Exit Strategy by Martha Wells

Title: Exit Strategy (Murderbot Diaries #4)

Author: Martha Wells

Publisher: Tor.com 2018

Genre: Science Fiction

Pages: 176

Rating: 5/5 stars

Reading Challenges: Ebook

Murderbot wasn’t programmed to care. So, its decision to help the only human who ever showed it respect must be a system glitch, right?
Having traveled the width of the galaxy to unearth details of its own murderous transgressions, as well as those of the GrayCris Corporation, Murderbot is heading home to help Dr. Mensah—its former owner (protector? friend?)—submit evidence that could prevent GrayCris from destroying more colonists in its never-ending quest for profit.
But who’s going to believe a SecUnit gone rogue?
And what will become of it when it’s caught?

Oh what a ride! I wish that I had planned my week better so I could have read this in one sitting. Unfortunately I had to break it up into two reading sessions. We get the return of some previous characters and learn more about what GrayCris has been doing. Murderbot’s narration has continued to entertain me on every page. I love the little asides and commentary on human life. My favorite part was definitely the reboot process. Fascinating to watch Murderbot understand who they are. I must read the next one (a full length novel!) soon.

Murderbot Diaries:

• #1 All Systems Red

• #2 Artificial Condition

• #3 Rogue Protocol

• #4 Exit Strategy

• #5 Network Effect

• #6 Fugitive Telemetry

Next up on the TBR pile:

Get a Life, Chloe Brown by Talia Hibbert

Title: Get a Life, Chloe Brown (Brown Sisters #1)

Author: Talia Hibbert

Publisher: Avon 2019

Genre: Romance

Pages: 387

Rating: 4/5 stars

Reading Challenges: Ebook

Chloe Brown is a chronically ill computer geek with a goal, a plan, and a list. After almost—but not quite—dying, she’s come up with seven directives to help her “Get a Life”, and she’s already completed the first: finally moving out of her glamorous family’s mansion. The next items?

• Enjoy a drunken night out.

• Ride a motorcycle.

• Go camping.

• Have meaningless but thoroughly enjoyable sex.

• Travel the world with nothing but hand luggage.

• And... do something bad.

But it’s not easy being bad, even when you’ve written step-by-step guidelines on how to do it correctly. What Chloe needs is a teacher, and she knows just the man for the job.

Our book club selection for July. It was a nice, light, and fluffy contemporary romance that was an enjoyable read for a few days. I liked Chloe, but Red was my favorite character in the book. He had such great comebacks and wit. I loved it. The romance was fun and steamy at all the correct points. I wouldn’t call it my favorite romance of the last few years, but this was a good one. I’m interested in reading the sequel.

Brown Sisters

• #1 Get a Life, Chloe Brown

• #2 Take a Hint, Dani Brown

Next up on the TBR pile:

Rogue Protocol by Martha Wells

Title: Rogue Protocol (Murderbot Diaries #3)

Author: Martha Wells

Publisher: Tor.com 2018

Genre: Science Fiction

Pages: 150

Rating: 5/5 stars

Reading Challenges: Ebook

Who knew being a heartless killing machine would present so many moral dilemmas?

Sci-fi’s favorite antisocial A.I. is back on a mission. The case against the too-big-to-fail GrayCris Corporation is floundering, and more importantly, authorities are beginning to ask more questions about where Dr. Mensah's SecUnit is.

And Murderbot would rather those questions went away. For good.

Oh Yes! This series just keeps getting better and better. I sped through this volume enjoying every quip from Murderbot and every action sequence. There’s not a deep plot to this one, but we do get more information on the larger conspiracy afoot. Plus we get to see Murderbot interact with another group of humans and bots in an attempt to figure out their identity. So good! I’ll be quickly picking up the next novella.

Murderbot Diaries:

• #1 All Systems Red

• #2 Artificial Condition

• #3 Rogue Protocol

• #4 Exit Strategy

• #5 Network Effect

• #6 Fugitive Telemetry

Next up on the TBR pile:

I'd Give Anything by Marisa de los Santos

Title: I’d Give Anything

Author: Marisa de los Santos

Publisher: William Morrow 2020

Genre: Fiction

Pages: 272

Rating: 3/5 stars

Reading Challenges: Ebook; MMD 2020

Ginny Beale is eighteen, irreverent, funny, and brave, with a brother she adores and a circle of friends for whom she would do anything. Because of one terrible night, she loses them all—and her adventurous spirit—seemingly forever. While the town cheers on the high school football team, someone sets the school’s auditorium ablaze. Ginny’s best friend Gray Marsden’s father, a fire fighter, dies in the blaze.

While many in the town believe a notoriously troubled local teen set the fire, Ginny makes a shattering discovery that casts blame on the person she trusts most in the world. Ginny tells no one, but the secret isolates her, looming between her and her friends and ruining their friendship.

Over the next two decades, Ginny puts aside her wanderlust and her dreams. Moving back to her hometown, she distances herself from the past and from nearly everyone in it. She marries a quiet man, raises their daughter, Avery, and cares for her tyrannical, ailing mother, Adela. But when Ginny’s husband, Harris, becomes embroiled in a scandal, Ginny’s carefully controlled life crumbles, and, just when she believes she is regaining her bearings, the secret she’s kept for twenty years emerges and threatens to destroy her hopes for the future.

With the help of fifteen-year-old Avery and of friends both old and new, Ginny must summon the courage to confront old lies and hard truths and to free herself and the people she loves from the mistakes and regrets that have burdened them for so long.

This one was a dud for me. I never really engaged with the characters or the storyline. Something about both felt very immature to me. As for the characters, I kept thinking that adult Ginny was much much younger than she actually was. And Avery sometimes acted 12 and sometimes acted 20. I couldn’t get a good feel for any of them. Harris completely annoyed the crap out of me and I was mad at Ginny for not being more upset by his betrayal. And then we get to the big mystery of the fire. I just didn’t really care. I guessed the secret that Ginny was keeping from about when they revealed the fire. the second twist I didn’t see coming, but I didn’t even really care about it. Overall I was left with a big MEH feeling. Not my type of book.

Next up on the TBR pile:

Artificial Condition by Martha Wells

Title: Artificial Condition (Murderbot Diaries #2)

Author: Martha Wells

Publisher: Tor.com 2018

Genre: Science Fiction

Pages: 149

Rating: 4/5 stars

Reading Challenges: Ebook

It has a dark past—one in which a number of humans were killed. A past that caused it to christen itself “Murderbot”. But it has only vague memories of the massacre that spawned that title, and it wants to know more.
Teaming up with a Research Transport vessel named ART (you don’t want to know what the “A” stands for), Murderbot heads to the mining facility where it went rogue.
What it discovers will forever change the way it thinks…

I’m again loving the Muderbot’s narration of space adventures. We get a bit more of the overreaching storyline, but mainly focus on an encounter with a collective and a devious company agent. I can’t wait to see what happens next. I hope we get more ART in future books and more of Murderbot attempting to pass for human. Very entertaining!

Murderbot Diaries:

• #1 All Systems Red

• #2 Artificial Condition

• #3 Rogue Protocol

• #4 Exit Strategy

• #5 Network Effect

• #6 Fugitive Telemetry

Next up on the TBR pile:

Red, White and Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston

Title: Red, White and Royal Blue

Author: Casey McQuiston

Publisher: St. Martin’s Griffin 2019

Genre: Romance

Pages: 425

Rating: 5/5 stars

Reading Challenges: Ebook

What happens when America's First Son falls in love with the Prince of Wales?
When his mother became President, Alex Claremont-Diaz was promptly cast as the American equivalent of a young royal. Handsome, charismatic, genius—his image is pure millennial-marketing gold for the White House. There's only one problem: Alex has a beef with the actual prince, Henry, across the pond. And when the tabloids get hold of a photo involving an Alex-Henry altercation, U.S./British relations take a turn for the worse.

Heads of family, state, and other handlers devise a plan for damage control: staging a truce between the two rivals. What at first begins as a fake, Instragramable friendship grows deeper, and more dangerous, than either Alex or Henry could have imagined. Soon Alex finds himself hurtling into a secret romance with a surprisingly unstuffy Henry that could derail the campaign and upend two nations and begs the question: Can love save the world after all? Where do we find the courage, and the power, to be the people we are meant to be? And how can we learn to let our true colors shine through? Casey McQuiston's Red, White & Royal Blue proves: true love isn't always diplomatic.

This was an utter delight! I loved every single page of this book. I’m always up for a good but realistic romance, and thankfully this one delivers. Alex is such a great main character, full of sash and bravery. I was rooting for him right off the bat. I couldn’t wait to see how he would change and grow throughout the novel. Thankfully we dive in pretty much right away. I loved seeing him re-meet Henry and then fall into a wedding cake. From there on out, I couldn’t read fast enough. I had to see them finally get together and realize their feelings. My one complain about the novel: I want to live in that political world, not our own. I even got a bit choked up during the election night chapters. I just really wish 2016 had turned out differently.

Next up on the TBR pile:

The Friend Zone by Abby Jimenez

Title: The Friend Zone (The Friend Zone #1)

Author: Abby Jimenez

Publisher: Forever 2019

Genre: Romance

Pages: 384

Rating: 3/5 stars

Reading Challenges: Ebook

Kristen Peterson doesn't do drama, will fight to the death for her friends, and has no room in her life for guys who just don't get her. She's also keeping a big secret: facing a medically necessary procedure that will make it impossible for her to have children.
Planning her best friend's wedding is bittersweet for Kristen -- especially when she meets the best man, Josh Copeland. He's funny, sexy, never offended by her mile-wide streak of sarcasm, and always one chicken enchilada ahead of her hangry. Even her dog, Stuntman Mike, adores him. The only catch: Josh wants a big family someday. Kristen knows he'd be better off with someone else, but as their attraction grows, it's harder and harder to keep him at arm's length.

CW: Infertility, death

I read this one as I friend warned me not to read Jimenez’s newer book (The Happily Ever After Playlist) before reading this one for spoilers. I didn’t realize it was a series. Thank goodness I didn’t read the summary of the number two before reading this book. Spoilers abound!

As for this volume, I was disappointed. The first and second halves of this one feel like different books. The tone becomes very serious in the second half and I was not prepared for the switch. The cover deluded me into thinking this was a lighthearted romance story. Nope! There are serious events and issues in this book. I was not prepared at all. And the two biggest themes (infertility and death) could really mess with a person who was not prepared to encounter those in the book. Beyond the tone, I was not on board with Kristen as a main character. She was very immature and selfish throughout most fo the book. I just wanted someone to knock some sense into her at many moments. And the way she treated Josh was so not fair. It was very bad behavior indeed. (I even felt sorry for Tyler who didn’t seem like a terrible guy, just different than Kristen wanted.) One last gripe: the big event in the second half of the book really felt like a device to get Kristen and Josh together. It’s devastating to at least one other character, but most of it gets brushed over so we can see Kristen and Josh get their HEA. Not a book for me.

The Friend Zone

• #1 The Friend Zone

• #2 The Happily Ever After Playlist

• #3 Life’s Too Short

Next up on the TBR pile:

The Authenticity Project by Clare Pooley

Title: The Authenticity Project

Author: Clare Pooley

Publisher: Pamela Dorman Books 2020

Genre: Fiction

Pages: 368

Rating: 3/5 stars

Reading Challenges: Ebook

Julian Jessop, an eccentric, lonely artist and septuagenarian believes that most people aren't really honest with each other. But what if they were? And so he writes--in a plain, green journal--the truth about his own life and leaves it in his local café. It's run by the incredibly tidy and efficient Monica, who furtively adds her own entry and leaves the book in the wine bar across the street. Before long, the others who find the green notebook add the truths about their own deepest selves--and soon find each other In Real Life at Monica's Café.

I did not really enjoy this book. I was sucked in by the premise and the back of the book blurb. Unfortunately, I don’t think the storyline or the characters live up to the promise. The storyline was fairly predictable. I wasn’t surprised by the bad decisions and silly interactions with the characters. I wanted to really dive into the characters, but they were often just stereotypes. And Julian, who should have been the most interesting one, was left unwraps most of the time. The only bits we saw were decidedly fake and unappealing. I just couldn’t with him and it spiraled out to the other characters.

Next up on the TBR pile:

The City We Became by N.K. Jemisin

Title: The City We Became (The Great Cities #!)

Author: N.K. Jemisin

Publisher: Orbit 2020

Genre: Science Fiction

Pages: 449

Rating: 5/5 stars

Reading Challenges: Ebook; MMD 2020

In Manhattan, a young grad student gets off the train and realizes he doesn't remember who he is, where he's from, or even his own name. But he can sense the beating heart of the city, see its history, and feel its power.
In the Bronx, a Lenape gallery director discovers strange graffiti scattered throughout the city, so beautiful and powerful it's as if the paint is literally calling to her.
In Brooklyn, a politician and mother finds she can hear the songs of her city, pulsing to the beat of her Louboutin heels.
And they're not the only ones.

Jemisin has officially landed on my must-read author list. I have enjoyed everything that I have read by her so far and I have more to read. The start of these series came from an intriguing short story about cities being born. She takes the idea and expands the story in an epic multiverse. I loved how Jemisin weaves real-world characters with otherworldly characters and supernatural horrors. Jemisin really takes inspiration from a variety of sources and it shows. I loved how she connects personalities to each of the New York City boroughs. It all makes sense. I kept having ah-ha moments in every chapter! I cannot wait to see where this story goes next.

Next up on the TBR pile:

The Bromance Book Club by Lyssa Kay Adams

Title: The Bromance Book Club (Bromance Book Club #1)

Author: Lyssa Kay Adams

Publisher: Berkley 2019

Genre: Romance

Pages: 352

Rating: 2/5 stars

Reading Challenges: Ebook

The first rule of book club:
You don't talk about book club.
Nashville Legends second baseman Gavin Scott's marriage is in major league trouble. He’s recently discovered a humiliating secret: his wife Thea has always faked the Big O. When he loses his cool at the revelation, it’s the final straw on their already strained relationship. Thea asks for a divorce, and Gavin realizes he’s let his pride and fear get the better of him.

Welcome to the Bromance Book Club.
Distraught and desperate, Gavin finds help from an unlikely source: a secret romance book club made up of Nashville's top alpha men. With the help of their current read, a steamy Regency titled Courting the Countess, the guys coach Gavin on saving his marriage. But it'll take a lot more than flowery words and grand gestures for this hapless Romeo to find his inner hero and win back the trust of his wife.

That was disappointing. I was intrigued by the concept and wanted it to be a great romance with deep discussions and satisfying sex scenes. What I got was a reenforcement of heteronormative gender roles dressed up with some dirty sex scenes. With every chapter, I found myself more and more annoyed by the characters and their inability to talk to each other. Instead, we get the “obtuse man who struggles with any emotion” and the woman “hung up on her daddy issues.” I just didn’t want to read about those characters. And I definitely wasn’t going to root for them. In fact, even at the end of the novel, I wanted Gavin and Thea to break up (or at least go to couples therapy). I was not impressed at all.

Bromance Book Club:

• #1 The Bromance Book Club

• #2 Undercover Bromance

Next up on the TBR pile:

Hollowmen by Amanda Hocking

Title: Hollowmen (The Hollows #2)

Author: Amanda Hocking

Publisher: Createspace 2011

Genre: YA Horror

Pages: 363

Rating: 3/5 stars

Reading Challenges: Ebook

After six months in the quarantine, Remy finds out things are much worse than she feared. Her plans to escape come with a heavy cost, and she realizes that zombies aren't the worst of her problems.

I snatched up this ebook after finishing the first book earlier this month. And I was disappointed… I was hoping for good zombie romp with a fun and strong heroine. Instead, we get one too many coincidences and little zombie action. I just didn’t like Remy at all in this book. And Max was a wet blanket. And argh! I hated the deaths in this book. It just didn’t bring me much joy to read this one at all.

The Hollows

• #1 Hollowland

• #2 Hollowmen

Next up on the TBR pile:

The Glass Hotel by Emily St. John Mandel

Title: The Glass Hotel

Author: Emily St. John Mandel

Publisher: Knopf 2020

Genre: Literary Fiction

Pages: 321

Rating: 3/5 stars

Reading Challenges: Ebook

Vincent is a bartender at the Hotel Caiette, a five-star lodging on the northernmost tip of Vancouver Island. On the night she meets Jonathan Alkaitis, a hooded figure scrawls a message on the lobby's glass wall: "Why don't you swallow broken glass." High above Manhattan, a greater crime is committed: Alkaitis is running an international Ponzi scheme, moving imaginary sums of money through clients' accounts. When the financial empire collapses, it obliterates countless fortunes and devastates lives. Vincent, who had been posing as Jonathan's wife, walks away into the night. Years later, a victim of the fraud is hired to investigate a strange occurrence: a woman has seemingly vanished from the deck of a container ship between ports of call.

I was so incredibly excited to read this one. I adored Station Eleven and was looking forward to Mandel’s next piece of fiction. Unfortunately this one felt so incredibly flat to me. There’s hardly any plot to speak of, but that was to be expected from her previous work. I didn’t think I was going to read a plot-driven book and that would have been okay. I need to really dive into the lives of interesting characters. This book did not have any. Every single character we met was terrible. I couldn’t root for any of them. I couldn’t make myself care about any of them. I just wanted them all to go away. Beyond that, I’ve found that I really don’t care about reading books where rich people behave badly. I just don’t care. I found no hope in this book. Definitely not for me at all.

Next up on the TBR pile:

Hollowland by Amanda Hocking

Title: Hollowland (The Hollows #1)

Author: Amanda Hocking

Publisher: Createspace 2010

Genre: YA Horror

Pages: 330

Rating: 4/5 stars

Reading Challenges: Ebook; TBR Random

"This is the way the world ends - not with a bang or a whimper, but with zombies breaking down the back door."

Nineteen-year-old Remy King is on a mission to get across the wasteland left of America, and nothing will stand in her way - not violent marauders, a spoiled rock star, or an army of flesh-eating zombies.

This was a pretty fun zombie book. The plot sped through at breakneck pace following Remy as she tries to reach quarantine and, more importantly, her brother. Along the way we get many zombie encounters plus those involving not-so-great humans. There’s not a ton to this book, but I really enjoyed this romp. I will definitely be reading the sequel. This one ended in a doozy of a cliffhanger.

The Hollows

• #1 Hollowland

• #2 Hollowmen

Next up on the TBR pile:

A Curse So Dark and Lonely by Brigid Kemmerer

Title: A Curse So Dark and Lonely (Cursebreaker #1)

Author: Brigid Kemmerer

Publisher: Bloomsbury YA 2019

Genre: YA Fantasy

Pages: 507

Rating: 5/5 stars

Reading Challenges: Ebook

It once seemed so easy to Prince Rhen, the heir to Emberfall. Cursed by a powerful enchantress to repeat the autumn of his eighteenth year over and over, he knew he could be saved if a girl fell for him. But that was before he learned that at the end of each autumn, he would turn into a vicious beast hell-bent on destruction. That was before he destroyed his castle, his family, and every last shred of hope.

Nothing has ever been easy for Harper. With her father long gone, her mother dying, and her brother barely holding their family together while constantly underestimating her because of her cerebral palsy, she learned to be tough enough to survive. But when she tries to save someone else on the streets of Washington, DC, she's instead somehow sucked into Rhen's cursed world.

I picked this one up on Kindle sale awhile back and let it languish on my iPad for months. Why? I started reading this book and just couldn’t stop. This Beauty and the Beast retelling is right in my wheelhouse. I love a good fairy tale story with wicked evil, not quite perfect heroes, and plucky heroines. This story isn’t quite surprising, but I loved how Kemmerer put her own spin on the classic tale. I loved Harper and all her insecurities and strength. I loved Rhen and his secrets and charm. And Grey was a delightful surprise full of loyalty and surprising tenderness. I was gutted by the last section of this book. And I’m desperately wanting to finish out the series with book #2. Guess I will have to put that on June’s TBR pile.

Cursebreaker Series

• #1 A Curse So Dark and Lonely

• #2 A Heart So Fierce and Broken

Next up on the TBR pile:

All Systems Red by Martha Wells

Title: All Systems Red (Murderbot Diaries #1)

Author: Martha Wells

Publisher: Tor.com 2017

Genre: Science Fiction

Pages: 155

Rating: 5/5 stars

Reading Challenges: Ebook

In a corporate-dominated spacefaring future, planetary missions must be approved and supplied by the Company. Exploratory teams are accompanied by Company-supplied security androids, for their own safety.
But in a society where contracts are awarded to the lowest bidder, safety isn’t a primary concern.
On a distant planet, a team of scientists are conducting surface tests, shadowed by their Company-supplied ‘droid — a self-aware SecUnit that has hacked its own governor module, and refers to itself (though never out loud) as “Murderbot.” Scornful of humans, all it really wants is to be left alone long enough to figure out who it is.
But when a neighboring mission goes dark, it's up to the scientists and their Murderbot to get to the truth.

I picked this up as a free download from Tor.com and absolutely loved it so much! We get a concise novella following a “murderbot” as it navigates it’s latest work assignment that goes wrong. I loved getting into the mind of the SecUnit but especially loved it’s voice. Such fun to listen to it’s stream of consciousness and journey. I sped through this adventure story in just a few hours and can’t wait to read the next book in the series.

Murderbot Diaries:

• #1 All Systems Red

• #2 Artificial Condition

• #3 Rogue Protocol

• #4 Exit Strategy

• #5 Network Effect

• #6 Fugitive Telemetry

Next up on the TBR pile:

The Five by Hallie Rubenhold

Title: The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper

Author: Hallie Rubenhold

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt 2019

Genre: Nonfiction - History

Pages: 359

Rating: 4/5 stars

Reading Challenges: Ebook; TBR Random

Polly, Annie, Elisabeth, Catherine, and Mary Jane are famous for the same thing, though they never met. They came from Fleet Street, Knightsbridge, Wolverhampton, Sweden, and Wales. They wrote ballads, ran coffeehouses, lived on country estates; they breathed ink dust from printing presses and escaped human traffickers.

What they had in common was the year of their murders: 1888. The person responsible was never identified, but the character created by the press to fill that gap has become far more famous than any of these five women.

For more than a century, newspapers have been keen to tell us that “the Ripper” preyed on prostitutes. Not only is this untrue, as historian Hallie Rubenhold has discovered, but it has prevented the real stories of these fascinating women from being told. Now, in this devastating narrative of five lives, Rubenhold finally sets the record straight, revealing a world not just of Dickens and Queen Victoria, but of poverty, homelessness, and rampant misogyny. They died because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time—but their greatest misfortune was to be born women.

So much research went into this book! I am amazed at the level of detail Rubenhold discovered to recreate the world of the victims of Jack the Ripper. Overall and overall I marveled at the amount of detective work to uncover the lives of these women. History has certainly painted them in a specific light and one that is not accurate. I really enjoyed getting to know each of them in life. I learned a bit more about England in the 1880s (not my expertise in history) and revealed in the atmosphere Rubenhold creates. This book is very dense, but such a good collection of biographies.

Next up on the TBR pile:

Upright Women Wanted by Sarah Gailey

Title: Upright Women Wanted

Author: Sarah Gailey

Publisher: Tor.com 2020

Genre: Science Fiction

Pages: 171

Rating: 5/5 stars

Reading Challenges: Ebook

“That girl’s got more wrong notions than a barn owl’s got mean looks.”

Esther is a stowaway. She’s hidden herself away in the Librarian’s book wagon in an attempt to escape the marriage her father has arranged for her—a marriage to the man who was previously engaged to her best friend. Her best friend who she was in love with. Her best friend who was just executed for possession of resistance propaganda.

The future American Southwest is full of bandits, fascists, and queer librarian spies on horseback trying to do the right thing.

So Sarah Gailey is most definitely going on my must read author list. I love how they write with fun classic tropes turned on their heads. On the surface, this is a story of a post-apocalypse(ish) world where a resistance faction has risen up with the aid of traveling librarians. Sounds like a typical scifi book. But Gailey really focuses on the relationships of the characters and explores gender and identity in this strange world. They did similar things in River and Teeth and Taste of Marrow and I am totally on board of this! This short novella really packs a punch. I wanted so much to see the the further adventures of Esther and Cye along with the resistance. I wanted to learn more about the world they live in. I wanted to meet more interesting characters. Maybe we will get another book set in this world from Gailey.

Next up on the TBR pile:

The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller

Title: The Song of Achilles

Author: Madeline Miller

Publisher: Ecco 2012

Genre: Historical Fiction / Mythology

Pages: 389

Rating: 4/5 stars

Reading Challenges: Ebook; Monthly Theme - May

A tale of gods, kings, immortal fame, and the human heart, The Song of Achilles is a dazzling literary feat that brilliantly reimagines Homer’s enduring masterwork, The Iliad. An action-packed adventure, an epic love story, a marvelously conceived and executed page-turner, Miller’s monumental debut novel has already earned resounding acclaim from some of contemporary fiction’s brightest lights.

It’s been decades since I last read The Iliad but reading this reimagining of Achilles’s story brought me right back to Classical Studies in college. Overall I really enjoyed Miller’s telling of a very classic story but framing the events from the viewpoint of Patroclus. I loved learning about Achilles not from himself, but from one who loved him. We get an interesting picture of a classical hero. Plus we get to experience the strangeness of encountering gods and goddesses. The horrors of war are particularly affecting coming from an acknowledged poor soldier. We get a proper coming of age story within the pages all the way through the deaths of both of our main characters. Tragic for sure, but with lush writing and storytelling. I enjoyed it very much.

Next up on the TBR pile:

The Secrets of a Courtesan by Nicola Cornick

Title: The Secrets of a Courtesan (Brides of Fortune #0.5)

Author: Nicola Cornick

Publisher: HQN 2009

Genre: Regency Romance

Pages: 69

Rating: 3/5 stars

Reading Challenges: Ebook

All's fair in love and matrimony in Nicola Cornick's wildly romantic new series that introduces the ladies of Fortune's Folly--spirited heiresses who are more than a match for society's most dashing rogues!The epitome of privilege and power, the handsome Duke of Welburn sets all the ladies' hearts aflutter as he strides into the village of Fortune's Folly.

For Eve Nightingale this fluttering is a mixture of wariness and wonder. Once his glittering society mistress--caught up in his glamorous world by day and tangled in his bedsheets by night--she is now no more than a penniless yet proud shopkeeper.

It's a world Eve can't go back to--she has secrets to keep. But this determined duke seems very keen on unravelling them....

Hmmm… I liked the premise, but wasn’t the biggest fan of the characters. Eve is fine. Alasdair is much too much of a pompous ass for me to really like him. At least this one was quick…

Brides of Fortune

• #0.5 The Secrets of a Courtesan

• #1 The Confessions of a Duchess

• #2 The Scandals of an Innocent

• #3 The Undoing of a Lady

Next up on the TBR pile:

The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd

Title: The Secret Life of Bees

Author: Sue Monk Kidd

Publisher: Penguin Books 2003

Genre: Fiction

Pages: 352

Rating: 4/5 stars

Reading Challenges: Perpetual - Top 100 YA, 21st Century Women Authors, Rory Gilmore; Goodreads Random

Set in South Carolina in 1964, The Secret Life of Bees tells the story of Lily Owens, whose life has been shaped around the blurred memory of the afternoon her mother was killed. When Lily's fierce-hearted black "stand-in mother," Rosaleen, insults three of the deepest racists in town, Lily decides to spring them both free. They escape to Tiburon, South Carolina--a town that holds the secret to her mother's past. Taken in by an eccentric trio of black beekeeping sister, Lily is introduced to their mesmerizing world of bees and honey, and the Black Madonna. This is a remarkable novel about divine female power, a story that women will share and pass on to their daughters for years to come.

A really beautiful coming-of-age story set in a fraught time period and place. I was rooting for Lily to find her place int he world away from her father and the ignorant perspectives of many in her community. I loved meeting the sisters and learning about beekeeping and their particular brand of religion. Many of the sequences feel very dreamlike. Almost like the opening scenes of Lily watching the bees swarm in her room. My only quibble with the book is the format. At times, the constant flashbacks muddled the prose. Transitions were not the best. Overall this was a lovely atmospheric book.

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