who is getting revenge on whom, because at the outset there are plenty of options. And this was a case where, although I had figured out one part of the mystery, I was as lost as everyone else on who done it and why. But I couldn’t wait to find out.

Allison Fitzgerald, now calling herself Allison Love, sues the animal shelter principals, Cherril, Brian and Jacqueline, because she believes that the internet bullying they encouraged led to her divorce and estrangement from her children. She wants payback.

Allison’s sister Vallerie came to Singapore with Allison. Now that Allison is dead, Vallerie wants revenge on whoever killed her. And she’s certain that the murderers must be those same people. With the possible addition of Allison’s ex-husband.

Cherril, Brian and Jacqueline left the old case behind them long ago. Or did they? Cherril certainly has, she is now happily married and equally happily involved with Aunty Lee’s restaurant. But Brian and Jacqueline, not so much. Even after all these years, Brian is still in love with Jacqueline, and Jacqueline is still in love with…getting herself out of Singapore. She’s decided that Allison’s ex-husband is her ticket to a posh life somewhere far away.

It’s up to Aunty Lee to wade through the mess. She finds her way to a solution by learning about the people, mostly through what they eat, and especially through what they say while they are eating. And by being very, very nosy.

It works. And it works deliciously.

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

Review: Terrible Virtue by Ellen Feldman

Posted on April 12, 2016April 11, 2016 by Marlene Harris | Author : Marlene Harris | B+ Reviews> blog tours> book reviews

Terrible Virtue by Ellen Feldman
Formats available: hardcover, ebook, audiobook
Pages: 272
Published by Harper on March 22nd 2016
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org
Goodreads

In the spirit of The Paris Wife and Loving Frank, the provocative and compelling story of one of the most fascinating and influential figures of the twentieth century: Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood—an indomitable woman who, more than any other, and at great personal cost, shaped the sexual landscape we inhabit today.
The daughter of a hard-drinking, smooth-tongued free thinker and a mother worn down by thirteen children, Margaret Sanger vowed her life would be different. Trained as a nurse, she fought for social justice beside labor organizers, anarchists, socialists, and other progressives, eventually channeling her energy to one singular cause: legalizing contraception. It was a battle that would pit her against puritanical, patriarchal lawmakers, send her to prison again and again, force her to flee to England, and ultimately change the lives of women across the country and around the world.
This complex enigmatic revolutionary was at once vain and charismatic, generous and ruthless, sexually impulsive and coolly calculating—a competitive, self-centered woman who championed all women, a conflicted mother who suffered the worst tragedy a parent can experience. From opening the first illegal birth control clinic in America in 1916 through the founding of Planned Parenthood to the arrival of the Pill in the 1960s, Margaret Sanger sacrificed two husbands, three children, and scores of lovers in her fight for sexual equality and freedom.
With cameos by such legendary figures as Emma Goldman, John Reed, Big Bill Haywood, H. G. Wells, and the love of Margaret’s life, Havelock Ellis, this richly imagined portrait of a larger-than-life woman is at once sympathetic to her suffering and unsparing of her faults. Deeply insightful, Terrible Virtue is Margaret Sanger’s story as she herself might have told it.

My Review:

When the phrase, “Well-behaved women seldom make history” was first penned by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich in 1976, Margaret Sanger had been dead for ten years. But that short, pithy phrase still sums up her life.

On the one hand, all women, at least in Western countries, owe Sanger a debt. Whether one believes that birth control is a blessing, a right, or even a pernicious evil, Sanger made that choice possible. More importantly, she challenged and eventually forced the overthrow of laws that didn’t just make birth control illegal, but made it illegal for women to be educated about the “facts of life” about their own bodies.

And those of us who have chosen the spacing and number of our children, or not to have children at all, can trace that ability, that choice, back to her crusade.

But crusaders and saints are generally terrible people to live with. In Sanger’s case, it seems as if her husbands, her lovers, and especially her own children suffered a great deal from her obsessive devotion to her cause. That we are the better for it doesn’t change the damage to them. But if she had chosen to be a traditional wife and mother, where would we be now?

Terrible Virtue is a fictionalized version of Sanger’s life, told primarily through her own eyes. And we are all unreliable narrators of our own lives, as Sanger is. Not that she deliberately lies, but certainly that she justifies her behavior in her own mind. As do we all.

The occasional insertions of brief comments from the point of view of those closest to her, those who most often found themselves sacrificed on the altar of her crusade, provide a much-needed leavening counterpoint. Sanger gave birth to a revolution, but everyone around her paid the price.

Sanger is charming, and vain, and frequently ruthless in the pursuit of her goals. She’s obsessed with her groundbreaking work, and neglectful of anyone and everyone in her life in pursuit of those goals. She’s a difficult person to sympathize with, and the reader frequently does not, but her life was endlessly fascinating. She pursued a revolution for all of her life, and did so with a keen intellect and an eye for who would best advance the cause that she strove for. She succeeded beyond her wildest dreams. And occasionally in the middle of her greatest nightmares.

And she built one of the cornerstones of women’s rights in the 20th and 21st centuries – not just the right but also the capability for women to decide when, if, or how many children they would have. She made it possible for middle-class and poor women to have the same choices that rich women have always had, to control the size of their families.

While she may have entered on this crusade to prevent women from suffering the fate of her own mother, 13 children and dead before her time, she gave the gift to us all.

Escape Rating B+: Sanger’s life is fascinating, but she is not a sympathetic narrator. She’s selfish, obsessed, and ignores anyone and anything that doesn’t further her cause. That neglect generally covered her children, her two husbands, and any and all of her lovers. But it is her own children that suffer most for her crusade to let every woman decide how many children to have.

She may have pretended to be a respectable middle-class woman, but she certainly used the privilege she created, and had affairs with many famous and influential men, including but certainly not limited to Havelock Ellis and H.G. Wells. But her life wasn’t ruled by her love affairs – whatever else was going on in her life, she worked on the cause tirelessly and relentlessly.

At the end of the story, readers may respect Sanger, but not like her. She would have been hell to live with. But revolution is never easy. Or bloodless.

Because the story is from Sanger’s point of view, and because she is both self-serving and self-centered, she glosses over the accusations that were later leveled at her work. From her own point of view, she was not really a eugenicist. She did not advocate genocide of any populations. Instead, her goal was always to allow poor women of any race or ethnicity to be able to have the same choice that rich women have always had – the ability to limit the number of children they had to what they desired and would be economically feasible. She believed that the accusations of genocide that were leveled at her were the result of deliberate attempts to discredit her work.

We can’t know today. But we can see the way that governments and legislatures are still trying to denigrate any attempts for poor women to control their own biology in the continued witch hunt that hounds Planned Parenthood, and in the ever increasing number of laws that restrict women’s choices and inject medically incorrect dogma into women’s pursuit of those choices.

This book is an eye opener. A fascinating woman, an amazing life, and an influence that changed the world. And seems to have been the inspiration for Wonder Woman into the bargain!

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