Jan 24 2012

I’ve Got Your Number by Sophie Kinsella

Genre: Chick Lit
Main characters: Poppy Wyatt, Sam Roxton
Time and place: present day London
First sentence:Perspective.
Verdict: Four and a half stars.

Summary:
Poppy Wyatt is engaged to be married and blissfully happy. Her fiance, Magnus Tavish, is “a tall, handsome university lecturer who’s written a book and even been on the TV“, could life get any better?

A few days later, while she is out celebrating with her girlfriends, disaster strikes: she loses her engagement ring. A very expensive family heirloom, that’s been in the family for three generations! To say that Poppy needs to get it back is an understatement. After searching every nook and cranny of the hotel where she lost it, she resigns and leaves her phone number to all the members of the staff, in case someone eventually finds it.

And then she goes outside and someone steals her phone.

What is she to do now? Frantic with worry and annoyance she paces the hotel floor, when… she finds a phone. Just like that, abandoned, in a bin. She takes it and re-gives the number to the hotel staff. Crisis averted. However, the phone turns out to be a company phone, belonging to the PA of the CEO, no less. And the CEO needs it back, as all his very important emails are routed through the said phone. But Poppy cannot relinquish it, what about her ring??

General impression
Yesterday I had a very long day at work (it ended past midnight). When I finally got into bed, I figured ‘hey, I’ll just read a few more pages of this book before I fall asleep’. And, tired as I was, I couldn’t put it down until I finished it. True story. And if this doesn’t show how much I enjoyed reading this book I don’t know what does.

As usual, a heartfelt thank you to NetGalley; I cannot say how happy having access to the next Kinsella book, a few weeks before release, has made me. All the more so since it turned out to be a book I liked so much.

Plot
The plot is what I come to call ‘classical Kinsella’, as it’s present in most of her books: a nice British girl gets carried away by her enthusiasm for one thing or another, and ends up really messing up her life. There’s also a guy in there somewhere, usually one she’s just met; they are brought together by strange circumstances — they are not lovers, they are not friends, and yet fate keeps bringing them together one way or another. Usually by the end she helps him with something really important. And over the course of the book their relationship develops into something more, so they end up together. The end.

Well, this may not sound like much (and pretty formulaic to boot), but the charm is in the execution. And I did like most of Ms. Kinsella’s books, so she must be doing something right :)

Back to our present novel. So Poppy loses the heirloom ring her fiance gave her, and this, in a strange turn of events, makes her cross paths with Sam. She is engaged, he’s very uncommunicative. And yet (of course!) I knew all along that they’ll end up together. What I did not know (and kept reading in order to find out) was the ‘how’. A clear case of ‘focusing on the journey rather than the destination’ :)

Characters
The characters themselves are the book’s forte, and the very reason I enjoyed the book so much.

A pleasant surprise for me was Poppy’s job, and the way she related to it. I for one love my line of work, and as such I have grown kinda tired with the usual chick lit heroines who are trapped in office jobs that they hate and sometimes they’re quite bad at. Poppy on the other hand is a physiotherapist (she had relatives in the dental field and initially had wanted to become a dentist herself, but then she thought she wouldn’t limit herself to just teeth :) ). It is obvious throughout the book that she loves her job, she does it well, and she cares for her patients’ welfare. I cannot begin to say how much I liked that.

Although I don’t think I could have resisted Poppy even without the job component. She is quirky and funny and very, very nice (sometimes she lets people step all over her because of that); she is a bit impulsive (as all the chick lit heroines, they kinda need this trait to land their troubles :) ), but not so much as to make her do really stupid things.

I also liked Sam quite a bit. He’s also a typical chick lit hero (a career guy, making good money and having a heart of gold), but there is more to him than that. I was particularly amused by his emails (“Yes. Sam”), and the way they never had a word more than they needed to. He starts out as this unfeeling guy, neglecting people at his company because he never had the time plus what did he care it was one of them’s birthday anyway? I actually like this attitude in a way: at such a big firm, he could hardly be expected to get to care about most of his colleagues, and he chose not to say things out of mere complaisance. He doesn’t actually care what most others thinks of him (a trait I have always envied :) ) and never shies away from awkward conversations. As the story enfolds we get to find out more about what he hides behind the cold facade: he’s funny, and reliable, and smart, and loyal; and he does have friends & good, healthy relationships in his life (despite what Poppy initially thought :) ).

And then there is the matter of both characters’ growth throughout the book. They start out at different ends of the spectrum (Poppy’s always wanting to please others + Sam’s being very much the opposite), and each of them gets to learn that sometimes there are cases that require a different strategy. I liked that, and I also liked the way the relationship between the two of them evolved, from distant to more and more intimate (none of that ‘love/lust at first sight’ stuff, just two people getting to know each other and liking what they discover).

What I liked

The whole getting to know each other by texting back and forth was quite a novel idea (for me at least, it is the first book I read where this element is present), and quite a well-done one too. I liked that they both felt the difference between their intimacy in writing (where they slowly became close friends) and their awkwardness in real life (where they treated each other like the random acquaintances they actually were). And I liked the way their texts changed over time, becoming warmer :)
(ah, what can I say, I am a sucker for a good relationship-developed-in-writing story :) )

Two quotes I thought were nice:
Poppy’s thoughts during a meal with her future in-laws, the ones that always intimidated her:

We’re halfway through the Bolognese, and I haven’t uttered a single word. It’s too hard. The conversation is like a juggernaut. Or maybe a symphony. Yes. And I’m the flute. And I do have a tune, and I’d quite like to play it, but there’s no conductor to bring me in. So I keep drawing breath, then chickening out.

and

It’s been quite addictive, scrolling down the endless strings of back-and-forth emails and working out the stories. Always backward. Like rewinding little spools of life.

Oh, and
show spoiler

What I did not like
This is where I show off my nitpicky side.
First of all, there was the matter of the footnotes. I found them to be a cute idea (Poppy got into the habit of using footnotes after reading Magnus’ book, when she discovered they can be quite useful — “you just bung them in whenever you want and instantly look clever” :) ), and pretty well executed. But. They are a total nightmare when it comes to reading on a Kindle. I never knew where the actual footnote will end up, and I had to scroll a few pages forward looking for it, and then of course I had to go back a few pages to where I was; and then, a few lines later, another footnote, and I had to scroll again. And again, and again. Eventually I gave up and ignored the footnotes altogether, but I do feel like I missed some of the fun because of that. If you have a choice between the Kindle version and the paper, by all means do choose the latter.

However, if there is one thing I did not like about this book that is… the heroine’s name (I know, I told you I was gonna be nitpicky). But… Poppy? It seems to be a bit too childish to be taken seriously. Again, I liked the character herself quite a bit, it is the name that I am not fond of.

Thoughts on the title
Not glamorous, but it does describe the book quite well :)

Thoughts on the ending
I very much enjoyed the ending, of course.
show spoiler

Recommend it to?
Anyone in the mood for a chick lit book :)

Buy this from amazon.com | Buy this from bookdepository.co.uk

Written by the same author:
Can You Keep a Secret? | Remember me? | Shopaholic & Baby | Twenties Girl | The Undomestic Goddess

The links to amazon.com and bookdepository.co.uk are affiliate links. If you click one of them and buy something, I receive a small percentage of the purchase price. This being said, rest assured that the few cents I might thus make will never influence what I say or do not say about any book reviewed on the site.

Popularity: 1% [?]


Jan 22 2012

The Man Who Invented Christmas by Les Standiford

Genre: Non-fiction
Main characters: Charles Dickens
Time and place: 19th century England
First sentence:In London, in 1824, it was the custom to treat a debtor little differently from a man who had reached into a purse and stolen a similar sum.
Verdict:Interesting :)

Book read as part of Charles Dickens month over at Fig and Thistle. The occasion? Charles Dickens’ Bicentennial anniversary! (he was born in February 1812)

Summary:
Faced with bankruptcy, he was contemplating giving up on writing fiction altogether. Instead, he pulled himself together and, in six short weeks, wrote a book that not only restored him in the eyes of the public but began the transformation of what was then a second-tier holiday into the most significant celebration of the Christian calendar.

This is a short book (a little over 200 pages) focusing on the part of Charles Dickens’ life related to A Christmas Carol. What has inspired him to write it, his plans for his little Christmas volume, the problems he had with it, and, not the least, the effect the book had on Christmas then, and ever since.

No individual can claim credit for the creation of Christmas, of course–except, perhaps, the figure that the day is named for. But Charles Dickens, given his immense and lasting influence and his association with all things Victorian, played a major role in transforming a celebration dating back to pre-Christian times, revitalizing forgotten customs and introducing new ones that now define the holiday.

General impression
This is just the “little did he know that he was changing the world” kind of story that I very much enjoy. At 31, Charles Dickens has already published a handful of novels, yet he was on a path seemingly going downward, rather than up. His once record-breaking readership levels were decreasing, and he was getting deeper in debt. He had doubts on his value as a writer, and even seriously considered leaving England for good. And then, during a visit to Manchester, an idea struck: he will write the story of a man that learns the true value of Christmas. It was already late autumn, so Dickens set to work straightaway, in order to finish his book in time for the holiday. He had so much faith in this new endeavor, that he chose to self-publish the book; he expected to make thus enough money to cover all his expenses and pay off his debts. The book was a success, and sold really well, but the costs were so high that he was left with only about a couple hundred pounds.

We are also treated to a few pages from the history of Christmas itself. Those were the most interesting ones for me, as I realized I knew little to nothing about the matter. It seems that not only the birth of Jesus was not celebrated for centuries, but later, after being established, it was even banned at one time by the puritans, who considered it a Catholic invention. Even after the ban ended, various religious people still discouraged the observance of the said holiday, so the sentiments people regarded it with were pretty mixed. The fact that it was considered mainly a religious event did not particularly help. Enter Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. It is this book that introduced a whole new idea of Christmas: a secular holiday to be spent with one’s family, a time of goodwill, generosity, and compassion. Even the phrase ‘Merry Christmas!’ entered common usage after being used in the book.

Back to our own volume, the thing I have liked most about it is that the book is chock-full of trivia tidbits, offering me a glimpse of things as yet unknown. A few of the things I learned:

  • as a young man, Dickens was apprenticed as a law clerk; he hated it and “he quickly came to loathe the hypocrisy of a labyrinthine and self-serving legal system–he formed a lifelong commitment to the distinction between “justice” and “the law.”” ;
  • I already knew that piracy was a problem for the writers of the times, and Dickens was one of those that insisted on a worldwide copyright agreement being instituted. What I didn’t know was that there actually were copyright laws at the time, yet they were valid only in one’s own country. American laws protected American author’s books, everything else was fair game; likewise, British laws only protected its citizen’s rights, and anyone could pirate a book by a non-British author whichever way one pleased;
  • Dickens’ serialized book The Old Curiosity Shop was selling 100 000 copies per issue, which is a huge number considering that the number of readers was considered to be somewhere around 300 000 and 500 000; comparing the 2 million people Dickens had access to with the hundreds of millions any US author can reach, and taking into consideration that even today 100 000 of books sold is considered a huge success,  Dickens’ 100 000 is positively mind blowing;
  • over the (rather recent) centuries there was no Santa Claus but a figure called Father Christmas, represented as “typically fat, with his backside and belly stuffed with straw, and, though old and bearded, nonetheless vigorous“, yet also carrying a sword and having a tail (which, according to the author, suggests the character’s roots in the image of the Devil and also the image of Pan);
  • scrooge was a verb used in Dickens’s day, meaning “to squeeze, or crush” and derived from the Old English scruze;
  • the impact of A Christmas Carol was said to have sent the nation’s goose-raising industry to near ruin“, as prior to the book the bird that was usually cooked for Christmas dinner was the goose, which was later replaced with the turkey (the bird sent by a repentant Scrooge to the Cratchits);
  • I was surprised that most people, on meeting Dickens for the first time, noted his unkempt hair (I only remembered the painted portraits of him, which naturally had perfect hair, and older photos of him, where his hair seemed rather normal-looking). Looking at the below picture (from Wikipedia), taken in 1850, a few years after the Carol, kinda cleared out the matter:
The man did not care a whit about his hair, did he? Reading about his later life I had the impression he was quite vain, and he cared a lot about keeping appearances. Perhaps he will grow to be so, later on. More interesting, his face seems very familiar to me in this picture (has felt so ever since I first saw it) — can anyone pinpoint who he resembles?
… Back to the book now.

Thoughts on the title
Intriguing. I wonder what one would have made of it if the subtitle (“How Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol Rescued His Career and Revived our Holiday Spirits“) was not present. Although A Christmas Carol is one of my favorite books, I never would have associated the idea of Christmas with Dickens prior of reading this book.

Thoughts on the ending
“Eliminate ignorance, Dickens dreamed in his Carol. Eliminate want. A tall order then, and a tall order now. But one does not need to be a social scientist to know that he identifies the true sources of misery in this world.”

I consider these last few lines eye opening. Of course things are actually more complicated than that (wars are being fought over various people’s wanting more than they will even know what to do with), but if one sits and thinks about it, eliminating ignorance and want would set us well on the way of a perfect world. A note though: I say that thinking about the kind of want Dickens met with, starving children with ragged clothes, not the kind of ‘I am mad because my parents didn’t get me an iPhone for Christmas’ want we see around us today. Alas, the ignorance levels are dropping fast enough in some places (including Europe, my own Europe) to be well on the way of reaching the same threshold Dickens met with one day prior to writing his little book.

A few more (earlier) lines on the matter:

He proclaimed his belief that with the pursuit and accumulation of knowledge, man had the capacity to change himself and his lot in life. With learning, said Dickens, a man “acquires for himself that property of soul which has in all times upheld struggling men of every degree.” The more a man learns, Dickens said, “the better, gentler, kinder man he must become. When he knows how much great minds have suffered for the truth in every age and time…he will become more tolerant of other men’s belief in all matters, and will incline more leniently to their sentiments when they chance to differ from his own.”

I cannot agree enough.

Recommend it to?
Everyone interested in knowing a bit more about Christmas, Charles Dickens, and/or A Christmas Carol.

Buy this from amazon.com | Buy this from bookdepository.co.uk | Les Standiford’s website | Dickens’ life in 4 minutes (via Becky’s Book Reviews)

The links to amazon.com and bookdepository.co.uk are affiliate links. If you click one of them and buy something, I receive a small percentage of the purchase price. This being said, rest assured that the few cents I might thus make will never influence what I say or do not say about any book reviewed on the site.

Popularity: 2% [?]


Jan 22 2012

How To Slay a Dragon by Bill Allen

Genre: Juvenile Fiction
Main characters: Greghart the hero & his sidekick Lucky Day
Time and place: the planet Myrth; time unspecified
First sentence:Greg Hart’s name had never caused him trouble before.
Verdict: It has its faults but I give it four stars because it shows some promise. :)

Summary:
Somewhere, in a kingdom on a distant planet, there is a prophecy saying that Greghart from Earth will slay the dragon and rescue their princess. And the prophecies can never be wrong.

Greg Hart is a twelve year old with quite an unimpressive physique. He’s never beaten anyone in his life, and he probably would not be able to if he wanted. Could tackling a fire-breathing dragon ever be a good idea under the circumstances?

General impression
Try as I might (my own TBR list is over 700 books long) and still I find myself reviewing NetGalley books. That is one hard to resist site :)

Looking at the bright side, this particular book was already on the said TBR, after reading about it on Reddit a while ago, and finding the blurb to be quite promising. A prophecy, and an unlikely hero. Ah, plus dragon slaying. I liked the sound of that :) And now, having read the book, I can say it has delivered: it is a fun book, mostly fast pacing and with interesting elements.

A thing I have found worth noting was the way the author’s writing style, intentionally or not, sounds like Terry Pratchett’s (who is one of my favorite authors). Mr. Allen does not have the same facility with words that Mr. Pratchett has (those are some big shoes to fill), but that is hardly surprising given that this is Mr. Allen’s first book. He does manage to ‘nail it’ at times, which is why I will be very looking forward to his next book, to savor the improvements experience will (hopefully) bring.

Setting
The planet of Myrth is, just as I was expecting, a version of our Earth in medieval times, with a bunch of fantasy elements thrown in. Some of those are well-known and well-worn (trolls, ogres, the witch, the dragon himself), and some are quite original and enjoyable (the Shrieking Shrub — a shrub that shrieked, adding to the tension of a scene — and the Enchanted Forest — a forest that opened up paths at the feet of unsuspecting travelers in order to lure them inside –, to name but two). The geography of the place is not particularly clear to me (I may have gotten a bit confused, geography was never my forte), but on the whole is a rather interesting place, and I will be glad to visit it again, in the next book.

The Myrth people are very much like ordinary people (there are a few who can wield magic, but only about a handful), except for their firm belief in prophecies. Interestingly enough, the prophecies have never let them down, although their prophet is very old and his clarity of speech isn’t what it (probably) used to be.

Characters
Our hero, Greghart, ends up surrounded by a wacky cast of characters I have very much enjoyed. There is Lucky (short for Luke) Day, who thinks himself too lucky to ever fail; no one around him can decide whether he really is that lucky or he just puts a positive spin on any event :) There is the Princess Priscilla, who, albeit small, thinks herself quite the adventurer and goes off to slay the dragon on her own. There’s Melvin Greathart, coming from an old line of dragonslayers, and resenting Greg for barging in and messing with the family business. Simon Sezxqrthm, the prophet, coming from an old line of prophets and now quite old himself. King Peter Pendegrass the Third, one of my favorites, with an easy manner and insisting on being called by his first name. Bart the Bard, composer of epic ballads about heroes’ mighty deeds — quite a good one at that, his song about Greg was quite catchy, I would have liked to hear it myself; a part of me wonders if he is not the real prophet (since he is the one that brings Simon’s words to people + at one moment he says something about his songs being never wrong, he just writes them prior to the events because that’s when the people’s interest in said events is at its peak). Last but not least, there’s Yoda… I mean Nathaniel Caine, the one who will teach Greg the fighting skills that will help him survive; and also the one who knows a lot more than he normally should, I am so very curious about him and who he really is — did I mention I’m looking forward to the next book? :)

As for Greg himself, he starts out as a scrawny boy of twelve, who could run really fast (a skill honed in years of escaping bullies) and with an overactive imagination. His favorite pastime is writing stories describing his defeating fairytale creatures, becoming a kingdom’s hero and winning a princess (although he realizes that even finding a princess shorter than him would be quite a challenge). Alas, Greg gets to find out quite soon that reality is somewhat different that his imagination, when he finds himself straight in the middle of one of his stories: he is the hero of a land, and he is supposed to save a princess by slaying a dragon. A huge, fire-breathing dragon, living at the half way of an infinite spire. Naturally enough, Greg started out with a very healthy attitude: being deathly afraid of everything, and I liked the way he was realistic about his chances of survival. However, he doesn’t have much choice on the matter, as everyone around him pushes him towards his ‘destiny’: the dragon’s lair, where he’ll fulfill the prophecy.

You know, one of my favorite sayings is “Courage is not the absence of fear. It is acting in spite of it.“. And I loved the way it applies perfectly to Greg’s attitude in this book. Greg is afraid of a fire breathing dragon, who wouldn’t be; but he also realizes he is the princess’ only chance, so he pushes himself forward despite everything.

He was anything but a hero. After all, would a real hero weigh his chances of sprinting past the spirelings and all of Ryder’s men to reach the forest before anyone could tackle him? Yet in spite of his fears, Greg thought of Priscilla. He didn’t know if it made him a hero, but there was no way he was leaving here without her.

I liked the way Greg developed throughout the book, both physically (his travelling making him more muscular) and mentally (when running was no longer an option he found within himself the resources to stand his ground, and it has given him confidence). Alas, this may turn out to be quite a hurdle for the author later — developing an already developed character even more — but, done well, it may be quite a fun journey too.

And can I just say I loved the dragon? For some reason I liked him ever since first reading his name in the blurb :)
Sure, Ruuan is a dragon’s dragon, hell bent on destroying mortals, just as a dragon is supposed to do. And yet his manner was… noble, for lack of a better word (he reminded me of Pratchett’s Death, and not only because he too talks in caps).

What I liked
Some of the passages did sound rather Pratchett-esque :) My two favorites:

“Wait a minute. Are you telling me your prophet’s name is Simon Sez, and you go around doing anything he tells you?”
“Well, his name’s Simon Sezxqrthm, actually. Most of us just call him Simon Sez. And it’s not like we do whatever he tells us. He only tells us what we’re already going to do.”

Actually, the second one is a bit of a spoiler:
show spoiler

The fact that all the names of the chapters had Hart in them was also well-done and even quite poetic :)

What I did not like
A touch more editing would have been useful, as some phrases were trying too hard to be clever and were veering towards incomprehensible instead. Example:

The blackness emanated from something far worse. It was somehow related to the witch, and Greg knew he was already closer to it than he ever wanted to be. Then again, so was his living room sofa back home.

I had to read this twice to realize what the sofa had to do with everything :)

There’s also a flat-out contradiction at one time:
Scene: Greg and Lucky are trapped in the Enchanted Forest. Greg takes to sword the king gave to him earlier and starts carving a path:

Greg snatched the sword from Lucky’s hand and whirled toward the nearest vine. The blade buried itself halfway and lodged so tight it took Greg two full minutes of diligent puffing to wiggle it free.
“I thought you said this was a magic sword.”
Lucky shrugged. “It’s also a magic vine.”
A dozen chops later the vine finally severed.

A few pages later, Greg takes a look at the sword and finds it almost to heavy to lift (although he had no problem doing so earlier on) :

The blade was nearly as tall as he was, and so heavy, Greg could barely lift it. He knew if he let the tip drift even an inch or two out of vertical, he’d never be able to hold on, and if he tried and failed, he might be catapulted from the forest.

Things like this (together with mentioning one princess instead of another at a later time) make me sad because they suggest the book is less polished than it might have been. Which is a pity, as it has so many things going for it.

Thoughts on the title
Ahem. It’s an attractive title but does not particularly relates to the events in this book. Basically any book where there is dragon slaying might have been called this. It reminded me of ‘How to Train Your Dragon’, which is a movie I loved.

Thoughts on the ending
Cute :)
show spoiler

I was fairly amused at the way the author chose to introduce his family at the end: we are shown five pictures (a woman, a man, two cats, and a plush bear) and asked to identify Bill Allen (an obvious choice), while on the next page we are told who the rest of the pictures represent (Bill’s wife, Kiki the cat, Kiki’s sibling, and … I forgot the bear’s name). It sure beats the usual ‘Bill lives in … with his wife and their two cats’ sentence that is customary to use at the end of a book :)

Recommend it to?
As this is Juvenile Fiction I recommend it to kids, of course :) Which isn’t to say the parents would not enjoy it, quite the opposite.

Buy this from amazon.com | Buy this from bookdepository.co.uk | Bill Allen’s website

The links to amazon.com and bookdepository.co.uk are affiliate links. If you click one of them and buy something, I receive a small percentage of the purchase price. This being said, rest assured that the few cents I might thus make will never influence what I say or do not say about any book reviewed on the site.

Popularity: 2% [?]


Jan 14 2012

Drood by Dan Simmons

Genre: Historical Fiction
Main characters: Charles Dickens, Wilkie Collins, “the Phantom named Drood”
Time and place: London and its surroundings, 1865 – 1870
First sentence:My name is Wilkie Collins, and my guess, since I plan to delay the publication of this document for at least a century and a quarter beyond the date of my demise, is that you do not recognise my name.
Verdict: Four stars out of five.

Book read as part of Charles Dickens month over at Fig and Thistle. The occasion? Charles Dickens’ Bicentennial anniversary! (he was born in February 1812)

Summary:
This true story will be about Charles Dickens’s final five years and about his growing obsession during that time with a man—-if man he was—-—named Drood, as well as with murder, death, corpses, crypts, mesmerism, opium, ghosts, and the streets and alleys of that black-biled lower bowel of London that the writer always called “my Babylon” or “the Great Oven.””

Thus begins Wilkie Collins’ manuscript. These are his memoirs of the strange things happening to him (and his friend Charles Dickens) after an unfortunate event caused an encounter between Oliver Twist’s author and a mysterious character calling himself (or itself) Drood.

General impression
I am not usually fond of the idea of having real people act out an author’s fantasies, especially when the book has paranormal elements mixed in. And yet in this case I have very much enjoyed having two of my favorite authors have “their” adventures brought to life. I loved the way the events in the book mingle with the real ones — the Staplehurst accident for example has actually happened (although at first I was tempted to dismiss it in an “yeah, right, of course Dickens’ carriage was the only one to survive, could this be any more obviously fabricated?” kind of way); Dickens’ infatuation with Ellen Ternan was real, as was Inspector Field; if we take into consideration the fact that Dickens’ last (& unfinished) novel was called The Mystery of Edwin Drood, the book starts to get a sort of an aura of authenticity that makes it very enjoyable to me.
(when I say “authenticity” I do not mean, of course, that the things in the book have/may have actually happened, but that there is no real-life element interfering with my suspension of disbelief when reading the novel; it is one of the things I love most when reading historical fiction novels :) ).

Characters
The characters themselves are part of the illusion, as they behave very much in the way I would have expected them to.
Well, to be fair, I do not know enough of Mr. Collins’ life & personality, but the Wilkie in the book (other than carrying out his personal life just like real life Wilkie, up to and including his “Other Wilkie” doppelganger) acts and thinks in just the way I would have expected from him on seeing his picture:

Not that I usually judge people by the way they look like, nor do I consider myself a great judge of character; however in this particular case the image and the feelings on the inside felt like they matched. Wilkie of the book seems born to be a sidekick (and he himself realizes that) : quite intelligent, and a capable author in his own right, he nevertheless lacks the easy-going confidence that make Dickens one of the most, if not the most  appreciated author of the time. By his own admission, Wilkie does not care a fig about what society makes of him/his living arrangements; and this unwillingness to make some amends to make people like him is very likely one of the reasons for the status quo. In his own words, he’s “small, cherubic, usually pleasant, rarely-taken-seriously“; everything about him seems less impressive than the corresponding traits of his friend’s. In simpler terms, Dickens was born to lead and make people obey his entreats; Wilkie Collins was born to agree to do other, stronger people’s bidding.

It is a pity Dickens (the real one) didn’t dedicate himself to becoming an actor (no, scratch that, I think we — the posterity — are better off having his books rather than not). Thing is, I was always impressed (and am even more so after having read this book) by how much of a performer Dickens was, and how much he enjoyed the spotlight and giving performances. If Wilkie is the type that never stands out — despite his literary successes and his very real talent –, Dickens is pretty much the opposite. People are drawn to him, people admire him, people end up worshiping him; he is a celebrity of his time, and I always was impressed by his managing to achieve that. One hundred years before Michael Jackson, people were fainting at his shows. The Dickens in the book goes on to flesh out these impressions I had. Dickens-the-character is a perfectionist, every performance rehearsed, every book passage rewritten and improved as needed. Even more impressive was his elephantine memory, knowing every one of his novel by heart, being able to recite them at will, while at the same time editing and improving the prose.

Dickens, during one of his readings:

Outside the stage, Dickens was still, in many ways, a child. He loved to laugh, sometimes in the most unfortunate circumstances; he lived to impress people; sometimes he even played pranks. He was not perfect (his pride was perhaps his greatest sin), but his personality shines through the pages in the book. I consider a sign of the author’s skill the fact that, although the narrator (Wilkie) and Dickens grow apart, driven away by their shared Drood experiences and in no small measure by Wilkie’s own jealousy, although by the final chapters the narrator’s feelings for Dickens become less than amiable ones, Dickens-the-character (“a complex, sensitive, and paradoxical man“) is nonetheless a very likable one. Or at least I liked him a lot. So much so that the last part of the book, as the dates approached the day he was going to die in (five years after the Staplehurst accident, to the day), made me grow sadder and sadder, feeling the loss.

Relationships
As the book opens, Wilkie and Dickens are close friends. However, their Drood-related adventures start taking a toll on their easy relationship ever since the night Wilkie found himself, against his better judgment, traversing the city sewers alongside Dickens, hunting Drood. It is the first time that Wilkie feels mistreated by his friend and mentor, and it is by no means the last. Quite the contrary actually; the frustrations pile up and Wilkie’s feelings for Dickens slowly turn into downright hate. I have a theory actually regarding that: perhaps the reason things turn out so is that Dickens and Drood were superimposed into one and the same deep down in Wilkie’s mind (after all, Drood has entered his life via Dickens — people often mistake a cause and an effect); thus his inability to find and destroy the one that ruined his life reflects itself onto the other, affecting W & D’s relationship in the way described. Although of course, pure professional jealousy also has a part in it (as old Wilkie finally manages to acknowledge, his first and foremost problem with Dickens was that in the end, “despite all of his weaknesses and failings (both as a writer and as a man), Charles Dickens was the literary genius and I was not“).

Setting
The London we come to associate with the world of Drood is a side of London I have not noticed being mentioned before: a stinky city with a sewer system that sent all human waste into the Thames. Even the citys cemeteries are overflowing, and it does not improve the atmosphere one bit. And then there is the Undertown, the ‘town’ below London, where people live like rats, or worse. I dont think I can properly imagine the sights there — and yet a human being can get used to anything, as proven by Wilkie himself, whose quest for opium attracts to the area again and again and again.

A very picturesque description:

Twenty thousand tons of horse manure per day were gathered from the reeking streets and dumped in what we politely and euphemistically called “dust heaps”—-huge piles of feces that rose near the mouth of the Thames like an English Himalaya.
The overcrowded cemeteries around London also stank to high heaven. Grave diggers had to leap up and down on new corpses, often sinking to their hips in rotting flesh, just to force the reluctant new residents down into their shallow graves, these new corpses joining the solid humus of festering and overcrowded layers of rotting bodies below. In July, one knew immediately when one was within six city blocks of a cemetery—-the reeking miasma drove people out of surrounding homes and tenements—and there was always a cemetery nearby. The dead were always beneath our feet and in our nostrils.

Plot
For me, the book was character driven, as I loved discovering bits and pieces of the two authors lives. Which is why I did not pay that much attention to the plot itself. What I did find interesting about it was how fluid it was, everchanging. There wasn’t one big arc (or at least it was not an obvious one), but many smaller ones, developing from one another like so many plan Bs.

Example: Dickens sees Drood and takes Wilkie on a hunt for him; the two of them do not discover his lair *but* Dickens does, behind the scenes; enter Inspector Fields and his own quest to discover Drood, getting Wilkie entangled in the story almost without his will; however Wilkie’s spying on Dickens offers no useful results, so the detective rennounces their collaboration *but* about that time Wilkie meets Drood himself, and is irrevocably changed by the encounter; and so on.

What I liked
One of the things I enjoyed the most consists of Wilkie’s ruminations about his future books, and the way he ‘put aside’ in his head all sorts of events and characters, for future use. My favorite such thoughts were the ones regarding The Moonstone (initially The Eye of the Serpent or maybe The Serpents Eye), and the various iterations it went through until reaching the shape it was published in. Alas, Wilkie’s feelings/themes/ideas were probably quite interesting in regards to the other novel he writes in the course of the book too (Man and Wife), but I have not read that one so I couldn’t enjoy comparing the drafts with the finished form, like I did with The Moonstone.

Speaking of which, my reading list has lengthened with no less than three books after reading this one: I added Our Mutual Friend (written at the height of the writer’s infatuation with Ellen Ternan and showing a passionate side of Dickens I never saw of thought of before), Armadale (Wilkie’s pride and joy prior to writing The Moonstone), and Man and Wife (if only to discover what was the way our female hero, a representation of Wilkie himself, was forced by law to marry someone she did not want).

What I did not like
Two things, both more or less spoilers (and both more or less nitpicks) :
show spoiler

Thoughts on the title
Brilliant :)
Everything that happens in the book can be traced to Drood, one way or another. Which makes the title nothing less than perfect :)

Thoughts on the ending
Ah, the ending. The ending is… sad. The kind of ending that makes me like the book a little less (remember Atonement?), despite the fact that it makes the book better, not worse.
show spoiler

Recommend it to?
People who like dark, Gothic novels :)
Also, people who enjoy Wilkie Collins’ plots, as the book did remind me about him and his novels now and then, for more reasons than the obvious fact that ‘he’ was the narrator.

Buy this from amazon.com | Buy this from bookdepository.co.uk | An article about Dickens’ public readings | a site about Wilkie Collins (with details about Dickens and some of the events in the book) | read Dickens’ works online

The links to amazon.com and bookdepository.co.uk are affiliate links. If you click one of them and buy something, I receive a small percentage of the purchase price. This being said, rest assured that the few cents I might thus make will never influence what I say or do not say about any book reviewed on the site.

Popularity: 3% [?]


Dec 31 2011

My Unfair Godmother by Janette Rallison

Genre: Fantasy, YA
Main characters: Chrysanthemum Everstar, Tansy Miller Harris, Hudson Gardner
Time and place: mostly Sherwood Forest in the year 1199; a small Arizona town in “early twenty-first century”
First sentence:Dear Professor Goldengill,
Thank you for another opportunity to raise my semester grade with an extra-credit project.

Verdict: Four stars.

Summary:
By the time Tansy was twelve, she had worlds without number enfolded in her heart. And each one of them was built with the scaffolding of her father’s voice. She couldn’t read without hearing him narrate the story in her mind.

By the time Tansy turned thirteen, her parents got a divorce and her father moved away. Tansy, always a Daddy’s girl, feels that he has abandoned her, like she no longer mattered. When Tansy’s sister gets a part in a Broadway play, their mother has to go on tour with her, and Tansy is sent to live with her father and his new family. She still feels unimportant to him though. She starts dating a boy her Dad disapproves, just to show him that she couldn’t care less about his opinion either :)

But things go awry one evening and Tansy ends up at the police station. She tries to play tough, but she is a good girl at heart so she is easily tricked into divulging the guilt of her boyfriend and his gang. The next days are a difficult time for Tansy, who feels both hopeless and pathetic. There is a huge surprise in store for her though: her level of patheticness was so high it earned her a fairy godmother, complete with a set of three wishes to be fulfilled!

Alas, Chrysanthemum Everstar, the fairy, is but an amateur one, the kind that did not pay much attention in school. Tansy’s wishes end up taking her on a wild ride, including Robin Hood, King John, Rumpelstitskin, and… Hudson, the local police chief’s son. The only way to get back to a normal life is for Tansy to figure out the moral to her own story — will she be able to?

General impression
After reading and liking My Fair Godmother so much, it was absolutely obvious that this will be the next book I pick up. Now, however, I am not sure it was such a good idea. Thing is, I have found the first book absolutely charming not in the least because of the novelty of it all; while the wishes-gone-horribly-wrong theme is hardly novel, I do not remember when was the last time I encountered it, so I enjoyed everything and its freshness. In this context, the second book, which is based mostly on the same ideas, felt somewhat recycled and unoriginal in comparison. A pity, since it was a cute book, and I think I would have liked it a lot more had I read it first (although not as much as I liked My Fair Godmother, mind you, there are no patronizing dwarves here :) ).

Setting
The setting Tansy ends up swept in is a combination between fact and fiction: we’re talking about 1199′s England, the time of King John and Robin Hood, and somehow also the age where Rumpelstitskin made his deal with the miller’s daughter. It’s a time of fairies, and wizards (the king himself has an official one of his own), and other magical creatures; people are used to them and see nothing out of the ordinary in having them around. Rumor has it that the fairies are evil and care about their own interests alone, so mortals usually know better than to deal with them; however now and then someone is desperate enough to ask them for something, and so a new fairytale is born :)

Characters
The thing that I noticed being mentioned the most in reviews of the previous book was that people were happy that the main character doesn’t do well in school; apparently having a straight A student as a main character is somewhat of a cliche. The author must have noticed that too, so she pushes the envelope a bit farther this time: the reason Tansy does not do particularly well in school is that she wants to spite her father, who was a librarian, a book lover, and the one who taught her to enjoy books. It’s actually fun to watch Tansy trying to be a rebel, as deep down she is the goody-two-shoes type :) Luckily, shortly after the book opens, she realizes that the path she’s on leads her nowhere, so she’ll have to think of a new strategy to win her father’s heart. She doesn’t seem to have heard the song about money not being able to buy love, so that ends up being her main wish: to be able to turn everything she wants into gold. I liked the way the author has laid out Tansy’s motivations, managing to allow her to have such a wish without seeming greedy. The thing about Tansy is that, unlike Savannah (who among other things has tried to slay an ogre on her own), she is more damsel-in-distress-y, having people rescue her and take care of her more often than not. Which isn’t to say I did not like her — she’s brave, and kind, and willing to sacrifice things for what she thinks is right.

As for Hudson, I did not feel anything for him for most of the book. I actually spent about half the pages trying to put my finger on the reason why Hudson didn’t particularly work for me (unlike Tristan, whom I found interesting even at the times when I wasn’t sure whether I liked him or not). The closest I could come to an explanation is that Hudson is the distant type, and, as we see things through Tansy’s eyes, we don’t get to know enough about him to become emotionally invested in his adventures. Case in point: he becomes a lot more sympathetic near the end, as he gets closer to Tansy (and she gets to know him better). Coincidence? I think not. :)

Moving on to Chrissy, I was somewhat confused by her behaviour in this book. While in the first one she has been behaving somewhat erratically, yet managed to keep things balanced enough for me to still find her sympathetic despite her lack of logic, in this book she crosses the threshold into downright strange and sometimes silly. While the hint that she may have had a master plan all along is still there, this time I could not buy it, as things were too far out of control at times for her to pretend otherwise. At least I found amusing the way she had to get a job as a tooth fairy in order to feed her shopping addiction :)
I wonder whether there’s ever gonna be a sequel (she still hasn’t been admitted into university, so she is bound to have at least one other extra project :) ), and if so where will the story take her (and us) next.

Relationships
All I can say here is that the relationship between the two main characters started out in quite an original way :) Sure, it was somewhat obvious they will end up together ever since they first met, but the thing that actually brought them together was a complete surprise:
show spoiler

Something I liked
I thought the way that Tansy was able to solve her problem with Rumpelstitskin was quite cool, in an imaginatively-plausible kind of way.
show spoiler

Also, I was amused to note that this book answered one of the questions I asked in my previous review (“how do fairies decide which mortal to choose as godson or goddaughter?”). In Chrissy’s own words: “I needed an extra-credit project, and your life qualified according to the pathetic-o-meter.” :)

A quote about King John’s delight on being offered golden thread spools:

He stopped at several of the spools, admiring them like they were works of art. “Resplendent! Prodigious!”

He knelt down in front of one and stroked it. “We shall name this one Theobald, and he shall sit at the foot of our bed.”

Haverton made note of it on a scroll he carried. “I’ll have the guards take it there at once, sire.”

King John moved onto another spool, patting it lightly. “And this one we shall name Helewise because she is beauteous. Splendiferous.”

Something I did not like
There were a few things that I did not like, but all of them are rather small so mentioning them would feel like nitpicking :)

Thoughts on the title
Ah, I even liked the title of the other book better than this one’s :)
Although, to make this title justice, Chrissy does act somewhat out of whack in this book, which I imagine qualifies her for being considered “unfair”. So at least it’s an accurate title if nothing else :)

Thoughts on the ending
The ending was by far the best moment of the whole book’s. Loved it loved it loved it :)
show spoiler

Recommend it to?
Anyone who wants to enjoy a light but not overly light read. This is a second book in a series, but the only connection between this and the previous book is the presence of Chrysanthemum, so you don’t need to know anything about the first book in order to enjoy this one.

Buy this from amazon.com | Buy this from bookdepository.co.uk

This book is a sequel to:
My Fair Godmother

The links to amazon.com and bookdepository.co.uk are affiliate links. If you click one of them and buy something, I receive a small percentage of the purchase price. This being said, rest assured that the few cents I might thus make will never influence what I say or do not say about any book reviewed on the site.

Popularity: 3% [?]


Dec 27 2011

My Fair Godmother by Janette Rallison

Genre: Fantasy, YA
Main characters: Chrysanthemum Everstar, Savannah Delano, Tristan Hawkins
Time and place: “Herndon, Virginia, early twenty-first century”; also, a land of fairytales, called Pampovilla, in the Middle Ages
First sentence:Dear Professor Goldengill, Thank you for allowing me to raise my semester grade through this extra-credit project.
Verdict: Five stars.

Summary:
The prom is approaching and Savannah, recently dumped by her boyfriend, has no one to go with. Which is why, approached by a fairy saying she’ll grant her three wishes, Savannah thinks aloud about how nice it would be if her life would have a prince to take her to a ball, you know, just like in a fairytale.

Next thing she knows, she’s Cinderella. Eight months before the ball. And the fairy, Chrysanthemum, is nowhere to be seen.

General impression
I loved this! The writing style (I would have quoted half the book if it were possible), the ideas, the characters, the world building, everything. I would never have thought I would like so much a book about an airheaded high-schooler who doesn’t care much about books, but I did! I am so looking forward to the sequel :)

Setting
Somewhere outside our world there is a school of Fairy Godmothers, where teenage fairies are studying various topics meant to help them in their future career. The criteria that makes a fairy become a particular someone’s godmother were not expounded upon; suffice it to say that a fairy is assigned a person, and they have to grant that person three wishes (because that’s how the story goes, right?) :)
Getting to live in a world where a fairy can poof into one’s existence at any moment, offering to grant three wishes, is bound to lead to some interesting adventures — as is the case with this book. Now, while fairies (and leprechauns, and computer gremlins) do exist and take their Godmothering responsibilities very seriously, their assignments are spread around in time and space, so very few people know about them at a given moment.

This is the case in Pampovilla too, actually. While there is plenty of magic there, complete with knights and ogres and dragons to be vanquished, most of the atmosphere is classical Middle Age-y, with folks going around their business, most of them knowing about the magic and the likes from stories only, not having direct contact with it. This made the characters transition from their own world to Pampovilla as seamless as possible in the circumstances, especially as even Savannah knew enough about the fairytales she found herself in to know what to expect.

Characters
The main reason I liked this book so much are the characters, whom I found likable and relatable, despite the difference in age and, well, everything else.

The book starts out focusing on Jane, the straight A student and the serious one (“The way the teachers loved her, they could have erected a statue in her honor. They would entitle it The Student the Rest of You Should Have Been“). And also, as was somewhat to be expected, the one in love with a guy that doesn’t even know she exists.

And then the POV switches to Savannah, the beautiful, airheaded sister, the one who thinks high school exists merely as an opportunity to socialize, preferably with cute guys. I did not know what to make of her at first but, somewhat to my surprise, she turned out to be a very likable character. I was happy to see that, despite her lack of interest in school-related stuff, Savannah never acts dumb, or ditsy. She is smart, brave, kind, and never takes the easiest way out just because it’s the easiest; she always tries to do the right thing, and I can never resist that :)

The fun part is that the fair godmother, Chrisantemum (Chrissy from now on), is very much of a teenage girl herself: good looking, loves flirting and pretty clothes, and is able to spend countless hours shopping at the mall with her friends. Alas, these activities keep her too occupied to actually pay attention to her charge, which is how Savannah ends up in all sorts of situations in the first place. Chrissy is, in a way, too much of a teenager for my taste, and, while it was fun meeting her and all, I am not sure I would have liked interacting with her for a longer period of time (alas, I may be too old and grumpy to get her). To be fair, her lack of patience regarding other people may be related less with her being a teenager and more with her being a fairy, and as such thinking herself way above humans (her paper about her assignment is named “How I Used Magic to Grant Wishes, Make Mortals Happy, and Rescue Them from Their Dreary Lives” :) ). However, when all is said and done I cannot say I did not like her; quite the opposite actually, I am looking forward to reading the next book she stars in.

As for Tristan, I think it was a very good idea to have him spend a few months in the Middle Ages before meeting the narrator/reader again. He must have taken it quite hard at first, but after a while he ends up adjusting very well to the day and age he finds himself in. I very much liked his resourcefulness, how he managed to find a way to earn his bread (by telling stories — according to him people turned out to be great fans of Battlestar Galactica :) ), and how he has formulated a plan to get out of his predicament. A difficult plan too, but he doesn’t waste any time complaining about what he cannot change, he just does his best with whatever tools he has at hand. And to think that in his own land he was a rather shy teenager :)

Relationships
The book starts out in Jane’s POV, so we get to see the way her relationship with her sister’s then boyfriend has begun and evolved from a sympathetic standpoint. Which was quite a nice touch, in my opinion. Jane’s situation is not easy, but she is indeed a far better match for the guy she’s been interested in all year (far before he met her sister) than Savannah is. And deep, deep down Savannah herself knows it, although she is disappointed and heartbroken and lacking a date to the most important social event in the near future. I liked the relationship between the two sisters, although it’s not much dwelt upon. I liked how each of them cared and worried for the other, despite there being a world of difference between them and despite the recent event that has pushed them apart.

As for Savannah and the guy she’ll end up with (I’m not saying who that is :) ), I liked the way their relationship develops. Sure, he has been interested in her all along, and yet she never noticed him until very recently. Drawn to him by a sense of duty, little by little she starts noticing him as a person, the way he looks, the jokes he makes, the way he acts. Just the kind of relationship I like seeing in books :)

Plot
About a decade ago there was a movie called Bedazzled, with Brendan Fraser starring as a guy who’s granted seven wishes by the devil. However, each and every time he makes a wish, the devil (Elizabeth Hurley) takes it literally, making each wish’s fulfillment something to get rid of rather than something good. It’s one of my favorite comedies, and it is the one this book reminded me of over and over again. :)

What I liked
My favorite part was when Savannah found herself in the middle of Snow White story, and everyone was treating her condescendingly because it seems that the original Snow White wasn’t the sharpest tool in the shed. Apparently, she is the one who has nicknamed the seven dwarves Grumpy and Doc and Dopey and the rest, because she couldn’t keep track of their actual names.
On the whole I found the dwarves’ reactions to her to be laugh-out-loud funny, and I am really sorry I cannot quote that whole part here :) They are all quite fond of her, and try to humor her as much as possible (e.g. they all still wear the misshapen caps Snow White has made them when she learned to knit), and yet somehow that always turns out to be quite hard to do (even now, as Savannah has replaced Snow White, because although she is smart enough she still knows too little about the new environment to act like a person who truly belongs).

I cannot help but quoting a part, although I am not sure how much it works outside context:

[...] I thought of the perfect way to learn the dwarfs’ names. I’d just call out a name and see which
dwarf answered me. It would be easy. Ha — and they thought I wasn’t smart.
“Dopey?” I asked.
“Of course you’re not,” the one in the brown cap said. “You’re just not used to cooking yet.” He went to the cupboard, took out a stack of bowls and spoons, and handed them out.
A dwarf in a blue cap went to the soup pot and stirred it. He kept poking the spoon through it as though
searching for something, then sighed, disappointed.
“Well, bring over your bowls and we’ll say grace.”
The gray-capped dwarf looked into the pot. “Aye, it needs praying.”
“Sleepy?” I called out.
“I am now,” the gray-capped dwarf said. “Think I’ll turn in for the night instead of eating.”
I tried one more time, searching the dwarfs’ faces.
“Doc?”
“Don’t be a pessimist,” The brown-capped dwarf said and handed me a bowl. “No one’s gotten sick from eat-
ing your food for days now.”

Fun bits aside, I liked how the author has managed to strike a balance between a clear, readable writing style and beautiful prose. Consider this quote for example:

Guys can smell desperation. It triggers an instinct in them to run far and fast so they aren’t around when a woman starts peeling apart her heart. They know she’ll ask for help in putting it back together the right way — intact and beating correctly — and they dread the thought of puzzling over layers that they can’t understand, let alone rebuild. They’d rather just not get blood on their hands. But sharks are different. They smell the blood of desperation and circle in. They whisper into a girl’s ear, “I’ll make it better. I’ll make you forget all about your pain.” Sharks do this by eating your heart, but they never mention this beforehand. That is the thing about sharks.

It makes me want to go out and find some other book of the author’s, to get to enjoy her writing some more.

What I did not like
Five stars = there’s nothing I want to complain about, I have liked everything well enough.
Which is definitely the case here. :)

Thoughts on the title
The title is the thing that has first piqued my interest in this book. Its explanation is funny in itself: Chrissy is a fair godmother because her grades are only fair, not good. And, according to Savannah, it shows :)

Thoughts on the ending
I cannot help but wonder whether Chrissy knew all along how things will eventually unfold (that everything will end well and everyone will benefit from the experience) or she was just lucky enough to have things work out in the end. I am leaning towards the former, although Chrissy does seem enough of an airhead most of the time to make the latter very plausible too.

The moral of the story is “nothing worth having comes easy”; in Chrissy’s own words:

“Did you think wishes were like kittens, that all they were going to do was purr and cuddle with you?” She shook her head benevolently. “Those type of wishes have no power. The only wishes that will ever change you are the kind that may, at any moment, eat you whole.But in the end, they are the only wishes that matter.”

Recommend it to?
Anyone who doesn’t really and truly hate YA. And who knows, you might like it even so (I myself am not crazy about some of today’s YA tropes, and this book managed to steer clear of all of them; and did I mention it’s fun? :) )

Buy this from amazon.com | Buy this from bookdepository.co.uk

Part of the same series:
My Unfair Godmother

The links to amazon.com and bookdepository.co.uk are affiliate links. If you click one of them and buy something, I receive a small percentage of the purchase price. This being said, rest assured that the few cents I might thus make will never influence what I say or do not say about any book reviewed on the site.

Popularity: 2% [?]


Dec 24 2011

How To Dance With A Duke by Manda Collins

Genre:  Romance
Main characters: Miss Cecily Hurston; Major Lucas Dalton, Duke of Winterson
Time and place: 19th century England
First sentence:Miss Cecily Hurston battered her ivory-tipped parasol against the hulking footman who none too gently thrust her through the doors of Number 13 Bruton Street.
Verdict: Three stars.

Summary:
Cecily Hurston has a mission: getting access to the journals her father has kept in his last, ill-fated expedition to Egypt. This should be as easy as going to his Egyptology club — the place where the results of his expeditions are always taken — and ask to see them, right? Turns out it is not so, as there is a rule in place that only allows entrance to the club members or their wives.

The Duke of Winterson also has a mission: to ask the members of the Egyptology club for details about the trip to Egypt that has resulted in his brother’s going missing. Unsurprisingly, he is not admitted to the club either.

This is how our protagonists first meet — in front of the Egyptology club — and how they ended up working as a team, joined by a common goal. Little did they know how dangerous this enterprise of theirs will turn out to be; little did they know that this adventure will change their lives forever after.

General impression
Alas, the book started out quite promising. A smart heroine with just the right level of pluck, a rather unwilling Duke with a sense of humor, a mystery involving Egyptian artefacts — all things I was bound to enjoy. However, it felt like there were two books, with a certain significant event separating them. The second half just didn’t match the pace of the first; the heroine started having some “what is she thinking ??” moments and the conclusion of the mystery was only so and so. I’m not saying it’s a bad book, just that the second half could have been better.
Book obtained via NetGalley.

Characters
Lucas, the duke in the story, is a former soldier, who recently has found himself inheriting the title from a relative. An honorable, intelligent man, from a loving family, he is as close to being the perfect romance hero as can be. I enjoyed ‘meeting’ him, of course, but there’s a downside to his perfection: he doesn’t stand out in any way from the rest of titled romance heros that seem to be abundant these days. I find this somewhat sad, as he really is a great guy and a lovely character.

Cecily, the would-be dancer with a duke, is a bluestocking: a young woman who has dedicated her life to her passion for cryptography and ancient languages. Her father, an Egyptologist (one of the archaeologists digging in Egypt), did not encourage her to pursue her inclinations, yet she has managed to become quite a reputed scholar on her own. She was engaged, years ago, with a guy who broke her heart, and has all but retired from ton activities ever since. Although of course later, when she decides that she does actually want to be seen and admired by men, she turns out to be quite a beauty, with the perfect figure and all that pile of clichés (I am starting to crave a book with a less-than-amazingly-beautiful heroine *sigh*). For a while, I really liked Cecily, as she was smart, and made a good team with the duke (whom I have also liked a lot). However, some of her feelings/actions seemed somewhat unauthentic at times, or exaggerated, and I wasn’t very fond of her during those times.
show spoiler

Relationships
Joined by their mutual goals, the two characters develop an unlikely friendship, that will, of course, bloom into love later on. I liked the fact that their initial attraction was based on something more than lust, and I liked the way Cecily was strong-willed enough to always keep her gentleman friend guessing. In fact, he often thinks of her as “his vibrant Amazon”, and not based on her tall stature alone. They make a cute couple, and I liked the way everyone around them noticed that.

Plot
The mystery component of the plot is not the novel’s forte (but hey, who reads romance books for the mystery part? :) ). Like the protagonists’ relationship, things are very promising up to a point (although I did guess early on who the culprit was, I was quite curious about what did actually happen to William, Lucas’ brother). However, after a certain point things started falling apart and events started happening with no particular rhyme or reason.
show spoiler


I probably would have liked the book somewhat more if it weren’t for this mystery element; although having all this Egyptian stuff involved does make for a cooler story :)

Thoughts on the title
Ahem. I spent most part of the book wondering about why the title is so. I get the alliteration, especially as the next book in the series is called How To Romance a Rake (and I bet we’ve already met the rake in question :) ), but on the whole it seems just a phrase plastered on, rather than having anything with the book. Especially as Lucas, having been wounded in the war, cannot actually dance, making the title look less than inspired.

And it actually gets worse later on. One of the sentences near the end is “[Making babies] was one dance for which she and her duke were very well matched indeed.” Ahem. So this is how you dance with a duke, by having sex with him? I could have done without that part.

Thoughts on the ending
I liked the romance’s ending, classic HEA (what can I say, I like HEAs :) ). And we already know how I feel about the mystery part.
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What I liked most
The sense of humor both Lucas and Cecily shared. Seeing them together was fun fun fun :)

What I liked least
This honor goes to a particular scene, that happens to contain my ‘favorite’ kind of sex scene: I call it the OMG-we-are-in-danger-let’s-have-sex trope. It may be because I have never been in an actual danger, but I cannot imagine anything would be farther from my mind in those circumstances than sex.
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Recommend it to?
People who like romance books, of course :)
I know I have listed here quite a few things that did not work for me, but it is (mostly) a cute book and worth giving a try.

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