Review: Moonlight on Butternut Lake by Mary McNear

Posted on June 3, 2015June 9, 2015 by Marlene Harris | Author : Marlene Harris | B Reviews> blog tours> book reviews

Format read: ebook provided by the publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: paperback, ebook, audiobook, large print
Genre: contemporary romance
Series: Butternut Lake #3
Length: 384 pages
Publisher: William Morrow
Date Released: May 12, 2015
Purchasing Info: Author’s Website, Publisher’s Website, Goodreads, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Book Depository

Mila Jones has fled the big city seeking a safe haven on the serene shores of Butternut Lake. Her position looking after Reid Ford is more than a job. It’s a chance at a fresh start. And although her sullen patient does everything he can to make her quit, Mila refuses to give up on him.

But Mila isn’t the only one needing refuge. Haunted by the car accident that nearly killed him, Reid has hidden himself away. He wants Mila to just leave him alone. And he wishes the whole town would stop looking after his well-being.

Against all odds, Mila slowly draws Reid out. Soon they form a tentative, yet increasingly deeper bond with each other, as well as becoming part of the day-to-day fabric of Butternut Lake itself. But the world has a way of intruding, even in such a serene place . . . and when Mila’s violent husband forces his way back into her life, she and Reid are compelled to face down the past.

My Review:

Butternut Lake is definitely second-chance lake. In the first book in the series, Up at Butternut Lake, both Walker and Allie get a second-chance at happy ever after in the wake of the loss of her husband in Afghanistan, and the death of his first child and the breakup of his first marriage.

In Butternut Summer (reviewed here), Jack and Caroline get a second chance at their marriage to each other. Jack is finally clean and sober and has grown into the man he should have been.

Now it’s Walker’s brother Reid’s turn. Reid has a second chance at life after a near-fatal car crash. Reid is just at the beginning of his extensive healing process, and is going to have a long and rough row to hoe to get back to health.

But it is early days, and at the moment, Reid is clinically depressed. He’s also being a complete and total jerk. He’s nasty and rude to every single home health aide who comes to stay with him while he’s still wheelchair bound. He’s just plain nasty to everyone near him, and wants to throw all of his care onto his brother Walker’s shoulders. Walker is already stretched thin, he’s covering for Reid in their boatyard business, and Walker and his wife Allie have just had a baby.

Walker and Allie can’t do it all, but Reid doesn’t care about anything except his own misery.

Mila Jones is his last chance to stay out of the rehab institution he hates. And Reid Ford is Mila’s last chance to escape her abusive husband and stay off the grid and out of sight for three months.

Something is bound to go wrong. And eventually it does, but not until Mila has a chance to shake off some of her very necessary fear, and Reid gets his head out of his ass. And those two things are definitely connected.

Mila’s husband is dangerous. Psychotic, possessive, obsessive, abusive. The entire sick package. Mila is right to be scared to death of him, and right to be paranoid about him finding her. Even though she has had help covering her tracks, all it will take is one slip up for him to find her. And we all know it’s going to happen before the end of the story, otherwise Mila will have to run again, and there can’t be a happy ever after in that situation.

But she, and we, need a resolution to her dilemma.

As Mila claws back her self-esteem, she finally gives Reid the comeuppance that he needs to get him living again. She stops taking his BS and tells him just what an asshole he is being to his family and to everyone who tries to help him. Because in spite of his current situation, which is temporary if he does his rehab, he is lucky.

Not just lucky that he survived in a situation that should have killed him, but lucky in that he has family and support and time and money to get back on his feet. All of which are things that a lot of people don’t have, and that Mila has never had.

Reid’s journey out of his darkened, locked room is every bit as slow as Mila’s journey from righteously scared rabbit to a woman who is willing to fight for her right to have a real life.

That they come out of the dark reaching for the light in each other makes for an awesome love story.

Escape Rating B: I have enjoyed this series tremendously, including Up at Butternut Lake, Butternut Summer, The Night Before Christmas (reviewed here) and now Moonlight on Butternut Lake. It’s not just that the lake is beautiful, but that the fairly remote town is pretty darn marvelous itself, with a great group of people living in it.

While I don’t think it is absolutely necessary to have read the rest of the series before diving into Moonlight, it does make the book that much more enjoyable when you know who all the people are and the struggles that they have overcome to reach their own happy endings.

Mila’s story is heartbreaking. She was exhausted and lonely and became the victim of a predator, because that’s what abusers are, predators. I understood completely why she went to the lengths she did to get away from the man who was killing her by inches.

But we see the story of Mila and Brandon in flashbacks, and I’ll confess that I just didn’t get why Mila married Brandon after the first time he beat her. How she talks herself out of leaving him at that point, and agrees to marry him instead, is not a place I could follow. I will also confess that I’m getting tired of the “abused woman flees stalker and needs man to rescue her” trope. It was done well in this story, but I liked the other stories in this series better because they did not go there.

Having gone there, however, Moonlight on Butternut Lake does a terrific job of showing Mila get past her own past, and come back to life. In that way, her story parallels Reid’s, who also needs to get past not just his accident but his own past traumas, in order to reach towards a new life that is different and hopefully better than the one that was interrupted by his accident.

Their romance was slow and sweet and often tentative, which felt right. Mila is held back, not just because she is still married, but also because she is certain that she can’t stay. And she keeps her secrets until the last possible moment. Without honesty, she and Reid can’t move forward together.

When they finally get there, it is almost, but not quite, too late. The terror that strikes is all the more devastating for having been anticipated through the entire book.

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

***FTC Disclaimer: Most books reviewed on this site have been provided free of charge by the publisher, author or publicist. Some books we have purchased with our own money or borrowed from a public library and will be noted as such. Any links to places to purchase books are provided as a convenience, and do not serve as an endorsement by this blog. All reviews are the true and honest opinion of the blogger reviewing the book. The method of acquiring the book does not have a bearing on the content of the review.

Review: Love and Miss Communication by Elyssa Friedland + Giveaway

Posted on May 29, 2015May 28, 2015 by Marlene Harris | Author : Marlene Harris | B Reviews> blog tours> book reviews> Giveaways

Format read: ebook provided by the publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available:
Genre: chick lit, women’s fiction
Length: 400 pages
Publisher: William Morrow
Date Released: May 12, 2015
Purchasing Info: Author’s Website, Publisher’s Website, Goodreads, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Book Depository

This unforgettable debut novel asks us to look up from our screens and out at the world…and to imagine what life would be like with no searches, no status updates, no texts, no Tweets, no pins, and no posts

Evie Rosen has had enough. She’s tired of the partners at her law firm e-mailing her at all hours of the night. The thought of another online date makes her break out in a cold sweat. She’s over the clever hashtags and the endless selfies. So when her career hits a surprising roadblock and her heart is crushed by Facebook, Evie decides it’s time to put down her smartphone for good. (Beats stowing it in her underwear–she’s done that too!)

And that’s when she discovers a fresh start for real conversations, fewer distractions, and living in the moment, even if the moments are heartbreakingly difficult. Babies are born; marriages teeter; friendships are tested. Evie just may find love and a new direction when she least expects it, but she also learns that just because you unplug your phone doesn’t mean you can unplug from life.

My Review:

Love and Miss Communication is an adorable fluffy, downy chick of a chick lit story, mixed with some multi-generational women’s fiction backbone and a loving but slightly stereotypical dose of Jewish grandmother guilt complex.

There’s also some interesting commentary on the fulfillment, or lack thereof, in our 24/7 always connected, always available technologically driven lives in the 21st century.

Evie Rosen starts out the story addicted to the internet, and it is not making her happy or fulfilled. Instead, it makes her discontented and consistently lowers her self-esteem at every turn.

It also gets her fired.

We all forget that our employers have the right to monitor anything we do on company computers and/or company equipment. Like Evie, for many of us, our jobs are who we are.

Evie is a senior associate attorney at a “white shoe” law firm in New York. She expects to make partner. She’s earned it, devoting all of her waking hours to her job and neglecting her friends, her family and herself in the process.

Instead, she is fired. She’s a great attorney, but she is also the company’s single biggest user of the company internet for personal business. She constantly checks Facebook to find out who is doing better than she is, and she Googles everyone she meets.

She’s obsessive. She’s so obsessive that when she Googles her famous chef ex-boyfriend to find out what he’s up to now, she discovers that the man who said he didn’t believe in marriage has, in fact, gotten married.

Barfing all over her laptop is the last straw. Google-induced vomiting destroys her computer. And after a few hours searching New York for a safe place to log on, Evie finally decides that enough is enough. It’s time to stop living vicariously through her computer and start living in real time. With real places and real people.

Of course, she goes a bit too far the other way, but that’s Evie – obsessive and compulsive about it.

While her friends and family are busily exchanging emails and evites and unthinkingly leaving her out, Evie has to deal with a family crisis. Her beloved grandmother Bette, who has equally obsessively been pushing Evie to find a husband and get married, is diagnosed with breast cancer. Evie is forced to deal with the fact that her time with her grandmother is finite, and possibly ending even sooner than she hoped.

Little does Evie know that her grandmother is using her very real and very scary diagnosis to make one last effort to get Evie’s head out of her own ass and recognize that there is someone out there for her – if only she can be herself long enough to make a real connection – without the false expectations raised by technology to steer her wrong.

Escape Rating B: I liked Evie a lot. It’s easy to sympathize with her desire to disconnect. Technology is ubiquitous and its ability to create and foster tiny niches is separating us from each other. And it is SO easy to get obsessed chasing every connection and driving ourselves crazy that everyone else seems to be doing so much better than we are.

And Evie’s “aha” moment over the keyboard was epically tragicomic.

However, one of the cornerstones of the story is Evie’s relationship with her grandmother Bette, or more obviously, Evie’s relationship with Bette’s desire to see her married, and if possible to a “nice Jewish boy”, albeit a grown up one. Evie is 34 at the beginning of the book, a boy would be a bit young.

But the cultural markers that define Bette, her use of Yiddish in an attempt to weed out the goyim, the extreme way that she wields guilt, all seem as if they belong to an earlier generation. Bette acts and sounds like someone from my own grandmother’s generation, but I’m more contemporary with Evie’s mother.

The guilt-tripping Jewish mother/grandmother is a stereotype that while funny and even endearing for those of us who had one, seems a bit dated. While it is true that in this story, Evie would be happier if she found the right person, the drumbeat that she must at all costs gets a bit wearing.

What was more interesting was Evie’s internal conflict, that she always wants what she can’t have, to the point where it almost costs her what she really wants. Again, she has an “aha” moment that is slightly tragic and slightly funny, and also nearly results in more vomit.

Evie is person who lost someone important to her, her father, at a relatively young age, and is afraid to let herself love again out of fear that she will lose again. So she keeps fixing herself on the unattainable, in the impossible hope that she won’t get hurt again. Except that she does, and she hurts herself most of all.

When she finally gets it all together, it’s cathartic both for Evie and for the reader. But after Evie’s life balancing and society rejecting year of eschewing technology for real connections, I wish that her happiness had embraced some elements that weren’t totally traditional.

Which does not mean that I didn’t enjoy following Evie’s journey to her authentic happiness. Because I certainly did.

GIVEAWAY

The publisher is graciously providing one copy of Love and Miss Communication to one lucky winner. To enter, just fill out the Rafflecopter below.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

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

***FTC Disclaimer: Most books reviewed on this site have been provided free of charge by the publisher, author or publicist. Some books we have purchased with our own money or borrowed from a public library and will be noted as such. Any links to places to purchase books are provided as a convenience, and do not serve as an endorsement by this blog. All reviews are the true and honest opinion of the blogger reviewing the book. The method of acquiring the book does not have a bearing on the content of the review.

Review: The Mapmaker’s Children by Sarah McCoy

Posted on May 28, 2015May 28, 2015 by Marlene Harris | Author : Marlene Harris | B Reviews> blog tours> book reviews

Format read: ebook provided by the publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, ebook, audiobook
Genre: historical fiction, literary fiction, women’s fiction
Length: 320 pages
Publisher: Crown
Date Released: May 5, 2015
Purchasing Info: Author’s Website, Publisher’s Website, Goodreads, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Book Depository

When Sarah Brown, daughter of abolitionist John Brown, realizes that her artistic talents may be able to help save the lives of slaves fleeing north, she becomes one of the Underground Railroad’s leading mapmakers, taking her cues from the slave code quilts and hiding her maps within her paintings. She boldly embraces this calling after being told the shocking news that she can’t bear children, but as the country steers toward bloody civil war, Sarah faces difficult sacrifices that could put all she loves in peril.

Eden, a modern woman desperate to conceive a child with her husband, moves to an old house in the suburbs and discovers a porcelain head hidden in the root cellar—the remains of an Underground Railroad doll with an extraordinary past of secret messages, danger and deliverance.

Ingeniously plotted to a riveting end, Sarah and Eden’s woven lives connect the past to the present, forcing each of them to define courage, family, love, and legacy in a new way.

My Review:

The lives of two women, 150 years apart, tied together by a doll’s head. And a little bit of mystery.

The two women at the center of this intertwined story wouldn’t seem to have much in common. And they don’t except for an accident of place and a misfortune of circumstance – both Sarah Brown and Eden Anderson are childless, and not by choice.

They are both caught in the position of making a fulfilling life for themselves that does not fit the standard pattern, and both find themselves mothering children not theirs by birth. They also both occupy the same house, at very different points in time.

Sarah Brown was the daughter of revolutionary abolitionist John Brown. History remembers him for his famous (or infamous) raid on the Federal Armory at Harper’s Ferry (West) Virginia in the fall of 1859. The raid was an attempt to start a slave uprising and help the slaves to free themselves. Brown was either ahead of history or a catalyst for it, and was hanged when his raid failed ignominiously. His sons and most of the others who participated were either killed in the raid or hanged afterwards.

Sarah Brown, along with her mother and sisters, were left behind when Brown died. Sarah, too, was an abolitionist, and was also an artist who drew maps on anything handy in order to assist runaway slaves on the Underground Railroad.

Some of those “handy things” were dolls’ faces, and it is one of Sarah’s doll heads that Eden Anderson finds in the root cellar under her new home in New Charlestown, West Virginia in 2010. The search for the history of that poor little head, and the house surrounding it, become the catalyst for Eden’s healing after the final ending of her hopes for a baby.

At the beginning of Eden’s story, it also seems possible that the house will witness the end of her marriage, as strained and cracked as it is after many years of failed attempts, failed hopes, failed dreams, and fertility hormone-induced moodiness and finally depression.

Her husband Adam brings her a dog. The dog brings a little girl to take care of him, and most importantly, a reason to get out of the house and to let other people in. And Cricket brings his loving self and his need for a forever home, no matter how brief his forever might turn out to be.

Escape Rating B+: I really enjoyed this story, but I can’t point to a specific reason. I just did. The two parts don’t gel until the very end, and the switches between Sarah’s story in the past and Eden’s in the present sometimes felt abrupt. At the same time, I liked and felt for both women, and no matter which story I was in, I always wanted to know how the other one was doing.

Both women are in the middle of lives that need rebuilding. In Sarah’s case, that rebuilding is frequent and often, due to circumstances outside her control. From the moment her father leaves to conduct his famous raid, until the Fisher children arrive at her home in California, Sarah keeps dealing with blows that strike her from all sides.

At the same time, she takes a licking and keeps on ticking right up until the very end, making a new life each and every time she is struck down. Much of her life in this story moves in the direction it does (and did in history) because in fiction, at least, she was declared to be unable to bear children after a near-fatal attack of dysentery.

In history, she did not marry or have children, but the reasons are lost to us.

Sarah really did paint maps for the Underground Railroad, but whether she used doll’s heads for her maps is not certain. In this story one doll’s head provides a much-needed link to Eden in our present.

While Sarah seems like a heroic figure, Eden starts out her story as a self-absorbed and self-centered depressed wreck. All of her attempts to conceive a child have failed, and her IVF clinic has told her that it’s over. After 7 years of fertility treatments and failed hopes, she has given up everything that she was in pursuit of something that will never be, and she feels like she has nothing left.

The dog her husband brings home, Cricket, slowly brings her back to life, an irony that is not apparent until the very end. Because Cricket needs care, and her husband, out of a desire to help her and keep her from reaching past her current constricted boundaries, has given her not just a dog but a person to care for the dog.

Eleven-year-old Cleo needs just as much care as Cricket, but is much, much less willing to admit it. But Cleo is an incredible little girl who stirs up everything in her wake, and in that stirring, Eden comes back to life. She begins to reach out to the life she now has, instead of reaching back to the one she gave up or the child she will never have. And in that reaching out, she finds the world again.

It’s not so much Eden’s reawakening that brings the joy, as Cleo’s fascinating ability to make it happen. It all starts with Cleo’s amateur investigation into the mysterious doll’s head that Cricket finds in the root cellar, a search that ties Eden back to the town, and ties her house and its history all the way back to Sarah Brown. And all the way forward into the life of a place that Eden has come to love.

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

***FTC Disclaimer: Most books reviewed on this site have been provided free of charge by the publisher, author or publicist. Some books we have purchased with our own money or borrowed from a public library and will be noted as such. Any links to places to purchase books are provided as a convenience, and do not serve as an endorsement by this blog. All reviews are the true and honest opinion of the blogger reviewing the book. The method of acquiring the book does not have a bearing on the content of the review.

Review: The Case of the Invisible Dog by Diane Stingley + Giveaway

Posted on May 20, 2015May 19, 2015 by Marlene Harris | Author : Marlene Harris | B Reviews> blog tours> book reviews> Giveaways

Format read: ebook provided by the publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: ebook
Genre: mystery
Series: Shirley Homes #1
Length: 328 pages
Publisher: Random House Alibi
Date Released: May 19, 2015
Purchasing Info: Author’s Website, Publisher’s Website, Goodreads, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo

After failing to launch her career as a Hollywood actress, Tammy Norman returns home to North Carolina, desperate for a regular paycheck and a new lease on life. So she accepts a position assisting Shirley Homes, an exceptionally odd personage who styles herself after her celebrated “ancestor”–right down to the ridiculous hat. Tammy isn’t sure how long she can go on indulging the delusional Shirley (who honestly believes Sherlock Holmes was a real person!), but with the prospect of unemployment looming, she decides to give it a shot.

Tammy’s impression of her eccentric boss does not improve when their first case involves midnight romps through strangers’ yards in pursuit of a phantom dog—that only their client can hear. But when the case takes a sudden and sinister turn, Tammy has to admit that Shirley Homes might actually be on to something. . . .

My Review:

Somewhere at the corner of quirky and delusional lives Shirley Homes and her questionable belief that she is the great-great-granddaughter of Sherlock Holmes – the fictionality of his existence notwithstanding. Of course, Shirley believes that he was real, because fictional characters don’t have children, let alone great-great-grandchildren.

Whether Shirley is eccentric or downright insane is up to the reader to judge. In her world, everyone seems to have decided that she is a couple of sandwiches short of a picnic. But is she?

The person most concerned about that question is Tamara Norman. Tammy has taken on the job of Shirley Homes’ assistant. While at first it seems as if the job consists of collecting a very nice paycheck for providing a presence that helps prop up Homes’ delusion, the situation changes when they get a real case.

Where Sherlock Holmes had “the curious incident of the dog in the nighttime” Shirley Homes has the case of the barking dog who isn’t there.

It’s pretty obvious that someone is gaslighting their client, Matt Peterman. As soon as he goes to sleep every night, he hears a dog barking outside. But when he gets up to look, the dog stops barking. And there is no dog.

What there is are some new and very smarmy neighbors, and a lot of vacant houses. It’s the depths of the Great Recession, in North Carolina and everywhere else, and Matt lives in a development that isn’t selling.

So why is this happening?

Tammy Norman thinks that Matt is just a lonely crank, until he turns up dead the day after he hires them. Whatever is going on with the ‘invisible dog’, someone wanted the man dead. But the reasons are obscure, and the local police are convinced that Shirley Homes is a complete nutter. Let’s just say the police interview didn’t go well, although by that point Tammy (and the readers) are all too aware that it went typically for any conversation with Shirley.

While Shirley is the catalyst for everything that happens, Tammy is the person who really sinks her teeth into the case, even though she doesn’t want to. She’s sure Shirley is harmlessly nuts, but starts feeling protective of her boss, even as she thinks that the woman needs a keeper and not an assistant.

Although the case reaches for more and deeper levels of ‘slightly out there’, at the same time there is still a case. Matt Peterman is still dead. His ex-wife is trying to grab whatever assets he might have had. Those smarmy neighbors watch every move that takes place in his house, and someone is cleaning up every scrap of evidence that Shirley and Tammy find as soon as they find it.

Tammy finds herself learning how to be a detective from possibly the worst teacher ever. But she can’t help getting involved and wanting to get to the bottom of the case.

As a former actress, Tammy finally hits paydirt when she follows the precepts of her favorite TV show – Law and Order. Tammy starts following the money. And digs up not just dirt, but also a powerful enemy who has been manipulating events in Shirley’s life from the very beginning.

Can there be a Holmes without a Moriarty?

Escape Rating B-: I’m pretty sure this is the quirkiest Sherlock Holmes spin-off I’ve ever read, and I’ve read some dillies. This one takes the prize.

You’re never sure whether Shirley Homes is delusional or telling the truth. It’s not just that her contention that she is a descendant of the original Holmes is impossible because he was fictional, but even he was real, her portrayal isn’t Holmes, it’s a caricature of Holmes.

Holmes used every scrap of technology available to him at the time. Not because he worshiped technology, but because it was efficient and effective. A modern-day version would have adapted, not attempted to slavishly adhere to 19th century practices as much as possible. For example, Holmes often found cases by combing through the personal ads and agony columns in the newspaper. Today, most of that information and angst is in social media.

However, the parallels are striking. The detective isn’t just “Shirley Homes”, but her sister Myra bears a striking resemblance to Mycroft. And there appears to be a Moriarty, the question is who?

There is someone who seems to have the agenda of spying on Homes at every turn, even pretending to be a psychiatrist in order to pump Tammy for information. And she’s not the only contender for the position of Moriarty. Or is she?

And there really is a case. While there is no invisible dog, someone was using Matt Peterman’s fear of dogs to gaslight him for some nefarious purpose.

At the same time, this case has the feel of the movies The Adventure of Sherlock Holmes’ Smarter Brother and especially Without A Clue. In Without a Clue, Holmes the bumbling idiot is merely a front man for the real detective genius of Dr. John Watson. It also feels like a bit of They Might be Giants was added for spice.

While Tamara Norman is no detective genius, she is intelligent, sensible and grounded in the real world of the 21st century. It is her effort to keep Shirley Homes on track and out of too much trouble that eventually solves the mystery of the invisible dog, even as it pulls them all much deeper into the mystery of ‘Who is Shirley Homes?”

If you like your cozy mysteries with more than a touch of madcap, The Case of the Invisible Dog is a lark.

TOURWIDE GIVEAWAY

This tour includes a Rafflecopter giveaway for a $25 eGift Card to the eBook Retailer of the winner’s choice plus an eBook copy of THE CASE OF THE INVISIBLE DOG.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

***FTC Disclaimer: Most books reviewed on this site have been provided free of charge by the publisher, author or publicist. Some books we have purchased with our own money or borrowed from a public library and will be noted as such. Any links to places to purchase books are provided as a convenience, and do not serve as an endorsement by this blog. All reviews are the true and honest opinion of the blogger reviewing the book. The method of acquiring the book does not have a bearing on the content of the review.

Review: Lowcountry Boneyard by Susan M. Boyer

Posted on May 18, 2015May 16, 2015 by Marlene Harris | Author : Marlene Harris | A Reviews> book reviews

Format read: print ARC provided by the publisher
Formats available: hardcover, paperback, ebook
Genre: mystery
Series: Liz Talbot #3
Length: 286 pages
Publisher: Henery Press
Date Released: April 21, 2015
Purchasing Info: Author’s Website, Publisher’s Website, Goodreads, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Book Depository

Where is Kent Heyward? The twenty-three-year-old heiress from one of Charleston’s oldest families vanished a month ago. When her father hires private investigator Liz Talbot, Liz suspects the most difficult part of her job will be convincing the patriarch his daughter tired of his overbearing nature and left town. That’s what the Charleston Police Department believes.

But behind the garden walls South of Broad, family secrets pop up like weeds in the azaleas. The neighbors recollect violent arguments between Kent and her parents. Eccentric twin uncles and a gaggle of cousins covet the family fortune. And the lingering spirit of a Civil-War-era debutante may know something if Colleen, Liz’s dead best friend, can get her to talk.

Liz juggles her case, the partner she’s in love with, and the family she adores. But the closer she gets to what has become of Kent, the closer Liz dances to her own grave.

My Review:

It’s possible to call this series “paranormal mysteries” but they really are contemporary mysteries with one important paranormal element.

Liz Talbot sees ghost. Not plural, singular. The only ghost she sees is her late (14 years late and counting) and much lamented best friend Colleen.

But while Liz has grown up and almost moved on in the intervening years, Colleen remains 17, and says that she is the spirit guardian of Liz’ home island of Stella Maris. Colleen is visible, and very definitely audible, to Liz because who or whatever the powers-that-be are believe that Liz’ presence back on Stella Maris and its town council are the best chance for the island to remain the relatively pristine hideaway it has always been.

But Liz has a problem. Her long-distance relationship with her business and romantic partner Nate is starting to run into rocky shoals. Nate wants them to at least split their time between the company’s, and his, home base in Greenville and Liz’ home and extended family on Stella Maris.

He can’t know just how many times Colleen has intervened to save Liz’ (and his) lives so as to help maintain that status quo, or that Liz will lose Colleen’s protection if she leaves the island and gives up her council seat.

Liz and Colleen are trying to find a compromise, while Nate is increasingly frustrated and unhappy with the situation. It doesn’t help that Nate knows all too much about Liz’ love life. She left Stella Maris to marry his bastard of a brother, and stayed away because her first love was on Stella Maris and unhappily married to her own cousin.

Nate figures that if she could pick where she lived based on who she loved before, she must not love him as much if she won’t at least compromise on Greenville for him. While we can all agree that his thinking is a bit skewed, or screwed, it is very, very human.

Meanwhile, they have a case in Charleston, one that is much bigger and more dangerous than either of them expected. A rich, young woman has been missing for a month, and no one has been able to find a clue concerning her whereabouts. Her family is one of the founding families of the city, but she is 23 and without evidence, the police can’t help but think that her disappearance was voluntary.

No one on the Charleston P.D. is very happy when Liz starts turning up clues that they missed, along with a tangled web of classism, elitism, and family secrets.

Not all of them her own.

Escape Rating A-: There’s that old saying about power corrupting and absolute power corrupting absolutely. There’s also the one attributed to Ben Franklin, that three can keep a secret if two are dead.

Kent Heyward, the missing heiress, is heir to two of Charleston’s great family fortunes. Her family, especially her powerful grandparents, are all too used to getting their own way in every single thing. While they close ranks and protect their secrets, they seem to think they are so powerful that none of their secrets will ever get out, or that they will be able to completely suppress those secrets, by murder if necessary.

If only Kent really had run away. She would have been much better off with some other family, because her own family’s secrets have made her a target.

A lot of the nasty business in this story revolves around classism. The rich aren’t just different from you and me, but in this story, they think they are better. To the point where marrying outside the class is an excuse for kidnapping and murder. But it’s an old case that comes back to haunt them where it hurts the most.

As Liz investigates, its not so much whether she will uncover anything illegal, but rather how much she will uncover. And whether any of the people who have something to hide can afford to let her live, even if her death would leave Kent unfound and unmourned.

While she is investigating, Liz is also dealing with a personal crisis. She loves Nate, but she can’t leave Stella Maris. And she can’t tell him why. Nate’s reactions are not particularly adult or particularly sensible.

And in the background, there is Liz’ marvelous and slightly crazy family. Their deep roots on Stella Maris are sometimes a help, as is her brother the island Chief of Police, but dodging their attempts to protect her or take care of her often result in some crazy situations.

Her mother is hilarious in fiction, but I’ll admit would drive me nuts in a heartbeat.

The case that Liz is investigating has tons of twists and turns that keep the reader from figuring out both whodunnit and their motive for the entire way. Especially when the repeated attempts on Liz’ life intervene to confuse matters and motives.

I raced through this book to find out who, what and why, because I got so involved in the plot. Plots. Lots of bad people with lots of plots, some more successful than others. All wrapped up at the end with a lovely, but slightly bittersweet, happy ending.

Readers who like their heroines with smarts and brass and slightly zany friends and families will eat this series up like a slice of Key Lime Pie. Take your first bite with Lowcountry Boil (reviewed here) and enjoy!

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

***FTC Disclaimer: Most books reviewed on this site have been provided free of charge by the publisher, author or publicist. Some books we have purchased with our own money or borrowed from a public library and will be noted as such. Any links to places to purchase books are provided as a convenience, and do not serve as an endorsement by this blog. All reviews are the true and honest opinion of the blogger reviewing the book. The method of acquiring the book does not have a bearing on the content of the review.

Excerpt + Giveaway A Match for Marcus Cynster by Stephanie Laurens

Posted on May 12, 2015May 11, 2015 by Marlene Harris | Author : Marlene Harris | blog tours> Excerpts> Giveaways

If I haven’t whetted your appetite for A Match for Marcus Cynster with today’s sneak peak review of the book, this excerpt should do the trick. Reading Reality is the second stop on Stephanie’s tour. The first excerpt, which sets the stage for the story, is at From the TBR Pile. For future stops (and more tantalizing excerpts) check out the link to the full tour schedule at TLC Book Tours.

Excerpt #2:

After leaving Oswald tethered with the other horses a little way away, Niniver joined her clansmen in the fold to the south of the narrow ledge on which Nolan was pacing.
Bradshaw, Phelps, Canning, and Forrester greeted her politely. Phelps and Bradshaw had brought their sons. After exchanging quiet hellos and nodding to Sean and the young groom he’d brought with him, she joined the others in studying Nolan.

Continue reading “Excerpt + Giveaway A Match for Marcus Cynster by Stephanie Laurens” →

Review: A Match for Marcus Cynster by Stephanie Laurens

Posted on May 12, 2015May 16, 2015 by Marlene Harris | Author : Marlene Harris | B Reviews> blog tours> book reviews

Format read: ebook provided by the publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: paperback, ebook, large print audiobook
Genre: historical romance
Series: Cynsters #23
Length: 448 pages
Publisher: Harlequin MIRA
Date Released: May 26, 2015
Purchasing Info: Author’s Website, Publisher’s Website, Goodreads, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Book Depository

Restless and impatient, Marcus Cynster waits for Fate to come calling. He knows his destiny lies in the lands surrounding his family home, but what will his future be? Equally importantly, with whom will he share it?

Of one fact he feels certain: his fated bride will not be Niniver Carrick. His elusive neighbor attracts him mightily, yet he feels compelled to protect her—even from himself. Fickle Fate, he’s sure, would never be so kind as to decree that Niniver should be his. The best he can do for them both is to avoid her.

Niniver has vowed to return her clan to prosperity. The epitome of fragile femininity, her delicate and ethereal exterior cloaks a stubborn will and an unflinching devotion to the people in her care. She accepts that in order to achieve her goal, she cannot risk marrying and losing her grip on the clan’s reins to an inevitably controlling husband. Unfortunately, many local men see her as their opportunity.

Soon, she’s forced to seek help to get rid of her unwelcome suitors. Powerful and dangerous, Marcus Cynster is perfect for the task. Suppressing her wariness over tangling with a gentleman who so excites her passions, she appeals to him for assistance with her peculiar problem.

Although at first he resists, Marcus discovers that, contrary to his expectations, his fated role is to stand by Niniver’s side and, ultimately, to claim her hand. Yet in order to convince her to be his bride, they must plunge headlong into a journey full of challenges, unforeseen dangers, passion, and yearning, until Niniver grasps the essential truth—that she is indeed a match for Marcus Cynster.

My Review:

I had read most of the early Cynster books a while back – it looks like I stopped at 15, Temptation and Surrender. So I knew enough of the early background without remembering each and every detail.

I remember enjoying the books, so I’m not sure why I stopped. After having read A Match for Marcus Cynster, I’m really, really not sure why I stopped, because I just plain enjoyed the heck out of this one.

On the other hand, I think I’m glad that I haven’t read the most recent previous book The Tempting of Thomas Carrick. Based on the descriptions of past events in Marcus’ book, it’s obvious that very recently a lot of bad things happened to a lot of good people. In Match, we find out just enough, without having to deal with the horrible events as they occurred.

The resolution of those events forms the backdrop for this book. And we learn quite enough to make that backdrop make sense.

Niniver Carrick has become the Lady of Clan Carrick after what can best be described as a series of extremely unfortunate events. While it appeared that her oldest brother Nigel murdered their father, the early events in Match show that next-brother Nolan was the real murderer, and that he murdered Nigel as well, leaving Niniver and her youngest brother Norris as the last members of the leading family of Clan Carrick.

Niniver has also discovered that her two older brothers’ machinations and gambling debts have left the clan in a gigantic financial mess. With time and care, it can be sorted out, but Niniver expects that someone else will have that sorting. While the Carrick family have been the traditional Lairds of Clan Carrick, her remaining brother doesn’t want the leadership, and Niniver assumes that she is ineligible.

The clan decrees otherwise, and votes Niniver in as Lady Carrick.

Leaving Niniver with a personal dilemma. She is not married. Now that she is Lady Carrick she believes that she will never find a man who would be willing to marry her but not attempt to wrest the leadership of the clan out from under her. It’s a realistic fear in her time and place.

The clan will not follow anyone but her. They trust her and no one else. If some putative husband attempts to usurp her power, it will fracture the clan, and she knows it. But the law is otherwise, her husband would expect to take over everything she owns and holds, not understanding that leadership of the clan is given, not inherited, and that that leadership is based on trust and not merely the right of inheritance.

Of course for any casual reader of the Cynster stories, or just by learning about Marcus Cynster from the pages of this book, it is easy to see that the men of the Cynster family have learned better. As a group, they have found, or been forced to realize at dear cost, that a marriage of equals is a much happier and more fulfilling marriage for both parties.

Marcus is perfectly suited to marry Niniver. He knows how to support her from beside or if necessary behind her, because he’s seen the men of his family support their wives the same way. Even better, he has loved Niniver from afar for years. He just has no idea if she feels the same, or if she feels much at all.

Until circumstances force her hand. The younger, unmarried men all seem to be contesting for Niniver’s hand, in spite of her continued refusals and rebuffs. She is caught between a rock and a hard place – many of their fathers are influential in the clan, and she can’t afford to alienate their support. But their sons are not just acting like buffoons, but their continued flouting of her authority is shaking the foundations of her leadership.

Niniver has to admit that she needs a man to run off these young louts in a manner which brooks no argument – with fists if necessary. She calls upon her neighbor, Marcus Cynster, for his assistance in this matter, and tries to ignore her own feelings. She has loved Marcus for years, but has no idea of his feelings for her. She assumes that he is like all the other men of his class, instead of looking at his family for examples. (Her immediate family was never the supportive type, she has no concept of the close-knit nature of his.)

Each of them believes that a few days of Marcus in residence at Carrick House will teach the young men a lesson. Neither of them reckons on an outsider who is stirring up trouble in the hopes of taking his own advantage.

And neither of them counts on the continued danger drawing them so close that they are able to step past all of the own reservations – and irrevocably towards each other.

Escape Rating B+: As I said at the beginning, I enjoyed the heck out of this book. It’s not just that Niniver and Marcus are very likeable, although they definitely are, but that their romance, that neither one of them is willing to admit is a romance, fits the characters and the situation so well.

As a heroine, Niniver is a treat. It is difficult in a historical romance for the heroine to have not merely personal but also professional agency in a way that does not feel anachronistic. Upper class women just didn’t aspire to careers, at least within the pages of historical romance. But Niniver is a leader, and in a way that feels like it is reasonably possible in her time and place. And she recognizes that the leadership is both a privilege and at times a burdensome responsibility.

She reasons, mostly correctly, that she can either be the Lady or be married, but not both. Eventually she, or rather the clan, might be in a financial position where a change in leadership would be survivable, but that time is not now.

I’ll confess to a bit of concern about her affair with Marcus. Not because she decides to have one, but that no one ever considers what will need to occur if she gets pregnant. Not that Marcus wouldn’t be thrilled to marry her under any circumstances, but for a woman who does a great deal of forward planning, this particular blindspot loomed a bit large.

Marcus is a good match for Niniver because he knows what he is getting into from the very beginning. She, or her position, don’t change his essential nature. He knows from the outset that Niniver needs a consort and not a Lord, and he understands and is willing to fulfill that role from the start. He protects her and supports her – it is her right and duty to conduct business for the clan. He usually manages to hit just the right note. And it’s not an act – he’s adopting the role he hopes to have from the beginning of their relationship.

Almost all of Laurens’ heroes and heroines have a difficult time either admitting they love each other or at least managing to say it to each other. This often results in a minor misunderstandammit late in the story, as is the case here.

However, the suspense element in this book nearly makes that misunderstanding fatal. Niniver is rightfully wary of any friends of her older brothers, because the fast crowd they got involved with directly contributed to the financial mismanagement of the clan. One of their crowd keeps hanging around, and it is obvious to the reader from the very beginning that Ramsey McDougal is up to no good. It was so obvious that he was behind all of Niniver’s current troubles that I kept wanting to shake Niniver and Marcus out of their complacency long before they finally figured out what MacDougall was up to.

So, although the villain was a bit bwahaha predictable, the hero and heroine were generally terrific. A Match for Marcus Cynster is a good book to read on a hot day, dreaming of the breeze over the Highlands. (Extra points for the creative use of THE love scene from Star Wars)

This post is part of a TLC book tour. Click on the logo for more posts in this tour.

***FTC Disclaimer: Most books reviewed on this site have been provided free of charge by the publisher, author or publicist. Some books we have purchased with our own money or borrowed from a public library and will be noted as such. Any links to places to purchase books are provided as a convenience, and do not serve as an endorsement by this blog. All reviews are the true and honest opinion of the blogger reviewing the book. The method of acquiring the book does not have a bearing on the content of the review.

Review: Ryder: Bird of Prey by Nick Pengelley + Giveaway

Posted on May 11, 2015May 8, 2015 by Marlene Harris | Author : Marlene Harris | B Reviews> blog tours> book reviews> Giveaways

Format read: ebook provided by the publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: ebook
Genre: thriller
Series: Ayesha Ryder #3
Length: 238 pages
Publisher: Random House Alibi
Date Released: May 5, 2015
Purchasing Info: Author’s Website, Publisher’s Website, Goodreads, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo

The Maltese Falcon was no mere legend—this fabulously jewelled golden bird really existed. Still exists, according to the last words of a dying man. Ayesha Ryder is on its trail, but not just to find the Falcon itself. It is said to contain a clue to the lost burial place of King Harold of England, a potent symbol for ruthless politicians determined to break up the UK and create a new, independent English Kingdom. The Falcon may also contain a second clue, one that few would believe.

Labelled an assassin, hunted by Scotland Yard and Dame Imogen Worsely of MI5—as well as those who want the Falcon and its secrets for themselves—Ayesha joins forces with Joram Tate, the mysterious librarian known to her friend Lady Madrigal, a one-time lover of Lawrence of Arabia. As Ayesha’s attraction to Tate grows, they follow clues left by long-dead knights to the tomb of a Saxon king and to the ruined Battle Abbey. When the trail leads them to a stunning secret hidden for a thousand years beneath an English castle, Ayesha must battle modern killers with medieval weapons before confronting the evil that would destroy her nation.

My Review:

Ryder: Bird of Prey is the third book in the Ayesha Ryder series, after Ayesha’s awesome introduction in Ryder (reviewed here) and Ryder: American Treasure (reviewed here)

Ayesha Ryder still feels like the love child of Indiana Jones and Lara Croft, but her adventures have a “ripped from the headines” feel in spite of their setting in a slightly alternate 21st century from our own.

On the one hand, in Ryder, Ayesha’s adventures led to the foundation of a new combined Israeli/Palestinian country in the Middle East named “The Holy Land”. Her rescue of that peace process and its principal political figures brought her to the attention of world leaders as a Middle East expert and a woman who can and will get the job done and the treasure found, no matter how mythical that treasure might initially seem to be.

In Bird of Prey, Ayesha is hunting for the sword of Harold Godwinson, the last English king. For those not familiar with the history, Harold is the king who lost England in 1066 to William the Conqueror.

While Ayesha’s friend, the British Prime Minister Susannah Armstrong, is vehemently opposed, there is a bill in Parliament, brought forward by Susannah’s Deputy PM, to not only dissolve the United Kingdom but take the remaining country, England, out of the European Union, NATO and the World Trade Organization. This England for the English platform would give Scotland its independence and allow Ireland to reunite. Or not in the latter case, but the English would be officially out of it.

In last week’s newspaper I saw an article about the British Parliamentary elections then in progress which also posits some of the same ideas. That this was closer to real than I expected was a huge surprise.

Back to the story. As a symbol of this England for the English movement, the organizers want Harold’s sword, which was supposed to have been buried with him. As usual for one of Ayesha’s adventures, the question on the table concerns the real life location of that burial. Which is, of course, part of the mystery Ayesha has to solve.

The clues to where that burial might be are hidden in yet another legendary artifact. Not on is the Maltese Falcon real in Ayesha’s world, but it contains both the key to Harold’s burial site and clues to the location of the fabled lost Templar treasure.

Someone, or multiple someones, are willing, in fact downright eager, to kill in order to get the sword and the treasure. But the bad guys should know by now that attempting to pin your crimes on Ayesha Ryder is a ploy that is guaranteed to fail. With extreme prejudice.

Escape Rating B+: It’s the treasure hunts that keep drawing me in. History is fascinating in general, and the idea that so many of the things we thought were legendary might be real is always enthralling. While there seems to be more than a bit of luck involved, it is so easy to get swept up in the way that Ayesha spins from one clue to the next, and always just one step ahead of the villains.

Ayesha’s assistants in this particular treasure hunt are a librarian whose propensity for adventure belongs in the TV show The Librarians and a female archaeologist who is thrilled to be the gender bent Indiana Jones in this running chase and battle.

That the chase comes to its conclusion in a reconstructed castle complete with reconstructed weapons and reenactors, while the villains arrive by Zeppelin, made for an exciting and climactic conclusion that goes from tongue-in-cheek to serious and deadly in the blink of an eye.

That one of the villains is a ghost from Ayesha’s past added to the stakes for her, and the consequences for the next book.

Something about the political setup of this one didn’t quite gel for me. The idea of England for the English is closer to real-life truth than I expected, but the idea that the House of Commons would be moved to revolt by the finding of the sword, or that such an important concept could pass this easily, seemed a bit too far-fetched.

I will say that the idea that highly-placed villains continue to try to shift blame for their crimes at the initial stages of the story by framing Ayesha Ryder has probably run its course. The first time it happened it added to the suspense. In this story even the characters who are intended to investigate the accusation saw it as a red flag that whoever said it must be part of the plot. I hope not to see this idea again for a while.

I absolutely love the treasure hunt aspects of the Ryder series. Ayesha always finds herself on the trail of something incredible, and always finds it, even if she doesn’t always get to keep it. It’s the chase that keeps the reader on the edge of their seat, especially because there is always someone out to get Ayesha and that treasure right behind her.

I can’t wait to read more of Ayesha’s pulse-pounding adventures. There must be lots more legendary treasures just waiting to be rediscovered!

TOURWIDE GIVEAWAY

The tour includes a Rafflecopter giveaway for a $25. eGift card and a copy of the book!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

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

***FTC Disclaimer: Most books reviewed on this site have been provided free of charge by the publisher, author or publicist. Some books we have purchased with our own money or borrowed from a public library and will be noted as such. Any links to places to purchase books are provided as a convenience, and do not serve as an endorsement by this blog. All reviews are the true and honest opinion of the blogger reviewing the book. The method of acquiring the book does not have a bearing on the content of the review.

Review: The Dismantling by Brian DeLeeuw + Giveaway

Posted on May 6, 2015May 5, 2015 by Marlene Harris | Author : Marlene Harris | B Reviews> blog tours> book reviews> Giveaways

Format read: ebook provided by the publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genre: thriller
Length: 288 pages
Publisher: Plume
Date Released: April 28, 2015
Purchasing Info: Author’s Website, Publisher’s Website, Goodreads, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Book Depository

Brian DeLeeuw hits that sweet spot between literary and commercial suspense with his brilliantly adept, ingeniously plotted novel—a chilling, fast-paced drama that urges readers to question the meaning of atonement and whether revenge might sometimes be the only way we can liberate ourselves from our past.
Twenty-five-year-old med school dropout Simon Worth is an organ broker, buying kidneys and livers from cash-strapped donors and selling them to recipients whose time on the waitlist is running out. When a seemingly straightforward liver transplant has an unexpectedly dangerous outcome, Simon finds himself on the run. In order to survive, he must put aside his better moral judgment and place his trust in a stranger who has a shocking secret.

My Review:

There are a lot of things that get dismantled in this suspense thriller. A career, a life or two, a criminal enterprise and a cadaver.

It all starts with the cadaver. Medical school dropout Simon Worth dropped out over that cadaver. As he and his study group dissected the anonymous donor, he kept seeing the face of his dead sister in place of the corpse. He couldn’t take the nightmares, and he ran away.

That he still feels responsible for his sister’s death (he isn’t, not really) is what makes his nightmares so peculiarly devastating. Not that his next choice is much better.

He finds himself, with the help of one of his very, very few medical school friends, in a new job where his medical knowledge, incomplete as it is, comes in very handy. Simon is the new face of Health Solutions Inc., a company that matches poor but willing organ donors with recipients who are willing to pay to get moved to the top of the transplant list.

Which is all completely illegal. But Simon is able to elide the moral issues by telling himself that everyone involved, including the highly compensated donors, knows exactly what they are getting into when they game the system.

As long as everybody in the chain of illegalities has something to lose, the delicate balance of crime stays under the radar. Of course, it can’t possibly last forever, and everyone seems to get that except poor Simon, who gets caught actually caring for the people in this chain of questionable practice.

It all falls apart when one retired football player needs a liver, and one of his friends decides to buy one for him. Not that Leonard Pellegrini really wants a new liver or a new lease on life, but his friend Howard Crewes is trying to buy himself atonement for an entirely different event. Leonard was perfectly content (happy never comes into this thing) drinking himself to death, and understands completely that his liver is just the first and most vulnerable organ to pay the price of his oblivion.

But Crewes wants absolution, Leonard’s wife and kids want him to stick around a few more years, and Peter DaSilva, the actual head of Health Solutions Inc., just gets greedy. So everyone ignores the warning signs.

The donor, Maria Campos, just wants a new life with enough money to set herself up far away from her old life. There are plenty of warning signs on her side of this particular equation, too.

Although the system is successfully gamed, it all falls apart when Lenny commits suicide, and Maria runs instead of showing up for her followup care and finds herself admitted to a hospital with obvious signs of being an off-the-books organ donor.

As the investigations coincide, all the players start trying to clean up any collateral damage, and any potential witnesses.

Simon and Maria run for their lives, still arguing over how much danger they are really in. When the entire structure completely dismantles, it is just barely possible that they might be able to start over again. If they can get past the mess that got them there.

Escape Rating B-: This is a book where I have a lot of mixed feelings. For some reason, I found it difficult to care a lot about Simon or even Maria. Simon just seems to be an emotional mess who has gotten himself in way over his head. It’s not that what happened with his sister isn’t terribly sad, it’s that Simon is so good at suppressing his own emotional reactions to everything that I didn’t get enough of a feel for him to, well, feel for him.

On that other hand, the case that brings down the whole house of cards did connect to a lot of my feel buttons, probably because it was so real. Although it isn’t named specifically, Leonard Pellegrini and a lot of the other ex-football players who are in the support group he doesn’t want to be a part of are suffering from Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE) which is very, very real.

(Without spoiling it completely, Leonard’s ultimate fate mirrors the real-life case of Dave Duerson, a member of the 1985 Chicago Bears Super Bowl Championship Team. Which explains why I remembered the case.)

(It is also possible that the on field hit that is responsible for Crewes’ guilt, which gets all of them into this mess, is intended to represent the case of Darryl Stingley, who was paralyzed in an helmet to helmet hit during an exhibition game between the Oakland Raiders and the New England Patriots.)

Leonard is suffering from CTE, and he’s been drinking in order to make the pain, and the headaches, mood swings and general depression, stop. He doesn’t want to go on living. But he also isn’t willing to fight all the people around him who want him to. There are plenty of warning signs, but Health Solutions Inc. is greedy and his family is desperate. It is a recipe for disaster on every side.

For me, the football tie-in gave me a lot more feels, and a lot more sympathy, for the reasons why everyone got themselves into this mess than anything to do with Simon or the donor Maria. The football references gave the story a real-life grounding that Simon and Maria’s story did not.

However, the football connection made the rest of the story all too plausible. Whether one agrees or disagrees with the concept of organ brokering, it is all too easy to believe that some variation of this is probably happening.

And that does give me the chills.

GIVEAWAY

a Rafflecopter giveaway

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

***FTC Disclaimer: Most books reviewed on this site have been provided free of charge by the publisher, author or publicist. Some books we have purchased with our own money or borrowed from a public library and will be noted as such. Any links to places to purchase books are provided as a convenience, and do not serve as an endorsement by this blog. All reviews are the true and honest opinion of the blogger reviewing the book. The method of acquiring the book does not have a bearing on the content of the review.

Review: Pleasantville by Attica Locke

Posted on May 5, 2015May 4, 2015 by Marlene Harris | Author : Marlene Harris | A Reviews> blog tours> book reviews

Format read: ebook provided by the publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, large print, ebook, audiobook
Genre: mystery, thriller
Series: Jay Porter #2
Length: 432 pages
Publisher: Harper Collins
Date Released: April 21, 2015
Purchasing Info: Author’s Website, Publisher’s Website, Goodreads, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Book Depository

In this sophisticated thriller, lawyer Jay Porter, hero of Locke’s bestseller Black Water Rising, returns to fight one last case, only to become embroiled once again in a dangerous game of shadowy politics and a witness to how far those in power are willing to go to win

Fifteen years after the events of Black Water Rising, Jay Porter is struggling to cope with catastrophic changes in his personal life and the disintegration of his environmental law practice. His victory against Cole Oil is still the crown jewel of his career, even if he hasn’t yet seen a dime thanks to appeals. But time has taken its toll. Tired and restless, he’s ready to quit.

When a girl goes missing on Election Night, 1996, in the neighborhood of Pleasantville—a hamlet for upwardly-mobile blacks on the north side of Houston—Jay, a single father, is deeply disturbed. He’s been representing Pleasantville in the wake of a chemical fire, and the case is dragging on, raising doubts about his ability.

The missing girl was a volunteer for one of the local mayoral candidates, and her disappearance complicates an already heated campaign. When the nephew of one of the candidates, a Pleasantville local, is arrested, Jay reluctantly finds himself serving as a defense attorney. With a man’s life and his own reputation on the line, Jay is about to try his first murder in a case that will also put an electoral process on trial, exposing the dark side of power and those determined to keep it.

My Review:

Pleasantville was every bit as terrific as I expected it to be, and the story makes an excellent bookend to Jay Porter’s legal career. We saw it take off in Black Water Rising (reviewed here) and in Pleasantville we see what could be his swan song, or perhaps a new renaissance. Time will tell.

Jay’s own story seems to be a parable on the cliche that if it wasn’t for bad luck, he wouldn’t have any at all. He has an unfortunate knack for being in the wrong place at the wrong time, and nearly getting himself killed extricating himself from the mess that he has accidentally landed in.

In this particular story, Jay also finds himself caught in the middle of a mess that could be described as “power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely”, along with a cautionary tale about not getting in the way of someone who gets their jollies by being a very big fish in a very small pond.

I used to know someone who referred to some folks who fit that category as being a shark in a goldfish bowl. The problem that Jay discovers is that those type of sharks will do just about anything to maintain their sharkitude.

Pleasantville takes place in 1996, fifteen years after the end of Black Water Rising. During those intervening years, Jay’s career has risen and finally fallen. He’s gone from being in his 30s to pushing 50, and sometimes feeling 50 push back. In Black Water Rising, his wife Bernice was pregnant with their first child. In Pleasantville, he is a widower raising their two children alone, after Bernice’s death from cancer the previous year. His once burgeoning civil practice has sunk to one last case that he is afraid to go to court with – after the death of his wife, he has lost his own fire.

In the autumn of 1996 the country was about to elect Bill Clinton for his second term. In Houston, a historic mayoral race has come down to a runoff between the first black Houston police chief and the second woman to run a viable campaign for mayor. The politics are dirty and getting dirtier by the minute.

In the middle of the campaign, a young female campaign worker is murdered, and the pattern of the crime fits two other recent murders of young women in the Pleasantville neighborhood. The murder is tragic, but political considerations overtake the investigation of the crime.

Former police chief Axel Hathorne is from Pleasantville. His opponent, District Attorney Wollcott, decides to prosecute Axe’s nephew Neal for the crime, based on extremely flimsy evidence. As Neal is his uncle’s campaign manager, it looks a lot like a cheap stunt to tank Axe in the upcoming runoff election.

Jay takes Neal’s case. At first, simply because he is in the police station when Neal is brought in for questioning. A happenstance. The patriarch of the Hathorne family, Sam Hathorne, asks Jay to take the case for real when Neal is charged. Jay doesn’t trust Sam, doesn’t trust himself in a courtroom, but can’t manage to stop himself from taking up Neal’s case when it looks like he wasn’t just falsely accused, but falsely accused in order to finagle the outcome of the election.

But the case turns out to be much different than Jay imagined. Not because of the election angle, but because old Sam Hathorne, the unofficial mayor of Pleasantville, has committed many more and dirtier deals than anyone in his community imagined. He’s sacrificed everyone’s best interests in order to maintain his position as the shark in his particular goldfish bowl.

And Jay won’t let him get away with it any more than he’ll let the DA and her dirty tricks manager get away with pursuing a trumped up murder charge to steal an election.

Escape Rating A+: Pleasantville was even better than Black Water Rising. The story has just as many thrills and definitely chills, but the scope was larger and the chills further reaching. While Black Water Rising was about one man’s fight against corporate corruption, Pleasantville has a broader theme about the far reaching consequences of political corruption, and the short term memories of the electorate. It’s a story about the changing nature of one community, and how that change is reflected in the wider world.

The dirty tricks campaign against Alex Hathorne in Houston is intended as a precursor of the long-drawn-out fight that turned into the 2000 presidential election where our fate was decided in a courtroom. The manager of the dirty tricks in this Houston mayoral race moves on to bigger and better (or worse, depending on perspective) things as a manager of the Bush campaign in 2000. It’s easy to see a connection between this mayoral campaign and the Swift Boat deceptive advertising in the 2004 election.

But this story personalizes the political dirt by focusing on the bogus case against Neal Hathorne. Through the case of one young man who has an alibi for the time when the crime took place, we see how easy it is to obfuscate the facts in order to forward an agenda. The opponents didn’t need to convict him, they just needed to dirty his name for 30 days, long enough to win the election. That Jay is willing to do whatever it takes to thwart that ambition tells both him and the reader that he still has something left to live for, and still has something to give back to his community and his clients.

That he is unwilling to bury a difficult truth in order to keep the status quo in power shows that he is still an idealist after all. And those choices are what make him so fascinating to follow.

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

***FTC Disclaimer: Most books reviewed on this site have been provided free of charge by the publisher, author or publicist. Some books we have purchased with our own money or borrowed from a public library and will be noted as such. Any links to places to purchase books are provided as a convenience, and do not serve as an endorsement by this blog. All reviews are the true and honest opinion of the blogger reviewing the book. The method of acquiring the book does not have a bearing on the content of the review.

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