Filthy Beautiful Love by Kendall Ryan (Filthy Beautiful Lies #2)

I never expected to watch Sophie walk away. She was mine. I would own her. She just didn’t know it yet. New goal: Seal the deal and rock her world so thoroughly she never wanted to leave again.

Highly sexual and emotionally charged, Filthy Beautiful Love is the provocative conclusion to Filthy Beautiful Lies.

Review:

So, all the stuff that I was afraid would go wrong in book one? It all went wrong here in book two.

Every female character is a threat to Sophie – she’s wearing a lot of make up to our casual party, she must want to steal away my man! That other woman made a weird comment… she must have been intimate with him in the past! Sophie is possessive in the worst, paranoid way.

The way protection is handled is plain awful. To be clear – I don’t mind it when the couple decides not to use a condom when there’s trust and birth control on board. I don’t even mind the ‘crap, I didn’t use a condom’ if it’s recognized and addressed. But this, this I cannot stand:

“No, no condom. I want to feel you. Please, Colton.”
His gaze snaps to mine and I can read the indecision in his eyes. “Are you sure?”
I nod. “Yes, just take me.”
I’m sure he knows I’m not on any birth control, but I can see the exact moment he decides it doesn’t matter.

I could even forgive that if the chance of pregnancy is owned later, but it’s blithely ignored. GRAH. Other rage-inducing lines:

“I want your virginity, sweetness. I want total claim over you. It’s the only way to show me that you’re really here for me.”

And because English:

I see the vein throb at the base of his throat. “Good girl,” he admonishes.

Secondary characters are just as thin as before, including the presumptive hero for the next book. The plot starts off okay – a couple getting back together by overcoming trust issues – but at the end we’re pinballed from one happening to another. It’s not conflict, it’s a sad thing and a cute thing and a grief thing with sex scenes liberally interspersed.

All in all the book is spare and petty and made me mad. I had much hope after the unconventional opening of Filthy Beautiful Lies but Ryan didn’t follow through. At least it reads quickly. ~sigh~

The Reader on the 6.27 by Jean-Paul Didierlaurent

Translated by Ros Schwartz

Working at a job he hates, Guylain Vignolles has but one pleasure in life. Sitting on the 6.27 train each day, Guylain reads aloud. It’s this release of words into the world that starts our hero on a journey that will finally bring meaning into his life. For one morning, Guylain discovers the diary of a lonely young woman: Julie, who feels as lost in the world as he does.

This is a tale bursting with larger-than-life characters, each of whom touches Guylain’s life for the better. This captivating novel is a warm, funny fable about literature’s power to uplift even the most downtrodden of lives.

Review:

A friend lent me a hard copy of this book saying, “It’s a fun read, I think you’ll like it!  You could probably blow through it in an afternoon.”

And I totally could have but no, I had to be cute about it.  I read it on the train home after we parted.  I put random moments at home towards it, as it’s hard to fit a paper book in my work bag.  A huge chunk of my reading time is on my commute so my progress suffered, and this ‘afternoon read’ took over a month to complete.

First things first – it’s not the book’s fault.  Didierlaurent weaves a charming story that reminded me in some ways of The Red Notebook.  I like the way details are unspooled over time and the characters kept me interested.  The pages of text Guylain reads on the train may have been the best parts.  In a way that was frustrating – why wasn’t the whole book written like that? – but the contrast sets off differences nicely so I can’t complain too much.

The whole thing feels a little thin when stretched out over weeks but it would have been perfect on a lazy weekend.  So if you’re in the mood for charming with a side of ‘book on books’ give this a go – and set some quality time aside for it so you don’t end up like me.

The Trouble with Reality: A Rumination on Moral Panic in Our Time by Brooke Gladstone

Reality. It used to seem so simple—reality just was, like the weather. Why question it, let alone disagree about it? And then came the assault, an unending stream of “fake news,” “alternative facts,” and lies disguised as truths that is overwhelming our notions of reality. Now we can’t even agree on what a fact is, let alone what is real. How on earth did we get here?

Reality, as Gladstone shows us, was never what we thought it was—there is always a bubble, people are always subjective and prey to stereotypes. And that makes reality more vulnerable than we ever thought. Enter Donald J. Trump and his team of advisors. For them, as she writes, lying is the point. The more blatant the lie, the easier it is to hijack reality and assert power over the truth. Drawing on writers as diverse as Hannah Arendt, Walter Lippmann, and Jonathan Swift, she dissects this strategy straight out of the authoritarian playbook and shows how the Trump team mastered it.

And she offers hope—the inevitable reckoning history tells us we can count on—and a way to recover both our belief in reality and our sanity.

Review:

‘What is reality, anyway?’ seems like an impossible question but Gladstone has us covered.   The answer starts from a single core idea – that each of us has our own personal reality – and builds out bit by bit to explain how we got to where we are today.

I highlighted so many passages it’s slightly ridiculous.  Complex ideas are articulated clearly and memorably, and many have been rattling around my head as the news cycle spins on – how beliefs and conspiracies affect our realities.  How Huxley and Orwell’s dystopian fears translate to our times.  How demagogues get and lose their power.  How to avoid pitfalls in messaging and what we can do to affect change.  “Meaningful action is a time-tested treatment for moral panic,” she says, and we’re pointed in the right direction.

This is one of those reviews that’s hard to write not because of a lack of things to say but because I have trouble putting all the awesome into a few paragraphs. Let’s try this: if you’re looking for an insight into current times, if you want a timely read that will make you think and wonder and gasp in recognition, or if you’d like to plot where things go from here, The Trouble with Reality is a must read.  Much love.

Filthy Beautiful Lies by Kendall Ryan (Filthy Beautiful Lies #1)

The jacket copy is misleading (the hero is not that cold or calculating), but here goes:

I have no idea why she auctioned off her virginity for a cool mill. Regardless, I’m now the proud new owner of a perfectly intact hymen. A lot of good that will do me. I have certain tastes, certain sexual proclivities. My cock is a bit more discriminatory than most. And training a virgin takes finesse and patience – both of which I lack.

Sophie Evans has been backed into a corner. With her sister’s life hanging in the balance, the only choice is to claw her way out, even if that means selling her virginity to the highest bidder at an exclusive erotic club. When Colton Drake takes her home, she quickly learns nothing is as it seems with this beautifully troubled man. Being with him poses challenges she never expected, and pushes her to want things she never anticipated.

First things first – this is not a 300 page book. Sure, the print copy has that many pages, but the margins are generous to say the least.  On my ereader it felt like 150 pages. And to top it off, this is only half a story, ending in a cliffhanger. Not a ‘oo, one problem solved, another arises’ cliffhanger, but a ‘oo, things are finally getting interesting… whad’ya mean I’m at 100%?!?’ cliffhanger. Gah.

I originally picked it up because I like romance that pushes the envelope, and I wanted to see how a hero and heroine who “meet” at an auction can fall in love. I thought it would be heavy with BDSM but there are only overtones of power exchange. Sophie has good reasons to sell her virginity (to pay for sister’s cancer treatment), and Drake has reasons of his own for hiring her for six months. While the setup is a recipe for non-con or dubious consent sex the couple takes things slow, and Drake is loathe to take something that is not freely given. In that way the avant garde-ness of the plot fades out rather quickly.

The emotional arc is realistic, especially with Sophie. She’s understandably timid to start and takes time to get used to the situation, and when she does she’s good about asking for things she wants and communicating with Drake. He’s a bit more cagey, especially where past relationships are concerned, but there is no Big Misunderstanding.

Most of the action takes places in LA, with the secondary characters being shallow people in designer clothes whose only worries involve who is dating whom. The only way I can tell Drake’s brothers apart is that one is more explicit about the tail he chases, and the other women with speaking lines are his former or wannabe paramours. I didn’t notice a single person of color or other minority character.

So, is the book enjoyable? Hard to say, seeing that this volume only covers half of the story. ~fume~ I will be reading on, if only to see what happens to the main couple, so we’ll see.

Shiver by Maggie Stiefvater (Wolves of Mercy Falls #1)

For years, Grace has watched the wolves in the woods behind her house. One yellow-eyed wolf–her wolf–is a chilling presence she can’t seem to live without. Meanwhile, Sam has lived two lives: In winter, the frozen woods, the protection of the pack, and the silent company of a fearless girl. In summer, a few precious months of being human . . . until the cold makes him shift back again.

Now, Grace meets a yellow-eyed boy whose familiarity takes her breath away. It’s her wolf. It has to be. But as winter nears, Sam must fight to stay human–or risk losing himself, and Grace, forever.

Review:

I’ve gotten out of the habit of reading urban fantasy which is a shame because I love it.  I found this ranking of Best Urban Fantasy and was surprised to see that I’ve read 23 of the top 100, go me!  Shiver wasn’t far from the top and I recognized the author so I’d thought it would be a good place to start.

I like that werewolves are tied to the seasons instead of the moon, and Stiefvater’s writing is solid.  But it turns out that, at that moment, I wasn’t in the mood for reading YA.  My mind drifted off, thinking about the different ways parents are disposed of so high schoolers can do what needs doing, how sleeping in the same bed kind of non-romantically is a thing, and how you can see the collateral damage from a mile away.

The world building is good and the story is fine, but I didn’t fall in love with it.  I won’t be continuing the series but I will take a look at Stiefvater’s other work.  I guess The Raven Boys would be the best place to start?

Watching the English by Kate Fox

Synopsis:

In Watching the English anthropologist Kate Fox takes a revealing look at the quirks, habits and foibles of the English people. She puts the English national character under her anthropological microscope, and finds a strange and fascinating culture, governed by complex sets of unspoken rules and byzantine codes of behaviour. The rules of weather-speak. The ironic-gnome rule. The reflex apology rule. The paranoid-pantomime rule. Class indicators and class anxiety tests. The money-talk taboo and many more …Through a mixture of anthropological analysis and her own unorthodox experiments (using herself as a reluctant guinea-pig), Kate Fox discovers what these unwritten behaviour codes tell us about Englishness.

Review:

I’ve met a lot of Brits here in Japan so I thought I would learn what makes them tick. I feel empowered in a way – I now know how to order at a pub and properly “moan” about the weather.

But oh, the quibbles.

• The book feels looooong. It’s not (only) due to the page count, but because Fox ends each chapter with a summary. I get that she’s doing the “tell him what you’re going to tell him, tell him, tell him what you told him” thing but it feels like blatant rehashing. The conclusion at the end of the book would have been enough.
• “Liminal” seems to pop up twice a page. Ditto “dis-ease”. There isn’t any difference between unease and dis-ease, right? It was a cute visual joke the first time but grated after that.
• Woah, there’s a lot here about class. It was interesting in short bursts but some sections never seem to end. Names were used as stand ins for lower and upper class teenagers – Darren and Chantelle, Jamie and Saskia – and for the life of me I could never remember which was which. To my American ear it’s two normal guy names and two uncommon girl names, so… yeah. I guess I fail that test.
• If most of the class comparisons were between working and upper classes I may have been able to deal with it, but the fine differences between lower-middle, middle-middle, and upper-middle were a bit much for me.
• Even though it took me a long time to get through the book repeated phrases and jokes kept jumping out at me. “The English have satire instead of revolutions” is great the first time, but by the fourth I’m rolling my eyes.

As much as I learned I’m glad to have this one behind me.

Managed by Kristen Callihan (VIP #2)

I thought I’d hit the jackpot when I was upgraded to first class on my flight to London.

That is until HE sat next to me. Gabriel Scott: handsome as sin, cold as ice. Nothing and no one gets to him. Ever. He’s a legend in his own right, the manager of the biggest rock band in the world, and an arrogant ass who looks down his nose at me.

I thought I’d give him hell for one, long flight. I didn’t expect to like him. I didn’t expect to want him. But the biggest surprise? He wants me too. Only in a way I didn’t see coming.

Review:

Much like the previous book Idol, the romance in Managed is sweet and comforting. It wraps you in a big fluffy blanket, brings you a cup of tea, and says yes, love is this awesome. Go ahead, roll around in it. Enjoy the warm fuzzies.

One of the many things I love is that the relationship between Gabriel and Sophie is stripped down to its core. They’re attracted to each other, but for a variety of (good!) reasons, they’re not acting on it. Instead of the common “I can’t love you because I’m damaged!” it’s “I think I’m falling in love with you but that doesn’t work well considering the situation we’re in, and I respect you too much to force myself on you.” As a result what could easily be an instalust storyline fits into a friends-to-lovers paradigm. It’s also the longest and perhaps most delicious slow burn I’ve ever read.

Callihan keeps that burn going by masterfully playing with the tension, using small events as release valves to both blow off steam and show us that these two people are hot for each other and the status quo won’t last forever.

And the banter! Gabriel’s British-ness highlights his dry and wry humor, and the American Sophie gives as good as she gets.

“Seriously, you look grumpy even for you. Who pissed you off?” I grin at him. “Do I have to break some skulls?”

He finally huffs out a small laugh, his shoulders easing a fraction. “I can see it now, you nipping at someone’s ankle like an angry Pomeranian.”

“So you’re familiar with my methods.”

There are bigger themes beyond the romance – found family, loyalty, and what it means to be wealthy not only with money but also with friends and time. There is so much to love here. The first 85% of the book was a solid four star read for me.

But then. An ex introduced earlier stirs up trouble, just as you expected. Then there’s a Big Misunderstanding that drives me bonkers. I know that the couple needs some adversity to reach a satisfying happily ever after, but does it have to be so inane? I pushed through but it killed off all those warm fuzzies.

A moment of silence for the fuzzies.

While the ending is unfortunate I truly loved the vast majority of this book, and it will be a go-to comfort read when I need a literary hug. A big recommend to lovers of slow burns.

Noteworthy by Riley Redgate

It’s the start of Jordan Sun’s junior year at the Kensington-Blaine Boarding School for the Performing Arts. Unfortunately, she’s an Alto 2, which—in the musical theatre world—is sort of like being a vulture in the wild: She has a spot in the ecosystem, but nobody’s falling over themselves to express their appreciation. So it’s no surprise when she gets shut out of the fall musical for the third year straight.

Then the school gets a mass email: A spot has opened up in the Sharpshooters, Kensington’s elite a cappella octet. Worshiped … revered … all male. Desperate to prove herself, Jordan auditions in her most convincing drag, and it turns out that Jordan Sun, Tenor 1, is exactly what the Sharps are looking for.

Review:

Holy cow, I love this book.

The good:

• First and foremost, everything rings true, from the overarching issues (race, gender, class, identity) to small details (what it’s like to be part of a music group, theatre department politics).  Some of it is from the author’s own experience, some of it is from careful research and consideration, and all of it is appreciated.
• The intersectionality is real.  In the first chapter Jordan doesn’t get cast in the school musical and asks the director why.  All the options run through her head – is it because I’m not white?  Or because I’m taller than the prospective leading men?  This feeling, this ‘what’s the strike against me this time’, is real for many and I’m so happy to see it addressed on the page.
• Likewise all the gender issues are thoughtfully and thoroughly considered.  I won’t go into detail for fear of spoiling things, so here’s a quote after Jordan starts dressing as a guy:
  

  I’d set down the burdens of being a girl, unstrapped them one by one and left them on the roadside, but my shoulders didn’t feel any lighter.  They were carrying different, unfamiliar weights now.  As I stood there in that derelict husk of a theater, I felt like I’d gotten lost in between my lives, and the road ahead looked long and strange and poorly lit.

• There are subtle pokes at the reader to check in with themselves and see how they’re doing regarding these issues.
  

  With so many queer kids at Kensington, people sometimes got weirdly comfortable, like they had a free pass to say anything they wanted about sexuality.  I guess it was tempting to stick a rainbow-colored “Ally” pin on your backpack and call it a day, as if that were the endpoint, not the starting line.

  Word.

• Redgate name drops songs – this is a book about a cappella, after all – but none of them are real.  It’s genius.  The story will never date itself by the cultural references within, ensuring that people reading it even twenty years from now will feel a minimal amount of generational whiplash.
• The plot never stops moving, the banter is fun, you can feel the found family that forms within the Sharps, and you watch Jordan discover who they are.  It’s a delightful journey that I look forward to revisiting.

The only not-so-good thing I can think of is that I was shipping a different couple.  That’s it.  So minor.

In sum, Noteworthy is a diverse, inclusive YA novel that’s compulsively readable and a whole lot of fun.  And it’s full of a cappella!  What more could you want?

Thanks to Amulet Books and NetGalley for providing a review copy.

The Laws of Medicine by Siddhartha Mukherjee

Over a decade ago, when Siddhartha Mukherjee was a young, exhausted, and isolated medical resident, he discovered a book that would forever change the way he understood the medical profession. The book, The Youngest Science, forced Dr. Mukherjee to ask himself an urgent, fundamental question: Is medicine a “science”? Sciences must have laws—statements of truth based on repeated experiments that describe some universal attribute of nature. But does medicine have laws like other sciences?

Dr. Mukherjee has spent his career pondering this question—a question that would ultimately produce some of most serious thinking he would do around the tenets of his discipline—culminating in The Laws of Medicine. In this important treatise, he investigates the most perplexing and illuminating cases of his career that ultimately led him to identify the three key principles that govern medicine.

Review:

I’ve been meaning to read Mukherjee for a while now, especially considering how highly regarded Emperor of all Maladies is. That tome is 571 pages, though, so I thought The Laws of Medicine would be a better introduction.

And straight off I can tell you that I like his writing and his style.  He neither dumbs down examples nor overexplains details.  I want to read more… especially because this book is so short.

Clocking in at under 100 pages, it introduces the three laws of medicine Mukherjee devised.  One is more aimed at research than clinical practice, and one is dead obvious to anyone who has studied medicine (even this lowly interpreter) but they’re still good points and worthy of the attention.

What hurts the most for me is that book could have been longer.  The idea of laws could be better explored, corollaries proposed and debated, and exceptions that prove the rule gone over.  As it stands the information is sufficient but not satisfying.

I listened to the audiobook and like the reader and the way it is produced.  Having the author read the introduction is always a nice touch.

While I liked The Laws of Medicine it didn’t affect me as much as What Doctors Feel and other medical non-fiction does.  But that’s okay – I’m viewing it as a tantalizing preview of Mukherjee’s longer, more in-depth work.  Onward!