The Maid by Nita Prose

March 17, 2022

The Maid by Nita Prose

Molly Gray is a maid at a posh London hotel. She is on the autism spectrum, and until recently, lived with her grandmother who helped interpret life for Molly, explained how to deal with new situations, and taught her how to interact with other people. Now that her grandmother is gone, Molly is trying to learn how to manage life on her own. She loves to clean and observe proper etiquette, which make her a perfect maid. Her world is thrown into chaos when a regular hotel guest is found dead in his room and she finds herself caught up in a web of deceit. Fortunately for Molly, she has friends who help her sort through the clues about what really happened to the guest.

This is one of the few books that I didn't finish. Based on early reviews, I expected to really enjoy it and was disappointed. I couldn't stand the narrator/main character. Half of the time she's totally clueless, and the other half of the time she is incredibly sharp and clever. The author also tried to address too many social issues and illegal activities. Some parts, like the courtroom scenes, are just silly. Early reviews and publisher's prose compared the book to Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine, which was the first and best of the books to have a narrator who was on the autism spectrum. I have not really enjoyed any of the others that I've read.

Homicide and Halo-halo by Mia Manansala

March 14, 2022

Homicide and Halo-halo by Mia Manansala

Lila Macapagal continues to live in her hometown of Shady Palms a hundred miles from Chicago. Since solving the mystery of who killed her old boyfriend, she has been just drifting along, still working as a waitress at her aunt's restaurant, unable to push herself to open her new cafe with her BFF. When the town council decides to resurrect the teen beauty pageant, Lila is drafted as a judge since she won the pageant many years before. When another judge is murdered, Lila's cousin Bernadette looks like the most likely suspect. Although the two cousins have a rocky relationship, they join forces to find the real killer and clear Bernadette's name.

This is the author's second mystery and she wrote it during the pandemic and admits that it's not as light-hearted as the first one. I still found it to be enjoyable. I worked with Mia's mom at the Chicago Public Library for many years and they are a lovely family. We are all so proud of Mia!

Halo-halo is a Filipino dessert made with fruits like coconut, banana, and jackfruit, fruity gelatin, ube (which is purple yam, although I've seen recipes that omitted the ube and substituted mangoes instead) and shaved ice. Traditionally, you're supposed to mix it together before eating it so you get a taste of everything in a single bite.

A dish of halo-halo

Three Girls from Bronzeville: a Uniquely American Memoir of Race, Fate, and Sisterhood by Dawn Turner

March 11, 2022

Three Girls from Bronzeville: a Uniquely American Memoir of Race, Fate, and Sisterhood by Dawn Turner

Three African American girls grew up on Chicago's South Side in the historic Bronzeville neighborhood in the 1970's. They attend a good school and spend their childhood with the promise of greater opportunities, rights and freedoms than their parents and grandparents had. But as they begin high school, they go off in wildly different directions that include loss, displacement, drugs, alcholism, teen pregnancy, and murder.

The author is a journalist and novelist and the book is well-written. She published her novels under the name Dawn Turner-Trice, but when her marriage broke up, she began using her family name for her nonfiction writing. Turner went on to graduate from the University of Illinois, marry, and have a child, while her sister died young of alcoholism and her best friend went to prison for murder. It may have been a very different story if one of the other girls two had written it. 

Historic homes in Bronzeville

Fairy Tale by Stephen King

October 5, 2022

Fairy Tale by Stephen King

Charlie Reade is a high school student who lives down the hill from the neighborhood "psycho" house (every neighborhood had one when I was growing up). A reclusive old man named Howard lives there with his "vicious" dog. On his way home from school one day, Charlie hears the dog barking frantically, screws up his courage and goes to investigate. He finds Howard on the ground, having fallen from a ladder. He calls 911 and offers to care for Radar, who turns out to be a sweet elderly dog, while Howard is in the hospital. He quickly falls in love with Radar and continues to care for her (yes, Radar is a girl) and also for Howard when he comes home from the hospital. When Howard dies a few months later, he leaves everything to Charlie, including the source of his wealth, and Radar. But before his death, Howard tells Charlie a bizarre story about a parallel world where there is a sundial that can turn back time. With Radar's time rapidly coming to an end, Charlie sets out to find the mysterious world and save Radar.

Spoiler alert: Radar the dog is fine at the end of the book. As a librarian, this is the question I am most often asked when there is a dog in a book: is the dog okay?

The first half of the book is really good, with all the things that we love about Stephen King: great characters with well-imagine backstories, a search for redemption and a promise to fulfill, a worthy quest, and a wonderful dog. Second half, not so much. As long as Charlie is on his quest to save Radar, the story is great. Once SK delves into the darker disturbing side of the fairy tale world, it becomes a much different story. It's like King had ideas for two different books and decided to mash them together. I wish he had ended the book with the end of Charlie's quest - it still would have been over 300 pages long.

King said he wanted to write something during the pandemic that made him happy. If the imagery in the second half of the book made him happy, the pandemic went on a little too long. I shudder to think about what goes on in his mind. Stephen King fanatics won't care, they'll read anything he writes. Still, the first half of the book is worth the price of admission.

Love the cover art of Charlie, Radar, and the well.

The Deadliest Sin by Jeri Westerson

March 9, 2022

The Deadliest Sin by Jeri Westerson

London 1399 - At the Boar's Head tavern, where they are relaxing over a mug of ale and catching up on the political gossip, Crispin Guest and Jack Tucker are summoned to a London priory. Two nuns have been murdered in a manner that suggest the Seven Deadly Sins. Meanwhile, Crispin's old friend Henry Bolingbroke, now Duke of Lancaster, has returned to England to overthrow his cousin Richard II and take the throne. Will Crispin back the king or will he join Duke Henry's forces and commit treason - again?

This is the last of the Crispin Guest books, and I'm so sad. Westerson does wind in the threads of Crispin's story in a good way. Hopefully the author will have a new series for Crispin's fans - maybe Jack will become the Tracker 2.0?

Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for providing an eARC.

Coronation of Henry IV (I don't know which one is Crispin)

Crossroads by Jonathan Franzen

March 5, 2022

Crossroads by Jonathan Franzen

The Hildebrandt family is a fucked-up mess. The father is the assistant paster at one of those mega-churches, tired of his wife Marion, ogling one of the parishioners, and feuding with the youth pastor. The wife has a dark secret of her own (maybe more than one). They have four kids: the oldest is obsessed with sex and wants to quit college and enlist in the army and go to Vietnam; the daughter is in the middle of first love; the second son is 10 years old, brainy, drinks gin and sells 'Ludes at school; and the youngest, Judson, who is the only one with any redeeming qualities so of course, he's practically ignored for the whole book.

Annoying, unlikeable, uninteresting characters, focused on petty shit. This is supposed to be the first of a trilogy, but in my opinion, he doesn't need to write anything more about these people. Way WAY too long. Needed a good editor. Took too long to set up any kind of story (because there really isn't a plot). As much as I loved Franzen's first book, The Corrections, all of his books after that first one have been kind of boring. 

A mega-church

The It Girl by Ruth Ware

October 3, 2022

The It Girl by Ruth Ware

When Hannah Jones was a student at Oxford, her glamorous uber-rich roommate April was murdered. Hannah found her body. The college porter was arrested and convicted and received a life sentence in prison. Ten years later, the ex-porter dies in prison and instead of being relieved that a really bad person is gone, Hannah decides to have a lot of drama over it. Then it comes out that the porter may not have been guilty after all.

For the last 10 years, there have been a bunch of suspense/psychological fiction books with "girl" or "woman" in the title, featuring unreliable narrators who drank a lot and had bad habits (which were at least fun). Now they all have mommies or about to be mommies as the main character, which is a trend I'm not loving. Too much time is spent focusing on being a mommy and not on the mystery. One of Ware's previous novels, The Lying Game, was about four school friends who did something bad while they were in school - one of them has a baby now and a lot of time is spent feeding the baby, changing the baby, walking the baby, looking for the baby's stuff, etc. Maybe the author is fascinated with being a mommy. Me, not so much.

Nothing new here - the storyline was predictable except for the ending. I skimmed the last half of the book. Lotsa drama. I don't recommend this one. I think I'm done with Ruth Ware.

The set-up also reminds me of The Secret History by Donna Tartt, a much better book, about a group of brainy wealthy college students who adopt a scholarship kid into their group, and one of them ends up dead. Same situation but more interesting.

April is THIS kind of girl