Back soon, I hope.

Reader,

If you are reading this message, then my postcard made it safely to my ghostposter and she has hit "Publish."

Here is what I can tell you:

- I am in a safehouse.
- I am alive.
- I do not have access to the internet.

Whenever possible, I will be smuggling handwritten reviews to my trusted ghostposter. In the meantime, readers, if you see a woman in the village marketplace wearing a wide-brimmed hat and asking about books - shhhh.

Don't tell anyone you saw her.

Love,
Adelaide

P.S. Agent Hawthorne - I know you're terribly afraid of glacial ice, so I'll save you a painful part of the investigation - no, I'm not in Nuuk safehouse. You're welcome.

The Accident Season. Rating: Divine.

"There are no ghosts; only the dust in the light, our breath and the wind in the quiet, and the feeling that something, or a lot of somethings, are watching us."

I realized, reader, that I haven't been reviewing enough Young Adult fiction. This may give you an inaccurate impression of my reading habits. I love YA - I'm proud of how the market is growing, and I'm impressed by the huge strides YA authors are making in terms of inclusivity and character diversity. I'm proud to say that I've sought refuge in the homes of more than one YA author (they tend to have the best music and food, for what it's worth).

Most of my favorite YA books don't really feel like YA to me. In general, I love books that are very, very good, and those tend not to rely too much on the drama of what an adult remembers high school to have been like. I enjoy human stories, and good YA treats teens as humans, and tells their stories - stories that include mental illness and questions of identity and love and sex and murder.

I'm not elucidating this particularly well. This is why I rely on Ashley S. for the meatier YA reviews - because I'm not great at unpacking what separates good YA from bad YA from good any-other-books. So, reader, if I'm reviewing YA on here, it's probably because I think it's very, very good, on its own and within its genre.

Either that, or I'm reviewing it because I think it's very, very, very bad.

Accident Season by the fearless Moïra Fowley-Doyle...

...is very, very good.

 Here is your premise: Once a year, for a month, Cara's family is subject to accidents. All kinds of accidents, ranging from the negligible to the awful. They don't know why - it's just what happens. And nobody ever talks about it.

This book is not about that. Not really. That's a framing element, but really, the book is about the family and their past and their present and all of the entanglements of growing up in a family where something like that could be accepted as normal. A family where lots of things can be accepted as normal.

A couple of things before I get into the meat of this book: First, the speculative/paranormal element was absolutely integral to the story in so many ways. The important aspects of the plot are grounded in reality, but the entire tone of the book is like looking through old leaded glass: just a little wavy and warped by the fantastic. It's a very Irish sort of speculative fiction, in which fantasy is just part of reality, and that's how it is, and that's okay.

Second: this book has the best drunkenness I've ever read. There is a scene in which our narrator is drunk - not just tipsy, not your poorly-written 'oops I tried beer for the first time' drunk, but really and truly I've-been-drunk-before-and-I'm-drunk-now drunk. The writing gets choppy and wobbly and everything is moving just a little too fast and it's written absolutely perfectly.

Now to the meat of it, which isn't about the speculative element and isn't about getting drunk, no matter how beautifully written those parts are. The real story is about looking away from things. About ignoring the fact that something isn't right. Because isn't it wrong to have a month out of the year during which people get hurt and die, and nobody knows why? And yet Cara's family lives with those injuries, and doesn't discuss them.

This is going exactly where you think it's going, reader, and it's incredibly well done.

Now, for spoilers.

This is a book about child abuse.

This is a book about abuse, period.

This is a book about self-harm.

This is a book about sex and relationships and all the different ways that people find themselves in love.

Oh, also: there's a ghost, who admits that some of the accidents were accidents. She is pretty important to the story, reader, but she's not the focus of the review so I'll just say: she's written perfectly, brilliantly, a round of applause to Moïra Fowley-Doyle for handling her story so well.

At the end of Accident Season, Cara looks at all the things she's avoided looking at - all the things everyone in her family has refused to look at. These things aren't approached as a Big Reveal - instead, we walk with the characters as they finally put the pieces together. Things they should have seen all along - but instead, they looked away. They finally look directly at the fact that Cara's ex-stepfather sexually abused her sister - a sister who now hurts herself and who seeks out men that hurt her. Cara's best friend finally looks at her love for that same sister, and the sister looks back. Cara and her ex-stepbrother (it's complicated) finally admit that they're in love with each other, and have some great physical scenes (reader, this book, it's so good).

Cara's mother - and her whole family - finally admit that not all the accidents were accidents. They will need to struggle with that, because for so long, it's been easier for them to pretend that every time someone showed up with a broken bone or a black eye or a cut on their wrist - oh, it's just the accident season.

And they will struggle. And they will still, at the end of that struggle, be a family who finally looked at each other.

Rating: Divine. 

Possible ratings: Magnificent, Divine, Satisfactory, Tiresome, Lamentable, Execrable. This is a blog about words, what rating system did you expect?

I'll Meet You There. Rating: Divine (Guest Post by Ashley S.)

Reader,
The brilliant Ashley S. returns with another guest review! One comment from me to augment it: I haven't read the book, but I find the cover upsetting. Using words that are not related to the title on a book cover always bothers me - this one reads as if titled "I'll Meet You There No Vacancy Motel Pool" - but what the hell, that's just me.

In other news, reader - I suppose I should say 'readers' - according to my metrics, you now number in the thousands. That's... crazy. And exciting. And only a tenth of my pageviews come from law enforcement agencies! Thanks for reading, and please, by all means, visit me on twitter @ReadSpoilers.
-A


Creek View is a town, sandwiched and lost between Los Angeles and San Francisco, that will swallow its children and spit them out with broken dreams. Creek View is a town that is hot and sticky and is a little like quicksand: the more you try to move, the more it will pull you back in.

This is true for seventeen-year-old Skylar Evans, who has been dreaming of getting out of Creek View for years, and is almost there. It’s also true for nineteen-year-old Josh Mitchell who got the farthest you can get from Creek View -- Afghanistan, thanks to the US Marine Corps -- but comes back, anything but whole.

So maybe they both understand what it’s like to dig their way out of quicksand, and while neither of them knows the answer, they will spend three months at their crappy minimum wage jobs in their even crappier home town, trying to figure it out. Together.

I’ll Meet You There by Heather Demetrios...

 is a story about growing up, getting out, and moving on. It’s also about love and being broken and accepting what all those things mean. It’s honest, true to life, heartbreaking, and inspiring.

We first meet Skylar in the midst of life in Creek View. There’s a party and teenagers are getting drunk, being real, and making mistakes.

Skylar’s friends and the atmosphere of Creek View intrigued me early. Her best friend is a guy who I never once thought should be with Skyler, and she never once thought of him in any way romantically and it was so refreshing. I’m not saying relationships like this do not exist in YA, I could point you in the direction of some (Veronica Rossi’s Under the Never Sky trilogy and Tahereh Mafi’s Shatter Me series), however, it’s nice to see. And if you’re looking for the importance of female friendship, look no further. I’ll Meet You There has that, too, in the form of Dylan, a teenage mother who has no problem with her life in Creek View. She’s fierce and loyal and a beautiful contrast to Skylar and Chris’s desperate itch to get out of there.

And the youth of Creek View? They’re honest, the truest, and most realistic depiction of teenagers I’ve seen in awhile. They’re in a more conservative and low income area of California, struggling because of location and lifestyle, but they’re still real. I still saw them in my white, suburban teenage years.

Another hook was plunged into me in the form of Josh Mitchell. Josh was in Afghanistan but now he’s back all broken and incomplete, both mentally and physically. He’s missing a leg and suffering from PTSD and it all adds up to a parade of pills he has to take and a new life to navigate.

And life isn’t easy for Skylar either, roadblocks put up in the form of her mother’s depression and poverty. Now there’s Josh, who calls to her with a mixture of intrigue, love, and the urge to care for him. It’s sweet and haunting, much like Skylar and a lot like Josh.

Josh and Skylar’s story is told through both of their POVs. The switch back and forth between them is striking and lovely; Josh’s thoughts in big blocks of scattered runoff sentences and Skylar’s metaphors and pretty words contrasting beautifully. There are big feelings and even bigger missteps between two people who are just trying to figure out life and each other in very different ways. It’s easy to fall in love with both of them and with their depth and honesty,  you can’t help but root for them.

I’ll Meet You There is an honest look at two broken people and how they figure it all out together. It’s eye opening and true to veterans and others combating with mental illness, for people who feel lost and stuck, and for those whose bodies don’t work like everyone else’s. It shows us that what works for one, won’t work for another, that surrogate family members come in all different forms and for different reasons. It shows us that mistakes are okay and being broken is even more so.

It shows us that everything will be fine, even if it’s different.

Now, for Spoilers.

Because of the nature of the book, there’s no big twist ending or anything for me to reveal to you that will make you gasp and rip your hair out. But, what a lovely ending and I will tell you all about it because it still did surprise me.

Skylar’s back and forth whether she can leave her mother in the arms of a man she hates and still mentally unstable, ate at me the entire book. I didn’t want her to give up her chance at SF State because I was sucke dinto this world of hatred for this life like she was. But Josh is here! Josh is in Creek View, and as Skylar falls in love with him, he becomes another thing to keep her there.

But, she goes. She totally goes, you guys! Josh stays behind in Creek View to get himself better (with a gift from Skylar) and helps her drive up to San Francisco and start her new life. They’re still together, they totally kiss and have sex and it’s just as real, honest, and romantic as the rest of the book, but she goes off to start her life, and I just take that to mean that when Josh is ready, he joins her. And they’re happy and she’s a great artist and Josh does whatever makes Josh happy and they kiss a lot and try to sleep through the PTSD nightmares and just try.

That last bit is just my own wishful speculation, but it’s also right because I say it is.

Rating: Divine. 

Possible ratings: Magnificent, Divine, Satisfactory, Tiresome, Lamentable, Execrable. This is a blog about words, what rating system did you expect?

Damage Done. Rating: Execrable.

"I haven't been entirely honest."

Ooooooookay, reader. It's that time. We've been avoiding it, but it's here.

It's time for us to talk about Gone Girl.

I loved Gone Girl. You should not be surprised by this. I loved the unreliable narration, and the twisty plot, and how brilliant Amy was. I loved that all the characters were trying their best, and she still outsmarted them all. I loved that we as readers saw her as she wanted to be seen - our only view of her was from her diary, until the massive narrative turn; and then we discovered that we, too, had been duped. I loved the satirical undertones. I loved it. No holds barred, full-stop, loved it.

So many people and publishers have said to me, "if you loved Gone Girl, you'll love..." - and every time they do it, I just want to shove them off the roof of a burning building. Because, come on. We know better. None of these books are the next Gone Girl, and it's insulting to dark female writers to compare all of them to Gillian Flynn. Not because it's an insulting comparison in and of itself - Flynn is brilliant, hello - but because there's allowed to be more than one dark authoress out there.

I picked up Damage Done on the recommendation of a reader who DM'ed me on twitter saying "Did you like Gone Girl? Because this writer is the next Gillian Flynn..." My expectations were spectacularly low.

And yet.

Damage Done by the not-Gillian-Flynn-so-stop-saying-it-please Amanda Panitch...

...still managed to let me down. I almost couldn't stick it out. But I did! For you, and you alone, readers. Because I do a lot of "Magnificent" and "Divine" ratings, and I owe it to you to warn you away from the bad stuff.

Let's dive right on in.

Julia Vann (aka Lucy Black, but to avoid confusion, we'll just stick with Julia) is trying to start over after her twin brother shot and killed eleven people. She has some dark secrets about her brother, and about the shooting, and she's doing her damndest to keep them all tamped down. Her first-person narration is interspersed with diary entries written by her brother's former therapist (supposedly 'case logs,' but I know a diary entry when I see one). As she begins to develop a romance with The Cutest Guy at School, her past starts threatening her new life.

The thing that bothered me most about this book is a Huge Spoiler, so I'm going to give you the little problems up here and the big ones down there. Feel free to skip ahead if you want to know the worst of it. Until then:

Characterization in this one is weak at best. Mom's guiding characteristic, for example, is that she cleans a lot. Because she's upset, because her son shot and killed a bunch of people. That's all we really get about her. Secondary characters are not in any way fleshed out; frankly, neither are primary ones.

The romance (of course there's a romance, silly, it's YA) is almost comically unrealistic. Cutest Guy at School shoves his way into Julia's life with no discernible motivation, and just like that, he's pushing his way into her house and cooking her dinner. The relationship is heavily laden with your standard YA-romance aggressive chivalry: she says 'don't do that,' and he does it anyway, but because he's doing nice things for her it's supposed to be romantic.

Now, here is one place where I'll give Panitch a lot of credit - she wrote this boy's actions beautifully. Julia describes him as desperate for a damsel-in-distress, and deftly manipulates him using that one little trait. We've all known men like this - men who are dying to rescue someone - and Cutest Guy at School is one of them. He helps her even when she doesn't need - or want - help. She insists that she's fine with eating a sandwich; he insists that he must make her eggs.

I've been on dates with men like this. They refuse to let me carry my own purse, and push me to the inside of the sidewalk, and put their arm around me as if I can't stand up without their support. I don't need to wear a jacket, but they drape theirs over my shoulders anyway. They're always telling me to eat more. Their intentions are sweet, and they can be relied upon as getaway drivers in a pinch, but they can also be incredibly irritating and controlling. Panitch's portrayal of that nuance (you're useful, but also, could you just stop it and let me walk on my own strength) is well-done.

The sloppy execution on the romance - CGaS's chivalry aside - is mirrored by the rest of the book. Every character that isn't Julia is written as cartoonishly stupid. The police are incompetent; Julia's friends (such as they are) are putty in her hands. The therapist who treated her brother is a marionette with no sense of self-preservation. No character has clear motives for their actions; they are narrative devices, moving through Julia's life only to give her a story to tell.

Now, for Spoilers.

Here's the thing with an unreliable past-tense first-person narrator: You can't have them just come back at the end of the book and say "whoops, I lied!" It doesn't make any sense. The entire conceit with a past-tense first-person narrator is that they are telling you their story after the fact. They've given you their entire story, all at once, and handed it to you, and walked away. Maybe it didn't happen as they say it happened; but they're unreliable because they don't know that's the case, or they don't realize it until the very end (à la The Sixth Sense).

Well, here's the big twist ending: Julia is a sociopath who orchestrated the shooting so that nobody would know she was schtupping her brother. At the end of the book, Julia says "I haven't been entirely honest." She has, for some reason, lied to the reader for the previous 267-odd pages. All the times she's told the reader "I don't remember what happened that day" in her narrative - all lies, she says. "I remember everything."

This ending is not surprising, reader. The entire book sets up a pretty obvious "Julia was the killer all along" arc. I was not shocked to read that she manipulated her brother into shooting her classmates. Hell, I wasn't even surprised by the incest. I was so dismayed, though, that the author erased her entire story with that one sentence: "I haven't been entirely honest."

As soon as I saw that sentence, I had to put the book down and go for a run through the woods where I was hiding, just to burn through some of my pissed-off. She may as well have written "...and then I woke up." What followed the admission of dishonesty was a few chapters of revision: here's what really happened all that time!

Why, then, did I read the entire rest of the book? Why did I stick through the frustratingly weak characters and the underdeveloped plot?

Reader, you know how I feel about books that waste my time, and this was one of them. This structure - [most of the book] [lol nevermind] [here's the real story] - did not leave me feeling pleasantly duped the way that Gone Girl did. I can't quite describe the level of frustration that "I haven't been entirely honest" left me with, but I will tell you this: Somewhere in the woods of West Virginia, there is a tree that got kicked a lot harder than it deserved.

Rating: Execrable. 

Possible ratings: Magnificent, Divine, Satisfactory, Tiresome, Lamentable, Execrable. This is a blog about words, what rating system did you expect?

Silver in the Blood. Rating: Satisfactory.

"Night was falling, and Lou was losing herself."

Here is a list of things I lost when I began my flight:

My house on the hill, with the yellow door and the blue mailbox.
My black-and-white cat, Mr. Buble (no relation).
My red trenchcoat (too distinctive for my purposes).
My brother, Edgar, who will someday wake up from his coma to the news that I am in the wind.
My reading nook.
My comfortable chair.
My teacup collection.
My real name.

So you will not be surprised to know that I sometimes enjoy taking a break from the hard things. Some days, it's nice to read a book that is not about the horrible dark places we go. Some days, I just want to read a book in which good things happen to nice people; in which pretty girls wear pretty dresses. And also in which some people are wolves.

It's not too much to ask, is it, reader?

Silver in the Blood by the winsome Jessica Day George...

... delivers a delightful rest. Jessica Day George crafts a world of lace and corsets and ribbons and beaux and shapeshifters. Silver in the Blood is a feathery fantasy novel, filled with lovely, diverting descriptions of clothes and hair and fripperies. Our two main characters, Dacia and Lou, are sweet, strong women who sit beautifully within the filigreed society world built buy Ms. George. They are the platonic ideal of society girls, deeply concerned with decorum and appearances (but still quite clever). Both fall slightly out of their assigned social roles: Dacia is a little rebellious, while Lou is a little shy. That said, neither girl really looms as an anachronistic postmodern-feminist-in-Late-Victorian-clothing.

The plot is delightful: these two Late-Victorian society girls discover that they are part of a family of shapeshifters. What follows can easily be described as a "romp through 1890's-Romanian-werewolf society." There are stuffy aunts, and domineering grandmothers, and darkly brooding beaux, and blonde, well-meaning beaux. It is just-plain-fun. The secondary characters in the book are slightly underdeveloped, and I care not one bit. I did not find myself needing to know any of the details of Aunt Kate's mysterious love interest - it was more than enough for me to know that Lou and Dacia were scandalized by him, and then, we moved on. I did not care about the romantic interests - what I wanted to see was Lou and Dacia whispering to each other about those romantic interests. And I got what I wanted.

This touches on something that was intrinsic to my enjoyment of Silver in the Blood: the theme of Strong Female Characters Supporting Each Other. Lou and Dacia are cousins, and they are best friends, and that never changes. They trust each other, and confide in each other, and support each other, and their relationship is absolutely lovely. At the end of the book, loose romantic ends are tied up, and here is what delighted me, reader: the final scene of the book is not a steamy, romantic kiss with a man who has finally become a husband. Instead, it's the cousins, being excited for each other's happiness.

Now, for Spoilers.

You will be in no way surprised by any of this book, reader. I was so relieved to discover this: those who seem to be villains are villains, and those who seem to be heroes are heroes. Silver in the Blood is perfectly uncomplicated, as it should be. I would have been terribly disappointed had Jessica Day George attempted to shoehorn in a complex plot twist where none is needed; she did not let me down.

But, if you must have a spoiler, here's what I'll give you: Lou finds her strength. She is something that nobody thought she could be - the Smoke, a long-lost type of shapeshifter - and she goes from being a shy, wilted girl to being a strong, confident young woman. She doesn't surpass the brassier Dacia, but instead continues to complement her as they work towards an understanding of what it means to be shapeshiftresses in Late-Victorian Europe.

My hat goes off to Jessica Day George for Silver In the Blood. It was exactly what I hoped it would be - an airy-but-not-frivolous adventure for two young women in Parisian gowns.

Rating: Satisfactory. 

Possible ratings: Magnificent, Divine, Satisfactory, Tiresome, Lamentable, Execrable. This is a blog about words, what rating system did you expect?

The Suspect. Rating: Lamentable.

"You know its going to be a bad day when you are having a prostate examination and you feel both of your doctor's hands on your shoulders!"

Reader, exciting news! Did you know that Agent Hawthorne has hired a psychologist to profile me? Of course you don't. Unless you're Agent Hawthorne, or the psychologist, or the person who approves Hawthorne's expenses. If you are any of those people, then please do drop me a line - I'd love to know what you're reading these days.

The psychologist (hello, Amy!) is a lovely woman, and very smart, and I have no doubt that she'll have me all figured out in a tick. As an homage to her hard work, I decided to read a book about a psychologist who winds up working with the police. Don't worry, though, Amy - I'm sure that your shared profession is where your resemblance to the protagonist ends, otherwise Hawthorne would never have hired you.

Oh, and nothing personal, Amy - but don't expect to catch me. That's how most of these books end, but you and I are not fictional characters, and we will probably never meet. Hope that's okay.

The Suspect by the capricious Michael Robotham...

...verged on being a good book, but then, it wasn't. 

The main character, Joseph O'Loughlin, is a psychologist who winds up being asked to assist in a murder investigation. Of course, he winds up getting pulled in way over his head, his life is at risk, yadda yadda, you know the drill with these ones. The thing/other thing in this particular story: O'Loughlin has recently been diagnosed with Parkinson's, and is struggling to cope with his diagnosis. This sounded to me like it would end up being a satisfactory read - overall, bog-standard, but with perhaps some added color; I do love a nuanced main character, as you well know. I had moderately high hopes.

Alas.

Joseph O'Loughlin is a stock character. He is a psychologist who is helping to investigate a crime - we all know how that plays out. The reader is treated to a straightforward 'should I try to help the person I suspect or should I just turn them in,' 'Oh dear, this is bigger than I thought,' 'O Woe Betide the Hubris of the Psychologist' narrative. This is nothing new, reader. It's boring, and I'm not going to talk about it any more. Instead, I'm going to talk about the women of The Suspect, because they are the thing that made this go from an average book to a below-average book.

I am not one to bandy about "this book hates women." Many books neglect the development of their female characters; some of them go so far as to affront the very nature of women in literature. An underdeveloped female character will not ruin a book for me - although I cannot immediately think of a book I've enjoyed in which the female characters were left to flounder in shallow narrative waters. Here is what will ruin a book for me, reader: women as decoration, obstacle, and spectacle.

All of these assessments will go from top to toes, so I'm putting them in the spoilers. If you're stopping here because you don't want the book spoiled, I'll leave you with this: if you're looking for a good crime novel, read something else.

Now, for Spoilers.

Here are the female characters: Sainted Wife, Broken Prostitute, Dead Nurse, Abusive Promiscuous Mother. I'm not going to include analyses of Vague Former Colleague, Organized Secretary, or Age-Ambiguous Daughter, because they are so underdeveloped that there is nothing for me to grab hold of - I have literally included everything about them in their titles.

Sainted Wife: O'Loughlin's wife is described as beautiful, intelligent, charitable, vivacious, and generally lovely. The narrator goes out of his way to repeatedly draw our attention to how essentially perfect she is. Her biggest flaw: not giving her husband enough sex, because she wants a baby, and is closely tracking her cycle in an attempt to maximize the efficacy of his sperm. When shit goes pear-shaped and O'Loughlin is suspected of murder, she finds out that he had sex with Broken Prostitute, and responds with appropriate outrage. Later, when he is vindicated of the murder charge, she turns out to be pregnant and decides to forgive and reconcile with O'Loughlin. The fact that he had sex with Broken Prostitute, sans condom, and then had sex with Sainted Wife, also sans condom, is brought up during the initial confrontation and then is never mentioned again. The high stakes ("Do you know how long I have to wait before I can get tested for AIDS? Three months.") evaporate, because no reason. She is domestic, child-focused, and yielding.

Dead Nurse: The kickoff to the murder investigation is the discovery of a body: the body of a nurse, who has been killed by oodles of torturous stab wounds. We discover, through the course of the book, that O'Loughlin knew her - he had treated her for self-harm. His treatment of her included sending her home with fresh scalpel blades to ensure that she would use clean ones (remember, Amy, I think you're much smarter than him). We also discover that she had attempted to seduce him, and, when rebuffed, she had fabricated a rape accusation against him. She is unstable, manipulative, and (of course) hot for the main character.

Abusive Promiscuous Mother: This is the biggest spoiler in this review, so feel free to skip it if you're worried about that. This character is the mother of the murderer(s). At the end of the book, here's what we've learned about her. (a) She falsely accused her husband of sexually abusing her son, because she wanted a divorce and for some unexplained reason did not just divorce him. (b) She had sex with... everyone. Everyone in the world. (c) She took her son and stepson to watch her participate in orgies ("She was laid out on the table like a smorgasbord. Naked. There were dozens of hands on her. Anyone could do anything they wanted. She had enough for all of them. Pain. Pleasure. It was all the same to her"). And, last but certainly not least - (d) She forced her son and stepson to participate in the orgies themselves. She tries to have sex with O'Loughlin on her deathbed; then, cancer kills her, and the reader is meant to understand that death is the least she deserves. She is the worst kind of Oedipal nightmare; a perversion of everything a mother and a woman should be.

Broken Prostitute: This character is the one that most clearly highlighted this book's hatred for women. She only contributes to the plot in that O'Loughlin has sex with her. The description of this, by the way, gives her about as much agency as a slick palm, and in no way acknowledges the power dynamic between a psychologist and the woman who he treated when she was a fifteen-year-old-prostitute.
While this is her only participation in the plot of the book - 'person who main character sleeps with because he's sad about his Parkinson's' - she gets a high wordcount. Why do you suppose she gets space on the page, reader? You should be able to guess this by now.
Yes, indeed, it's the thing you were hoping it wouldn't be. The space afforded to this woman in The Suspect is devoted to describing her rapes. Lots of them. In plenty of detail - detail which, really, O'Loughlin (the first-person narrator) couldn't know. But why not stretch POV for the sake of delving into a narrative of multiple gang-rapes? And then, why not have her die horribly too (suffocation, in case you were wondering). After all, she exists within the narrative solely to tempt, to suffer, and (ultimately) to die.

So, that's the book. Women who are either perfect or terrible; women who want O'Loughlin's dick and/or semen; women who either bear children or die horribly. At the end of the book, the person who O'Loughlin thinks did it, did it. O'Loughlin is a hero, and his wife loves him, and they're going to have a baby together, and nevermind any of the rest of it. As we're explicitly told: he ends the book lucky.

The end, reader.

Rating: Lamentable. 

Possible ratings: Magnificent, Divine, Satisfactory, Tiresome, Lamentable, Execrable. This is a blog about words, what rating system did you expect?

The School of Essential Ingredients. Rating: Divine.

"The name for the cocoa tree is theobroma, which means 'food of the gods.' I know that chocolate is meant for us, however, because the melting point for good chocolate just happens to be the temperature within your very human mouth."



Why do we enjoy reading?

For if you follow this blog, you must enjoy reading. I don't write reviews about food or movies or different brands of lipstick. I write about books, and I write about them because I love them, and surely, reader, you come here to love books too.

I enjoy reading for many different reasons at different times. Sometimes, I enjoy reading because it makes me ask myself questions that are hard to ask and hard to answer. Other times, I enjoy reading because it opens doors inside of me, behind which wait memories and emotions I couldn't really access otherwise. And sometimes, reader, I enjoy reading because reading is home.

This last has become especially important to me over the course of my flight from the authorities. "Home" is no longer a place with a front door and a bathroom sink and a carpet that I always trip over but never remember to tack down. "Home" isn't even a car with my earrings under the seat where they fell and I forgot to pull them out. The closest thing I have to "home" these days is reading.

The School of Essential Ingredients by the sumptuous Erica Bauermeister...

...is the sun room in my new home. One might think that it would be the kitchen, but that's not the case; no, reader. It is a sun room with big windows and a deep, cushion-y, jewel-toned couch on which I might ensconce myself of a weekend. It is a sun room that's warm even in the wintertime, where I can take a steaming cup of cinnamon tea and watch the rain fall. I enjoyed this book not because it is challenging (it is not) and not because it stirs up strong feelings within me (it does not). I enjoyed this book because it is incredibly comfortable.

The prose is heavily embroidered - nothing is soft without being velvety, nothing opens without blossoming, nothing is smooth without being silken. You know the type of prose, reader. It's not a deep literary work, but it's incredibly lush.

The work is episodic - it is almost a series of short stories, divided roughly into chapters. Each story explores the life of a different character in the book; the characters are connected through a cooking class. This settling and style lets Bauermeister unleash her voice, describing food with loving care, and affording her characters the same tender affection. The result is that the reader feels cushioned by Bauermeister's writing. I have needed that cushion of late, as I've had to head literally underground to avoid stepping on the toes of a certain Federal Agent Extraordinaire, and cave floors are unforgiving mattresses.

While The School of Essential Ingredients proved inadequate as a pillow for my head, reader, it was a lovely place to set my heart while I waited for Hawthorne to give up the search.

Now, for Spoilers.

Reader, I almost did not review this book for you, because there are no spoilers. There's not really a ton of plot in this book - it's all character studies. They are all done with great care and skill, but there's nothing for me to reveal.

So here's what I did. I read the sequel.

The sequel is called "The Lost Art of Mixing," and it is just as approachable as The School of Essential Ingredients (albeit sadder in tone). In that sequel, the chef from the first book is unexpectedly pregnant, and trying to navigate the challenge of her relatively new relationship alongside the pregnancy. She deepens throughout the sequel, and by the end of the book, she is a more layered character than the first book allows.

The School of Essential Ingredients and The Lost Art of Mixing are two spots of sunshine in which a reader might curl up on a lazy Sunday afternoon. They are the foam that rests on top of a well-poured latte. They are two toasted marshmallows.

I may never come back to them, but I enjoyed sinking into them, and I encourage you to do the same.

Rating: Divine. 

Possible ratings: Magnificent, Divine, Satisfactory, Tiresome, Lamentable, Execrable. This is a blog about words, what rating system did you expect?