fiction – Page 7 – The Spine View

Beyond the Point by Claire Gibson

If I had not known in advance this was a debut novel I would have said, “No way.” The prose is as polished as any seasoned writer. Beyond the Point, by Claire Gibson, takes the reader into the world of West Point where we meet three young women athletes, Hannah, Dani and Avery, recruited to play basketball.

When they first meet they do not become friends immediately. Avery and Dani develop a fierce rivalry on the basketball court. Dani is an incredibly gifted player and is given a place on the varsity team as a freshman. Avery finds this hard to handle and it fuels her own personal insecurities. Over time Hannah the shy and faith driven women, who tends to be the anchor of the group, brings them all together and slowly a fierce friendship is formed.

You might think this book is about how women endure the rigors of a male dominated school like West Point. It is that and so much more. It is ultimately about how three strong women forge a long lasting friendship and face the hardships of West Point together. The friendship they have not only makes them stronger; they draw upon this strength to navigate the world after West Point when tragedy strikes.

This book is strongly character driven. Dani, Avery and Hannah are all portrayed very realistically and are fully developed. I especially loved that the author gave me both their strengths and their weaknesses.

The story is told form all three points of view. So we get a window into the interworkings of each of the main characters. The plot is not slow or fast. It does meander some as the author, especially later in the book, keeps flashing back to things that happened at West Point that sheds light on to a current situation or event.

I am really excited to see what else this author has in store for the future and expect that this is just the being of many good things to come. I highly recommend this book to readers who like a character driven story especially those with strong female characters.

Disclaimer: I received an ARC from the publisher in exchange for my honest review.

The Witches of St. Petersburg by Imogen Edwards-Jones

Pub. Date: 22-Jan-2019 Rating: 3.5 Stars

Based very loosely on facts, The Witches of St. Petersburg, by Imogen Edwards-Jones, is about two young sisters Militza and Stana whose father arranges their marriages to members of the Russian nobility. Once they arrive at court the Russian aristocracy look down their noses at them for being not only outsiders but uncultivated and having backwater ways.

The sisters further this appearance by dabbling in black magic. They predict the sex of the servant’s unborn children, read tea leaves, and hold séances to communicate with the dead. All of this is very unseemly for someone of the nobility. That is until the sisters capture the attention of the Tsar’s wife Alexandra.

Tsarina Alexandra has produced nothing but girls and she is desperate to give the Tsar an heir. So desperate in fact that she allows the sisters to send her charlatan, after charlatan, to help ensure a male child is born to secure the Romanov line. I guess you could say desperate times call for desperate measures. Once Rasputin enters the story Militza and Stana are desperate to help Alexandra and secure their place in the social standings of the Russian court. Unfortunately, they are wholly unprepared for what will come.

I read some of the reviews going into this book and was not sure if I would like it. Since I love reading historical fiction that are based on facts and I also find paranormal stories fascinating, I decided to not let others influence me. That is not to say that there were not flaws, because there were and I just ignored them for the most part and enjoyed the story for the entertainment it is.

So what I liked about the book was the darker side of court life that was betrayed. I felt the author really did a good job of capturing that. I also liked her imaginative take on fictional events surrounding the Romanovs. The sisters Militiza and Stanza’s characters I also liked. I felt that they were still young enough that they didn’t realize what they were getting into. What started out as a simple attempt to elevate their social standing in the end turned on them in the most horribly way.

What I did not like was the repetitiveness of some parts. I felt that the book could have been cut down by a third and it would be better for it. The other thing I disliked was all the sexual content, in the second half of the book, which took away from the plot. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mind sexual scenes in books especially when it helps move the story forward or releases tension. I just felt that it was heavy handed and fewer would have been better. This goes back to my prior point, less would have been better.

In summary, while I did like parts of the story and enjoyed reading sections, especially the first half of the book. There were flaws that some readers will find fatal to the overall story. This is why I have rated it at 3.5 stars. I received a free copy from the publisher in exchange for my honest review.

The Lost Girls of Paris by Pam Jenoff

The Lost Girls of Paris by Pam Jenoff is the fictional tale of women who were recruited and trained to become spies in Europe during WWII. It is a tale of incredible courage and fortitude in the face of overwhelming odds. Though the tale is fictional it is based on the fact that there were women that were spies during WWII.

This story starts in the U.S. shortly after the war is over. Grace Healey, a war widow herself, finds a suitcase in Grand Central station in New York City. She can’t resist the urge to open it and look through its contents. She finds a group of pictures of young women and this intrigues her. On a whim she takes the pictures and returns the suitcase to its hiding spot under a bench.

She becomes obsessed with finding out who the suitcase belonged to and who the women are in the pictures. As she works to gather information, the reader is introduced to Eleanor Trigg. Eleanor runs the organization in England that recruits, trains and handles women spies in German occupied Europe. Eleanor recruits a young single mother Marie Roux who is later sent to France as a radio operator for the French resistance. As Grace slows finds all the puzzle pieces and fits them together we see what really happened to these women.

My favorite thing about this book is the strong, resourceful, women characters the author has presented us. We normally think of women during WWII as entering the work force for the first time and doing men’s jobs in factories that would normally have been considered male only job. We tend to forget that women did play vital roles during WWII.

The story is told from three POVs, Grace, Eleanor and Marie. The author made sure the plot was seamless despite the changing POVs throughout. There was not tons of character development but there was enough to fit the plot. At first I thought this might be a flaw, but I in retrospect I think the author did this so on purpose. She gave us enough to connect to the characters but not enough to overwhelm the reader and bog down the plot.

The pace of the plot was good and there was plenty of intrigue to keep the reader turning the pages. I was hooked early on in the story and I wanted to see what actually happened. I also liked how everything wrapped up at the end. I wish I could elaborate further; yet, I don’t want to spoil the story for others. Let me just say that how the government handled things was spot on to what happens in real life.

I know from other books that the life expediency of a spy during WWII was very short. Therefore, the only thing I disliked about the story was the decisions made by Marie. I felt she was overly reckless and even a little naïve. Who would go off and become a spy knowing the odds of dying are very high and thus leaving a young child without a mother.

I highly recommend this book for readers of both Historical Fiction and WWII stories. I received an ARC from the publisher in exchange for my honest review.

The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle

The 7 ½ Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton is an ingenious murder mystery with shocking twists that cannot be foreseen. It reminds me of the movie Groundhog Day except here the MC is trying to solve a murder before it is committed so he will be released from the loop.

The story opens on the resetting of the loop after innumerous rounds without the murder being solved. When we are first introduced to Aiden, he does not even know his own name. He wakes up in a wooded area near a castle and he has no idea how he got there. He manages to make his way to the castle and learns that he has just 8 days and 8 different hosts to solve a murder that will be committed. No one will know it is a murder because it is disguised as a suicide. Once he has solved the murder he is to meet the Plague Doctor, an elusive person who appears to be in charge of the loop, at the lake with the answer. When the correct answer is given he will be released.

The Plague Doctor informs Aiden that others are trying to solve the murder and only one of them will be released. He further advises Aiden to use all his hosts wisely and that each host has been carefully chosen for him. What he does not know is that nothing is as it appears and someone wants all of his hosts dead. He will have to trust someone in order to solve the murder and free himself from the loop.

I am in awe of the author’s talent for making such a complex and tangled plot. I honestly do not know how he kept all of the details straight. It made for one of the best murder mysteries I have read in a long time. In my opinion, Mr. Turton is right up there with Agatha Christy.

The plot is paced quickly but I want to warn you not to rush through. There are too many little details that could easily be overlooked that become important as the story unfolds. In addition, I thought it brilliant how the author did not give the reader a lot to go on about the MC, Aiden Bishop. This deliberate lack of character development allowed Aiden to change as the plot required and Aiden needed to change and you will see why when you read the story.

If you love mysteries and complex plots this is the book for you. I highly recommend it to everyone. It is a suburb work of fiction and will have you in knots trying to fit the puzzle pieces together.

I won my copy of the novel in a Book Riot giveaway and this in no way impacts my review.

The Blue by Nancy Bilyeau

Title: The Blue
Author: Nancy Bilyeau
Pub. Date: 3-Dec-2018
Rating: 5 Stars

I always like to point out to readers those books that hit all the right notes for me. Especially when it is an indie-author or from a small/independent publisher which is the case with The Blue by Nancy Bilyeau. The alluring thing for me about this lovely historical fiction is all the factual tidbits of 18^th century life and the production of porcelain in that era. This is the perfect example of why Historical Fiction is among my favorite genres.

Genevieve Planche is a young British women who lives with her grandfather, a well-known artist, in London. Her family are Huguenots and refugees, having fled France for England in the wake of religious persecution. Since she was born in England she has no particular loyalty to the French crown and Louis XV. A good thing, since England is now at war with France.

Despite being at war, the English still crave some French goods, such as the famous porcelain pieces produced by Sevres the French manufacturer preferred by Madame de Pompadour chief mistress to Louis XV. Genevieve finds herself drawn into the world of porcelain when her family arranges for her to become a painter at the English porcelain factory of Derby. What she really craves is to study painting under one of the great masters of her time. This is not an option for her because painting is not considered proper for a young lady.

Genevieve chafes at the constraints that society has placed upon her. She even goes so far as to attend a party giving by an English artist, who her grandfather knows, in hopes of persuading him to become her teacher. Of course, she utterly fails. Though she does meet Sir Gabriel Courtenay who later calls on her as her grandfather’s home. He manages to enlist her help as a spy. He desperately needs the formula for the new blue color that Derby is reported to have developed. In exchange, he has promised her what she wants the most, to study under a painter. She agrees to spy and only has a few short weeks to find the formula. Yet, spying is a dangerous business and spies are hanged.

As I already stated, I love Historical Fiction because I always learn some little tidbits. In this instance, I learned a lot of tidbits. The author has out done herself with researching the period and the subject of porcelain. She actually peaked my interest and I had to do some further reading about porcelain, particularly Derby and Sevres.

I also loved the complexity of the main character Genevieve. She is intelligent, a gifted artist and somewhat self-centered person who struggles with her sense of duty to family and friends. Most importantly she is a strong young woman. Imagine going off to live and work were you do not know anyone and you are 4 days away, by carriage, from any family. She also has her flaws, she can be reckless and fails to see the consequences of her actions until it is far too late.

I thought the pace of the plot was good and there were some interesting things that happened that encouraged me to keep reading. The author did an excellent job of marrying fact and fiction. It gave the story a boost and complemented the prose.

In short, this was an excellently crafted story that any Historical Fiction fan will be sure to enjoy. Be sure to mark it as “Read Soon” on your TBR list.

I received a free copy from the publisher in exchange for my honest review.

Street Freaks by Terry Brooks

Title: Street Freaks
Author: Terry Brooks
Pub. Date: 2-Oct-2018
Rating: 4 Stars

Street Freaks is not your typical Terry Brooks novel. He is best known for his fantasy novels. I remember reading his Sword of Shannara series when I was younger and loved his story telling, characters and brilliant world building. I have never doubted his writing ability; however, I was surprised to realize this is a YA Sci-Fi book. Regardless, of the genre, Terry Brooks is a great writer and Street Freaks just goes to show how great his skills are.

The story is set in the future where technology has advanced to the point that machine and man can and have been seamlessly integrated to overcome debilitating illnesses and injuries. At the beginning we meet Ashton (Ash) Collins. He is your typical teenager who lives at home with his Dad and 3 robots until one day he gets an urgent call from his Father to run as fast as he can to the Red Zone and go to Street Freaks. Ash has lived a sheltered life thus far and he is not prepared for what he finds in the Red Zone or at Street Freaks.

Fortunately for Ash, the kids (actually young adults) at Street Freaks, a place where street cars are built and raced, take him in and make him part of their community of misunderstood rejects of experiments. That’s right, in this dystopian future, companies have experimented on kids and then disposed of them. They help him to discover what happened to his father. Together this band of unlikely allies sets out to take down the person and company who is responsible for Ash’s father’s disappearance and in the process hopefully expose the terrible things that have happened to kids.

Even though this was not the typical Terry Brooks story I am accustomed to, I liked it. Mr. Brooks has developed characters that you can empathize with and I was routing for them throughout the story. The future he has envisioned in this story was well thought-out and worked nicely with the plot. There is a lot of attention to detail and the story and characters are better for it.

The plot was paced nicely and I appreciated that Mr. Brooks did not just do a data dump to the reader in the beginning. All the facts and information important to the story were doled out only as needed. There were several twists in the story and a couple of real surprises that keep me interested and yet I did not get a feeling of the plot being overworked.

As I said, the story is well told and I think it will appeal to Sci-Fi and Fantasy readers alike. Though a note of caution, it is a YA book but some of the topics are not suited for the younger reader. Therefore, I recommend only for ages 16+.

I received an ARC from the publisher in exchange for my honest review.

The Adults by Caroline Hulse

Title: The Adults
Author: Caroline Hulse
Pub. Date: 27-Nov-18
Rating: 4 Stars

Could you spend the holidays with your ex and new partner? In this funny, and sometimes harrowing story, of 4 adults trying to have a “Normal” Christmas for the sake of one child, the author explores the underlying problems that make this a very bad idea and a good story (provided you are not in the story). Of course, the adults are anything but adults and when jealously, insecurity and other normal human emotions enter into the mix it is a disaster in the making.

The story opens with a frantic call to the police by Alex, Matt’s partner, saying someone has been shot with an arrow. Then Alex hangs up. Now step backwards in time a few weeks, to when Matt finally has the courage to tell Alex that he has already committed them to plans for the holidays. They are spending the holidays with Claire, his ex, and Claire’s partner Patrick at the Happy Forest Holiday Park. They want Scarlett, Matt and Claire’s daughter, to have a normal family Christmas.

Everything is already planned he says. Just pack a bag and have fun he says. I don’t know on what planet he thought it would be fun; because we all know, even without the glimpse into the future we got at the start of the story, these “Adults” are asking for trouble. Boy, oh boy did they get it!

Usually I do not like to know what is going to happen in advance, but in this instance it really worked. Since we know how things are going to end it leaves the reader time to imagine all the possible things that could go wrong before they arrive there. While reading, I constantly had thoughts such as, surely this was an accident, who shot who, what about Scarlett, and so on. In short, the plot execution was spot on. The pace was great too. All the little incidents that happened, such as Posey not liking Alex because scientists experiment on rabbits, moved the plot along in a way that I kept wanting to read more.

Throw in the loveable and flawed characters and one invisible, talking rabbit and you have a winning combination. I especially liked how the author presented some very real problems that lots of families face and injected some humor to make a very likable story. The character of Scarlett was particularly well done and by giving her an invisible friend, Posey, which she communicated with we were able to understand her view point. Scarlett and Posey made the story!

In recap, this is a humorous story and I think it will appeal to readers who like humorous fiction as well as readers who like stories about family dynamics and dysfunctional families. I received a free copy from the publisher in exchange for my honest review.

The Devil’s Son by Charles Kowalski

Title: The Devil’s Son
Author: Charles Kowalski
Pub. Date: 27-July-2018
Rating: 4 Stars

The Devil’s Son by Charles Kowalski was not the spy thriller I expected. I loved his first book Mind Virus and was expecting something like that again. I liked this one but it was not entirely to my tastes. That said, I think I will be in the minority and I will go into further detail shortly.

The story opens in Argentina in 1960 with Azriel Horowitz, a Jew and member of Mossad (the Israeli version of the CIA), attempting to capture two high ranking former Nazi fugitives. You see, for him this is personal, very personal. He is the sole surviving member of his family from Auschwitz and the two fugitives are Karl Weiss and Josef Mengele who were the deputy commandant and doctor, respectively, of Auschwitz. As luck would have it, the two manage to evade capture by the Mossad team.

Skip forward to the present day and Rachel Horowitz, the daughter of Azriel, and a member herself of Mossad, is being tasked with seeing that Henry Hale is not elected to the Presidency of the United Sates. She expects to achieve this by proving that Hale is actually the son of the famous Nazi Karl Weiss. She is also out to show that Weiss has passed on his Nazi views to his son.

Once in America this proves to be more difficult than she imagined and she will need the help of someone on the inside. When a near fatal car accident caused by Secret Service Agent Emmett Miller’s loss of focus turns out to be a blessing in disguise, Rachel manages to gain his attention and uses him for her own ends. Little does she know just how dangerous a game she is really playing.

There is a lot of action in this book and unexpected plot twists. However, the best part of this book is the suspense. I loved how the author set the reader up and then slowly resolved an issue only to have some other little twist come up for the heroine to deal with. Speaking of heroine, I loved the main character. Rachel is fierce, strong and resourceful, I just wished that her character had been a little more developed.

The story is good; however, I felt it a little far-fetched and it has a lot of political undertones. Personally, I am so over anything to do with politics. Another thing I want to mention, I felt the story in places was a bit Hollywood. In other words, a bit overdone. Without giving anything way, roughly ¾ through, a couple of things happened and I was like… really? Lastly, as much as I loved the main character, I felt things just came a bit too easy for her.

Despite the few things I mentioned above, I did enjoy reading The Devil’s Son. I have no hesitation in recommending this book to those readers who like fast paced thrillers and especially to those who like a strong heroine.

I received a free copy of the book, from the author, in exchange for my honest review.

Melmoth by Sarah Perry

Title: Melmoth
Author: Sarah Perry
Pub. Date: 16-Oct-2018
Rating: 1 Star

I was expecting much more for Sarah Perry’s new book Melmoth. I was particularly excited that it was a gothic style novel since Halloween is right around the corner and I was in the mood for a spooky read.

First off, I did not get any spooky. I would call it more muddled than anything. The characters were lack luster and I was never able to connect with anyone or the plot for that matter. Thinking of plot, a turtle moves faster and there was not enough meat in the story to hold me interest. Despite three attempts, I have to mark this one as DNF (did not finish) at a little over 100 pages.

Here is the synopsis given:

For centuries, the mysterious dark-robed figure has roamed the globe, searching for those whose complicity and cowardice have fed into the rapids of history’s darkest waters—and now, in Sarah Perry’s breathtaking follow-up to The Essex Serpent, it is heading in our direction.

It has been years since Helen Franklin left England. In Prague, working as a translator, she has found a home of sorts—or, at least, refuge. That changes when her friend Karel discovers a mysterious letter in the library, a strange confession and a curious warning that speaks of Melmoth the Witness, a dark legend found in obscure fairy tales and antique village lore. As such superstition has it, Melmoth travels through the ages, dooming those she persuades to join her to a damnation of timeless, itinerant solitude. To Helen it all seems the stuff of unenlightened fantasy.

But, unaware, as she wanders the cobblestone streets Helen is being watched. And then Karel disappears. . . .

I recognize that I am the odd man out here. It was just not to my tastes. However, if you liked her first book then you might enjoy this one.

I received a free copy from the publisher in exchange for my honest review.

Problems in Prague – JJ Bennett: Junior Spy by Alba Arango

Title: Problems in Prague
Author: Alba Arango
Pub. Date: 10-May-2018
Rating: 4 Stars

Problems in Prague: JJ Bennett Junior Spy by Alba Arango is a middle grade book that reminds me of the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew books I loved as a kid; Of course, with more modern lingo and cell phones, etc. It is an exciting adventure story about kids as spies and secrets that must be protected at all cost.

Jeremiah Bennett, aka JJ, is currently living in Prague where his father works as a computer tech for the CIA. With the Bennett’s are JJ’s tutor Ms. Hernandez and her daughter Maggie who is the same age as JJ.

During a sightseeing tour at a castle, JJ and Maggie, run into a young Russian girl, Ivana, who JJ had an encounter with, at the airport, the day before. He wants to ask her some questions but she runs away before he has a chance. JJ and Maggie decide to chase after her. Ivana leads them into the Black Tower and they slip inside unseen. A short time later they caught a glimpse of Ivana leaving a room but she manages to slip away but not before telling them she is a member of the P-KGP.

They decide to investigate the room she exited from. Inside a book they find a cryptic note to a Josef left by a person called Kangsly. Later they find out that Josef is Joseph Stalin and Kangsly was an American defector in the early 1950s. They are now determined to figure out what this P-KGP is and what the note means. What they discover is a secret that must be kept from the Russians and so the adventure begins.

What I loved about this book is the likable characters of JJ and Maggie and the fast paced plot. There was not a lot of descriptive prose, which is a good thing; because in this case I feel excessive prose would turn off the target audience. I could never see an 8 or 12 year old reading a book for its prose! They want action and characters they can relate to.

Speaking entirely as a parent here, I appreciate that the author was sensitive to the audience she was writing for. The book did not contain any language or scenes that where inappropriate for a young audience, not even any hidden innuendos. In addition, there were no violent scenes that might be upsetting to younger readers.

The only negative comment I have is with the plot. JJ just seemed to be too quick to figure things out. I always thought this of the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew books too. I must admit, I think me age colors my thinking a little on this one.

Overall I found this book has a good story that was written with a young audience in mind. Therefore, I highly recommend this book for middle grade readers.

I have rated the book four stars and I feel this is the correct rating. However, upon reflecting I wonder how much my age is influencing my rating. I am passing the book on to my grandson, currently 10, who is also a big reader and I hope to update this review sometime in the future with his rating. In the spirit of fairness, I believe the target audience should have their opinion heard and have more weight because ultimately they are the consumer.

I received a free copy in exchange for my honest opinion. For more of my reviews, and author interviews, see my blog at www.thespineview.com