Spelling the Month in Books: August

Okay, I couldn’t stick to my “books read before I started blogging” theme—titles that start with U aren’t that common, and I had two of them this month. But I did go for books that I read a few years ago, anyway. The problem with this post is that I want to take a break from everything I’m doing to re-read these (and their sequels/other entries in the series) today.

	Au Revoir, Crazy European Chick Joe Schreiber’s YA thriller is about what you’d expect from this title. It’s a fast, light, thriller about a high schooler stuck taking an exchange student to prom. It turns out that she’s a little more than the shy geek he imagined. Okay, she’s a lot more than that.
	Updraft Fran Wilde’s book is too hard for me to describe in a sentence or two—this is a wildly imaginative novel brimming with great worldbuilding, a strong story, and memorable characters. It’s not quite the book that will make you believe a man (or young woman, in this case) can fly—but you’ll hope it was so.
	Gone, Baby, Gone Dennis Lehane’s fourth novel was my introduction to both him and his Kenzie & Gennaro. And it made me an insta-fan. It’s a great piece of P.I. fiction, a gripping story that’ll break your heart and haunt you for a long time to come (24 years so far for me).
	Unseemly Science The second novel in Rod Duncan’s Fall of the Gas-Lit Empire series takes a lot of what was established in the first book and blows it up so that the characters are driven to new strengths and adventures and so that readers’ expectations are surpassed. Espionage and strange science take this steampunk/gaslamp adventure in a direction that few in this genre go.
	The Stepsister Scheme Jim C. Hines’s repurposing of these fairy tale princesses is one of my favorites—he takes Cinderella, Snow White, and Sleeping Beauty and turns them into secret agents who are defending the kingdom with their wits, magic, and martial arts. There’s a little bit of humor, but he doesn’t play this for jokes. This book sets up a series of four re-imagining of these (and other) fairy tale/Disney princesses that The Mouse definitely wouldn’t approve of.
	Tonight I Said Goodbye Michael Koryta’s debut blew me away—PI Lincoln Perry and his partner/mentor Joe Prichard are hired to investigate the apparent suicide of an investigator and the disappearance of his wife and daughter. Lincoln and Joe soon find themselves up to their neck in danger from the Russian mob. I’ve read this two or three times over fifteen years ago, so my memory is pretty vague, but I remember being gripped by the story and the characters—and thinking that three sequels to this were not enough. Koryta’s gone on to bigger and better things—but I’d take another book with these characters any day.