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?

Back next week

Reader,

I'm afraid that I won't be able to post you a review this week, but fear not! One is coming. It's been tough to read without turning on my flashlight, and the sound of pages turning wakes the bats.

In the meantime, reader, I need recommendations. If you have a book that you would like to see reviewed - a book you love, a book you hate, a book containing a coded message with the location of a safehouse in chapter 7 - leave a comment or send me an email at read.spoilers@gmail.com. I would love to hear from you.

-A

P.S. Follow me on Goodreads if you are so inclined, and if you like this blog, reader, tell your friends about it. Also, I need a social media manager. If you want to be that, let me know. It's hard to publicize when one is in hiding.