Category: F-J Page 8 of 26

Not Awkward by Matthew Hanover: Moving On by Looking Back

This is a little (pun unintended but embraced) awkward to write—I served as a beta reader for this and had intended to wait until the final version was published to say anything. But Hanover asked, so here we go. Many things may (and have) changed from the draft that I read and what will be published in a couple of months, so I’m not going to get into some of the particulars that I want to until then, and I know what the final version will be like. Hopefully, this isn’t too vague as a result:


Not Awkward

Not Awkward

by Matthew Hanover
Series: Wallflowers, #3

Beta Version
2021

Read: May 9-18, 2021

What’s Not Awkward About?

I’m assuming I’m not the only one who finds themselves in a situation like this—I halfway expected to find a Jeff Murdock monologue about this, but alas… You go to an event of some kind because of family obligation, an acquaintance, your Significant Other’s employer—not because you really want to, but you feel you should. Once there, you stay an adequate amount of time and try to make your excuses and leave. But the host or someone talks you into staying for a little longer, and a little longer after that. While you may not be actively hating the experience, you’re certainly not enjoying yourself much and are looking for an opportunity to make a tactful exit.

This is pretty much the situation that Scott finds himself in. But rather than a birthday party for your second cousin you haven’t seen in a decade, Scott finds himself as a guest at his ex-girlfriend’s house while they sit shiva for her father. Recently fired and about to get married, Scott felt like he should go to the funeral for the man who always treated him so well. One thing led to another and Leila’s mother compelled him to stay for a night, which turns into another, and another…

Scott’s fiance, Charlotte, is off for a bachelorette’s week with his sister and Charlotte’s closest friend, Quinn. So there’s nothing for him to go home to, and he can search for jobs from Leila’s as well as anywhere. So he sticks around as emotional support (and/or emotional punching bag, depending on Leila’s understandably shifting moods require), and finds himself with an opportunity to get the closure he didn’t realize he needed and maybe even an explanation for why she dumped him out of the blue six years ago. Or maybe, something else will end up happening between the two.

Speedcubing

A few months ago, one of the local newscasts had a feature about an area resident who used to take part in Rubik’s Cube competitions on a pretty high level, it looked back on his competitions and “does he still have it?” No, he doesn’t. But he’s still faster than at least 96% of anyone who’s ever solved one.

So when we learn that Charlotte is a speedcuber, going to competitions, posting videos to social media, my mind immediately went back to that and I was in. Most readers aren’t going to have that particular background, but Charlotte’s hobby (for lack of a better word, but it’s not quite right) is going to make her stand out in readers’ minds—how often have you come across a character who does that? What I appreciated most about the Rubik’s cube thing is that was it starts out as a character quirk, but by the end, Hanover finds some thoughtful things to do with it—revealing something about the character (and a little more).

The Sister Factor

A mistake that readers like me can make is to think they’ve figured out all a writer’s moves, I really thought I had a handle on the role of “protagonist’s sister” in Hanover’s books. So when Quinn shows up pretty early, I sat up and paid attention to her. Which is when I noticed that Quinn is going to serve another role in this novel. She’s not an antagonist, but she’s certainly an obstacle for both Charlotte and Scott to overcome.

She’s been best friends with Charlotte since childhood—and try as she might, she’s still having trouble shifting from being Charlotte’s best friend to her best friend and brother’s significant other/future sister-in-law. I wasn’t entirely sold on this particular arc, but it helped us get a different look at Scott and his love life, and in the final third or so of the novel, it really paid off.

Along the same lines, Hanover hasn’t given us a protagonist’s brother before. I really didn’t care for this one—but I wasn’t supposed to*, he was written in such a way that it’d be hard to like him at all. But Scott and Quinn having an older brother is a new dynamic for Hanover and it works pretty well.

* And I won’t even get started about his wife.

The Interconnectedness of It All

In Not Dressed, Hanover alludes to a couple of characters and events from Not Famous, but here in Not Awkward he goes a lot further—the characters and events actually show up in the text. Sure, it’s done in such a way that people who haven’t read the other books won’t be short-changed when it comes to understanding this novel. But if you have read them, you’ll appreciate the way that Hanover has woven them into these pages.

It’s a great way to make a reader smile when they recognize something. But better, it’s a fantastic way to touch base with characters from one of those books. “Oh, look X got engaged.” Or “hey, Y and Z will be working together.” We also get to see characters like that in a different setting and from a different perspective. Rather than having to go through the bother with writing a whole new novel about one of Not Dressed‘s characters, with a few scenes in this (that move the plot along and help us understand Scott better), we see that character in a whole new light and it may change what you think of some parts of that other book.

Again, I stress—if you haven’t read his other novels, or if you don’t remember the details, it won’t matter at all.

Eep! A Conservative!

There is a character in this book who is a political conservative who works in politics (in more of the pre-2015 mold, I should stress), but this is a non-political book. The fact that they are conservative is mentioned a few times, and two (I think—no more than three) positions are mentioned. There are no debates, explanations, or arguments for the positions.

I mention this only because in our current climate, a lot of readers (from all over the political spectrum) run for the hills when politics come up. There is no need for that here—it’s brought up occasionally, but not in any kind of detail. No political position is ever endorsed or supported, or discussed in any kind of depth.

So, what did I think about Not Awkward?

While this is a lighter read, as is the norm for a “lad lit” novel—it’s not as funny as Hanover’s earlier works. That said, there are a couple of moments that are comedic gold. Slap-stick humor is difficult to pull off in print, but Hanover makes it look fairly effortless.

At at least three points in this novel, I assumed I knew how the rest would play out, “Oh, it’s going to be ____ kind of a story.” And I was wrong each time—thankfully. Instead, Hanover has given us a different kind of story than he has in the past, a subtler one, a more mature one.* One still infused with his trademark warmth, heart, and appeal. But there’s more going on, there’s a little ambiguity about some things. Experience is making a better author out of Hanover.

* Although I would have been satisfactorily charmed and entertained by the kind of story he’s given us before.

There were aspects of the story or characters that I wasn’t crazy about—but I’m not going to get into that at this point, because I don’t know what will happen to those things between the beta stage and the final version (although I was told about some directions he was going and that made me feel better). Maybe I’ll update this when the final version is out—maybe I won’t, we’ll see how much I care once it hits. But whatever quibbles I might have had, that’s all they were, quibbles. And they paled in comparison to the novel as a whole.

Because I wanted to think carefully about this novel, I wouldn’t let myself read more than 10-15 percent of it a night. That was hard. I wanted to read the whole thing in one sitting—and easily could have. I literally had to force myself to stop reading each time I picked it up so I could send my feedback and do other things. But I wanted to keep going, I had such a great time with these characters, this story, and Hanover’s writing.

Somewhere in there is Hanover’s secret—no matter what dumb, reckless, obnoxious, or (have to say it) awkward thing his characters do, you like them. You can’t help but do so. Scott said a couple of things in the first chapter that really made me wonder if I wanted to go through an entire book with him. By the third, I was pulling for the guy. This goes for Leila, too—not only did she break Scott’s heart six years ago, but she didn’t even tell him why. But in no time flat, you’re hoping she’s doing okay after her father’s death and you feel bad for the situation she finds herself in. If it’s bad enough that she talks Scott into sticking around…

And I’ve gone on far too long here. I need to wrap things up.

Not Awkward is a warm and heart-filled story about revisiting the past, finding healing (whether or not you thought you needed it), and embracing a future that doesn’t look like you expected it would (and is probably better). It’s the kind of book that’ll make you feel a little better about life for a while—and who doesn’t want to read something like that?


4 1/2 Stars

The Friday 56 for 5/7/21: A Wanted Man by Rob Parker

The Friday 56This is a weekly bloghop hosted by Freda’s Voice

RULES:
The Friday 56 Grab a book, any book.
The Friday 56 Turn to Page 56 or 56% on your ereader. If you have to improvise, that is okay.
The Friday 56 Find a snippet, short and sweet.
The Friday 56 Post it

from 56% of:
A Wanted Man

A Wanted Man by Rob Parker

We go through all the names quickly, and Jack identifies each one as one of his father’s friends or family members. He can’t identify a couple of them, but the picture is already clear. The first phone is for personal use only – a useful tool for organising the dualities of the life he had chosen.

That poses the inevitable question of the twenty-six names on phone two. Call signs or numeric pseudonyms for twenty-six people who clearly got the special treatment. How best to find out who they are, though? And of course, what was that third phone used for, if not for business or personal? That makes me question if there’s a fourth, that perhaps he had one with him when he was taken. I could ask Jack, but all three phones are identical. ‘IPhone 4S’ in black, ‘32GB’ it says on the back of each. There’s no telling them apart. Even the home screen wallpapers are the same.

Dead Secret by Noelle Holten: Maggie Has to Juggle Several Balls at Once—Can She Keep it Up AND Catch a Killer?

Dead Secret

Dead Secret

by Noelle Holten
Series: DC Maggie Jamieson, #4

Kindle Edition, 448 pg.
HarperCollins Publishers, 2021

Read: April 23-26, 2021


Before I dive in, I’d fully intended on having this posted five days ago, but I had to keep trashing paragraphs because I’d wander into a spoiler or three, and by the time I’d sanitized them enough to post, they were worthless. This has resulted in a shorter post than I expected, and one that may not feel up to my typical thoroughness for this series. There’s a lot to chew on in this novel—more than anything since Dead Inside—but this isn’t the place to talk about it.

The team were deflated – long nights, no solid leads – morale down – they needed to catch a break.

While they waited for more information, Maggie spent the majority of her day chasing up the curfew company, cross-referencing the prison tattoos – which was proving to be a very tedious job – and chasing up Social Care.

While waiting on hold, she recalled a conversation she’d had with her brother about how funny she found it that a large majority of the public believed that everything in a murder investigation was so exciting and moved quickly because of the way that it was portrayed in movies and TV – however a big part of her job focused on calls, computer work, research, and reports. She wished it was the opposite!

What’s Dead Secret About?

The book opens in the final fleeting moments of a young man’s life, he’s scared, beaten, bloody, and desperate for help. And then he’s no longer scared or desperate again. Found in a woody area near an industrial estate, his face has some dots drawn on it, but aside from that, there are no other clues—assuming they are one.

Maggie and the rest of her team have barely begun to get into this investigation when their DI drops a bomb on them—their DCI has gone missing. It’d been a couple of days since anyone had heard from him, so some officers went to check him—they found no one at the home but did find evidence that a violent crime had been committed there. Given their staffing levels, they couldn’t have some detectives work the missing persons cases and others focus on the homicide, so each detective on the team would be involved in each. Watching the detectives try to balance these cases—which primarily means not dropping everything to focus on DCI Hastings and his family—is good to see, and a needed reminder that actual detectives frequently have to juggle multiple cases at once—unlike their fictional counterparts.

Meanwhile, the domestic abuse shelter that Lucy Sherwood has been trying to start is on the verge of opening. But days before, a “battered and semi-conscious woman in her doorway” led her to get an early start. The young woman doesn’t speak at the beginning and appears to be reading lips when dealing with the paramedics. She won’t interact with the police, however. It is impossible not to feel all kinds of sympathy toward this woman—and Lucy definitely feels that way. This storyline is a fantastic way to follow up on Dead Inside, the first book in the series, and show how far Lucy’s comes since then and why her center is needed.

Realism

One thing that seems to jump out at the reader of this series is how authentic the procedural elements feel. Sure, events and characters are heightened, clearly played for greater narrative tension, and the like. But you can’t avoid how real this world, characters, and situations seem. Like the general public in that quotation above, novel readers are frequently given just “the exciting” portions of the procedural, but here, we see the drudgery, the combing through reports, and endless research before substantial advances in the investigation are made. While showing the reader that research and paperwork characterizes modern policing, Holten still allows her characters to have small maverick streaks that propel the action forward a little faster than the actual procedure can.

Along the same lines, all I know about the British probation system comes from this series and Helen Fitzgerald’s Worst Case Scenario. I think if I did, I’d have a better appreciation for scenes in each of these novels. Lacking that (and the drive to do research), I just have to assume that Holten was paying attention during the almost two decades she worked as a probation officer and is giving us something fairly reality-based.

One Random Thought

There are six times in the novel that “youths” is used, like: “youths in the area”, “gang of youths”, and so on. Maybe it’s a cultural thing, but I couldn’t help but laugh. It was like Maggie had been replaced by Schimdt. It’s not worth mentioning, really. But in a book as grim as this, you take the smiles where you can get them.*

* See also two surprising, but effective, TV references. I don’t remember this series doing that.

Give Her a Break

Several times throughout the novel, Maggie thinks about how tired she is—and how little downtime she’s had between major cases. She didn’t get a lot of time between these cases and the previous books (although she had even less between Books 2 and 3). Maggie needs to catch her breath if she’s going to be any good to anybody. Her personal life is a mess, and I’m worried that her professional life is close it one, too. Her physical and mental reserves have to be beyond spent—and you can’t help but wonder as you read this book (and the previous one) if she wouldn’t have picked up on something sooner if she’d been coming at things with a fresh mind.

It’s not much of a spoiler to say that Maggie isn’t going to get a whole lot of downtime before Book 5’s case takes over her life. But what comes after that? As far as I can tell*, this is intended to be a five-book series—so hopefully Maggie gets to take that holiday she’s been thinking about. Even more hopefully, we get to have at least a few more books with her.

* I’m prepared to be shown that I’m wrong—and hope I am.

So, what did I think about Dead Secret?

I’m a fan of this series—so obviously, I went into this book expecting to like it. But any reader knows that sometimes those expectations aren’t met. Thankfully, it wasn’t long at all before I knew Holten had, once again, provided her readers with a great read.

You’ve got a pretty grizzly beating death to start off with and then you the police’s natural inclination to focus all resources on the missing DCI—and them not necessarily wanting to follow all the evidence that points to the DCI not being the kind of man they all thought. Just those two storylines would be enough. But then Holten throws in that third storyline—here’s a person in desperate need of help, a survivor of (as far as anyone can tell) of domestic violence—a reminder that policing isn’t about arrests, it isn’t about only maintaining social order—it’s about people like this woman who showed at Lucy’s front door, it’s protecting and serving the public. This is the kind of thing that both (fictional and real) civilians and the (fictional and real) police need to be reminded of, and here it elevates the rest of the novel by its presence.

I’d largely figured out who the killer was and how it was happening pretty early on. I wasn’t prepared for the motive behind the killing until it was clear. Holten also did a good job of revealing enough for readers who wanted to identify the killer early while at the same time writing things clearly enough that even people who didn’t want that revelation would be able to enjoy the novel.

This is Holten at her best—I also see this having better commercial appeal than the previous novels in the series and I hope I’m right. Can you read this without having read the previous three novels? Yes. I think you’d be better off starting with the first book, but the important thing is that you start somewhere with this series.


4 1/2 Stars

The Friday 56 for 4/21/21: Dead Secret by Noelle Holten

The Friday 56This is a weekly bloghop hosted by Freda’s Voice

RULES:
The Friday 56 Grab a book, any book.
The Friday 56 Turn to Page 56 or 56% on your ereader. If you have to improvise, that is okay.
The Friday 56 Find a snippet, short and sweet.
The Friday 56 Post it

from Page 56 of:
Dead Secret

Dead Secret by Noelle Holten

(a little long, but couldn’t see a way to shorten it)

When the steam came out of the spout, Ronnie picked up the kettle and then poured the boiling water on her arm.

What the hell?

Ronnie didn’t even flinch. It was like she didn’t feel any pain. She placed the kettle back, used a tea towel to dry her arm, and covered it up with the sleeve of the cardigan. Vicki turned and looked at Lucy. They waited until they saw Ronnie leave the kitchen, and Lucy stood and headed to the kitchen.

Maybe I was wrong.

At the counter she touched the kettle.

Ouch!

She sucked her index finger and turned on the cold tap, holding the sore digit beneath the running water. Lucy looked up at the camera and raised a brow. She knew Vicki would be watching.

Junkyard Bargain (Audiobook) by Faith Hunter, Khristine Hvam: Shining Takes to the Road for the Next Step

Junkyard Bargain

Junkyard Bargain

by Faith Hunter, Khristine Hvam (Narrator)
Series: Shining Smith, #2

Unabridged Audiobook, 5 hrs., 40 min.
Audible Originals, 2021

Read: March 2-3, 2021

The Law was uncertain. Vengeance wasn’t.

What’s Junkyard Bargain About?

Shining Smith needs to gear up and improve her weapons and armor if they’re going to take on the task they have ahead of them. This means traveling to Charleston, and selling some of the junk from her scrapyard, and making the right deals.

Standing in their way are rival bike gangs, corrupt police, sex slavers, and random other criminals. Whatever else happens—Shining isn’t going to allow those slavers to hang on to their captives (and likely won’t let them hang on to their lives, either). She needs to avoid the police, strike careful deals with the gangs, and survive the rest—all the while she’s noticing changes in her cats and expands the control Shining’s won enhancements have on those closest to her.

It’s really hard to explain without pretty much recapping everything in the first book.

How’s the Narration?

In short, Khristine Hvam is the perfect reader for Hunter’s work. She gets how Hunter’s mind works, she knows how to bring the characters to life and how to infuse them with the right kind of humanity. You read enough of an author’s books and it’s just impossible to think of anyone else doing it. Just not sure what else to say about her work.

So, what did I think about Junkyard Bargain?

After Junkyard Cats took several unexpected turns in the latter half, I didn’t know what to expect from this beyond more of the same. This novella may have ended up where it seemed to be heading from the beginning, but the route it took bore so little difference to what was expected that it’s hard to recognize that. Hunter is filling this post-apocalyptic world with more dangers and strangeness than we’d been exposed to last time, and you know the next installment will increase the danger.

When talking about the last book, I said that it was too brief and not deep enough. This isn’t the case this time—and not just because it was 40 minutes longer. This time it felt like there was a solid match between depth and time—to the point I wondered how she fit it all in the novella-length book.

There were some great action scenes, some solid surprises, and good character development. And…cats with telepathy. I can’t wait to see what #3 has in store.


3 Stars

2021 Audiobook Challenge

Pub Day Repost: Smoke by Joe Ide: What Happens When Isaiah Quintabe Leaves LA?

Smoke

Smoke

by Joe Ide
Series: IQ</a, #5

eARC, 336 pg.
Mulholland Books, 2021

Read: February 8-12, 2021
Grab a copy from your local indie bookstore!


Not that any of the previous IQ novels have been cookie cutters of the rest, but this really feels less like an IQ novel than I was ready for. In fact, it felt* like this was more of a Juanell Dodson novel for most of it. When Isaiah left town at the end of Hi Five, he left his friends behind. But their problems didn’t leave with him, they all have to step up and take care of things now without him. But the way they go about taking care of these problems is heavily influenced by Isaiah—he might not be playing an active role in most of the storylines in this book, but this is still his book.

* Yes, I said “felt like,” I could be wrong. This isn’t the kind of blog where you’re going to find me doing word counts to prove things like this.

The LA Stories

Grace is trying to get over Isaiah and focus on her art. She’s got a show coming up and needs to get some more paintings ready—that’s all that matters.

But while she and Isaiah know they’re over—most people don’t (and some of those who do know, believe it’s temporary). When someone that Isaiah helped put away gets back to town and is looking for a little payback, he only hears that Grace is Isaiah’s girl. Which puts her right in the cross-hairs.

Deronda’s life is going great—she’s getting some media attention for her success (which is only serving to build that success), her food trucks are doing great, and her son is fantastic (just ask Deronda, she’ll tell you). But then someone comes along to help himself to a share of that success and uses Janeel as his tool. Deronda goes nuclear and tries everything she can think of to stop this.

Grace tries to help—and gets one of Isaiah’s former clients involved, too. And even Dodson gets in on it. There’s nothing about what they try or the solutions they come up with that Isaiah would have done. In fact, I’m pretty sure he’d have seen some of the problems with her theories and stopped Deronda before she tried to act on them. But for fear of repeating myself, without Isaiah’s influence on the three of them, none of them would’ve tried anything like they did.

Cherise has had enough of Dodson’s bouncing around from opportunity to opportunity, trying to make some money, but with no stability. He needs to grow up and get a real job, and to help with that, she’s arranged for an internship at a local advertising agency. Dodson isn’t interested at all in this, but she’s not negotiating.

So he shows up for the first day, and something clicks. He thinks about the way Isaiah had approached goals in his life and applies it in his way to this situation. It wasn’t quite a “What Would Isaiah Do?” thing, more of a “How Would Isaiah Do This?”

Now there is zero percent of the Dodson storyline that is Crime Fiction. It’s about character development, character growth—it’s a transition point for Dodson. Yet this is my favorite part of this Crime Novel. Because it’s Dodson going through all this. Also, as Dodson pops up in their storylines to help Grace and Deronda, he gets plenty of Crime Fiction action.

There’s a fun part of this storyline where Dodson, who started as Isaiah’s Dr. John Watson, now becomes an Eliza Doolittle figure. Cherise’s mother, Gloria, who tries to equip him into someone who could make it in the Corporate World. On the one hand, I felt bad for poor Dodson—this wasn’t easy for him—but man, it was funny. We also got Dodson’s commentary on Pop Music and TV—which is not to be missed.

The LA stories interweave, Grace helps Dodson, Dodson helps Grace, Dodson chips in with Deronda…and so on. IQ is mentioned, he’s talked about and he even converses with some of them—but not about the challenges they’re dealing with (and vice versa) in this novel. He’s as removed from their stories as possible. Yet, without him, without his influence in their lives—none of this would’ve happened. So it absolutely was still part of an IQ novel, even if it was for all intents and purposes IQ free.

Isaiah’s Story

Isaiah’s trying to be IQ-free, too. He’s pulled up stakes to get away from the enemies he made in Hi-Five, and away from everything else, too. He’s decided he wants a new life. He wants nothing to do with the violence, the depravity, the danger that has so characterized the last few years of his life.

Which, of course, means that despite his best efforts—and really by dumb chance—he’s brought into a hunt for a serial killer by one of the least likely, least credible people we’ve encountered in this series.

While I did say this felt like Dodson’s book most of the time, at one point the Isaiah/Serial Killer story took over—and we see heroism and depravity on display (not quite in equal parts, but we get an excess of both). As much as Isaiah has said he wants away from this life—when the chips are down, he finds a way to try to stop another murder, at great risk to himself.

The final confrontation can be seen as darkly comic or as intensely human and maybe even realistic to an extent you don’t usually see. There’s a visceral desperation to it—everyone involved seems to believe on some level that they’re doomed, but they press on anyway. It’s harrowing really.

So, what did I think about Smoke?

This really feels like a transition novel—probably for the series as a whole, and definitely for all these characters. In a book or two, it’ll be easier to see (not that it’s difficult now) exactly what role this is going to play in things, but choices are made, steps are taken that insure wherever Isaiah ends up, he’s going to be a different man than he was in Hi-Five, ditto for everyone else. I’m particularly looking forward to seeing where Dodson is. Hopefully, he’s still going in the direction he started to move in here.

But that’s for 2023. What about the 2021 novel? While Ide seemed to be writing with an eye to the 2022 and 2023 novels, he also produces a fine read in Smoke. There are a lot of balls in the air, a lot of Point of View characters (those we know and those we only meet here). There are blasts from the past and new characters that we could be seeing in the future.

And while we get some very strong resolution to just about everything in the novel, there’s a cliffhanger at the end that makes it difficult for me to say most of what I want to say. It’s a complete novel, this isn’t just a book that you read so that you have to read the next. But I tell you what, when you finish you want that next IQ novel now.

I think it says a lot about the kind of world that Ide has created that his main character can only show up in 50±% of a novel/its stories and the novel to still be as strong as any of the others. The series isn’t about Isaiah (and other characters) now. It’s about Isaiah, Grace, Dodson, and Deronda—and their families, no matter what the series is called. I love that evolution, that development.

I think existing fans will find their enthusiasm for this series rewarded. I think new readers are going to want to grab the earlier novels to fill in how the characters got to where they are. Either way, people who pick up Smoke are in for a treat.

Disclaimer: I received this eARC from Mulholland Books via NetGalley in exchange for this post—thanks to both for this.


4 Stars

This post contains an affiliate link. If you purchase from it, I will get a small commission at no additional cost to you. As always, opinions are my own.

Smoke by Joe Ide: What Happens When Isaiah Quintabe Leaves LA?

Smoke

Smoke

by Joe Ide
Series: IQ, #5

eARC, 336 pg.
Mulholland Books, 2021

Read: February 8-12, 2021
Grab a copy from your local indie bookstore!


Not that any of the previous IQ novels have been cookie cutters of the rest, but this really feels less like an IQ novel than I was ready for. In fact, it felt* like this was more of a Juanell Dodson novel for most of it. When Isaiah left town at the end of Hi Five, he left his friends behind. But their problems didn’t leave with him, they all have to step up and take care of things now without him. But the way they go about taking care of these problems is heavily influenced by Isaiah—he might not be playing an active role in most of the storylines in this book, but this is still his book.

* Yes, I said “felt like,” I could be wrong. This isn’t the kind of blog where you’re going to find me doing word counts to prove things like this.

The LA Stories

Grace is trying to get over Isaiah and focus on her art. She’s got a show coming up and needs to get some more paintings ready—that’s all that matters.

But while she and Isaiah know they’re over—most people don’t (and some of those who do know, believe it’s temporary). When someone that Isaiah helped put away gets back to town and is looking for a little payback, he only hears that Grace is Isaiah’s girl. Which puts her right in the cross-hairs.

Deronda’s life is going great—she’s getting some media attention for her success (which is only serving to build that success), her food trucks are doing great, and her son is fantastic (just ask Deronda, she’ll tell you). But then someone comes along to help himself to a share of that success and uses Janeel as his tool. Deronda goes nuclear and tries everything she can think of to stop this.

Grace tries to help—and gets one of Isaiah’s former clients involved, too. And even Dodson gets in on it. There’s nothing about what they try or the solutions they come up with that Isaiah would have done. In fact, I’m pretty sure he’d have seen some of the problems with her theories and stopped Deronda before she tried to act on them. But for fear of repeating myself, without Isaiah’s influence on the three of them, none of them would’ve tried anything like they did.

Cherise has had enough of Dodson’s bouncing around from opportunity to opportunity, trying to make some money, but with no stability. He needs to grow up and get a real job, and to help with that, she’s arranged for an internship at a local advertising agency. Dodson isn’t interested at all in this, but she’s not negotiating.

So he shows up for the first day, and something clicks. He thinks about the way Isaiah had approached goals in his life and applies it in his way to this situation. It wasn’t quite a “What Would Isaiah Do?” thing, more of a “How Would Isaiah Do This?”

Now there is zero percent of the Dodson storyline that is Crime Fiction. It’s about character development, character growth—it’s a transition point for Dodson. Yet this is my favorite part of this Crime Novel. Because it’s Dodson going through all this. Also, as Dodson pops up in their storylines to help Grace and Deronda, he gets plenty of Crime Fiction action.

There’s a fun part of this storyline where Dodson, who started as Isaiah’s Dr. John Watson, now becomes an Eliza Doolittle figure. Cherise’s mother, Gloria, who tries to equip him into someone who could make it in the Corporate World. On the one hand, I felt bad for poor Dodson—this wasn’t easy for him—but man, it was funny. We also got Dodson’s commentary on Pop Music and TV—which is not to be missed.

The LA stories interweave, Grace helps Dodson, Dodson helps Grace, Dodson chips in with Deronda…and so on. IQ is mentioned, he’s talked about and he even converses with some of them—but not about the challenges they’re dealing with (and vice versa) in this novel. He’s as removed from their stories as possible. Yet, without him, without his influence in their lives—none of this would’ve happened. So it absolutely was still part of an IQ novel, even if it was for all intents and purposes IQ free.

Isaiah’s Story

Isaiah’s trying to be IQ-free, too. He’s pulled up stakes to get away from the enemies he made in Hi-Five, and away from everything else, too. He’s decided he wants a new life. He wants nothing to do with the violence, the depravity, the danger that has so characterized the last few years of his life.

Which, of course, means that despite his best efforts—and really by dumb chance—he’s brought into a hunt for a serial killer by one of the least likely, least credible people we’ve encountered in this series.

While I did say this felt like Dodson’s book most of the time, at one point the Isaiah/Serial Killer story took over—and we see heroism and depravity on display (not quite in equal parts, but we get an excess of both). As much as Isaiah has said he wants away from this life—when the chips are down, he finds a way to try to stop another murder, at great risk to himself.

The final confrontation can be seen as darkly comic or as intensely human and maybe even realistic to an extent you don’t usually see. There’s a visceral desperation to it—everyone involved seems to believe on some level that they’re doomed, but they press on anyway. It’s harrowing really.

So, what did I think about Smoke?

This really feels like a transition novel—probably for the series as a whole, and definitely for all these characters. In a book or two, it’ll be easier to see (not that it’s difficult now) exactly what role this is going to play in things, but choices are made, steps are taken that insure wherever Isaiah ends up, he’s going to be a different man than he was in Hi-Five, ditto for everyone else. I’m particularly looking forward to seeing where Dodson is. Hopefully, he’s still going in the direction he started to move in here.

But that’s for 2023. What about the 2021 novel? While Ide seemed to be writing with an eye to the 2022 and 2023 novels, he also produces a fine read in Smoke. There are a lot of balls in the air, a lot of Point of View characters (those we know and those we only meet here). There are blasts from the past and new characters that we could be seeing in the future.

And while we get some very strong resolution to just about everything in the novel, there’s a cliffhanger at the end that makes it difficult for me to say most of what I want to say. It’s a complete novel, this isn’t just a book that you read so that you have to read the next. But I tell you what, when you finish you want that next IQ novel now.

I think it says a lot about the kind of world that Ide has created that his main character can only show up in 50±% of a novel/its stories and the novel to still be as strong as any of the others. The series isn’t about Isaiah (and other characters) now. It’s about Isaiah, Grace, Dodson, and Deronda—and their families, no matter what the series is called. I love that evolution, that development.

I think existing fans will find their enthusiasm for this series rewarded. I think new readers are going to want to grab the earlier novels to fill in how the characters got to where they are. Either way, people who pick up Smoke are in for a treat.

Disclaimer: I received this eARC from Mulholland Books via NetGalley in exchange for this post—thanks to both for this.


4 Stars

This post contains an affiliate link. If you purchase from it, I will get a small commission at no additional cost to you. As always, opinions are my own.

A Few Thoughts about Forged by Benedict Jacka

Forged

Forged

by Benedict Jacka
Series: Alex Verus, #11

Mass Market Paperback, 294 pg.
Ace Books, 2020

Read: December 17-22, 2020
Grab a copy from your local indie bookstore!


The whole time I read this, I kept thinking, “How do I write something about this?” More than a month and a half later, I’m still not sure.

Book Blurb

I’m so unsure what to say, that I’m not even going to attempt to summarize the setup. I’ll just steal the back of the book:

To protect his friends, Mage Alex Verus has had to change–and embrace his dark side. But the life mage Anne has changed too, and made a bond with a dangerous power. She’s going after everyone she’s got a grudge against–and it’s a long list.
In the meantime, Alex has to deal with his arch-enemy, Levistus. The Council’s death squads are hunting Alex as well as Anne, and the only way for Alex to stop them is to end his long war with Levistus and the Council, by whatever means necessary. It will take everything Alex has to stay a step ahead of the Council and stop Anne from letting the world burn.

Not Quite Fully-Formed Thoughts

I was blown away by the first novel in this series, Fated back in ’12. The cover caught my eye, the pull-quote from Jim Butcher on the front put it in my checkout stack at the Library. I was impressed enough that I bought the paperback almost immediately. And the series has been an auto-buy for me since. Here we are at the penultimate novel and so much of my loss for words is attributable to not knowing what he’s going to do with the events of this book.

Yes, it’s a complete story—we even get introduced to a new character. But I’m not sure what any of the events will actually mean for Alex/the series, so my judgment feels like it’s in limbo. If he does X, Y, or Z in Risen, well, sure it’ll be worth it. But if he goes in another direction…I just don’t know.

I’ve read four Urban Fantasy series from start to conclusion. Anna Strong, The Hollows,* Kitty Norville, and The Iron Druid Chronicles. If you stand back and take in the series as a whole, the first three had a very similar arc, and the IDC had a different one. It sure seems like Jacka’s taking a more IDC approach. If I’m right, that puts things in the last couple of books in a certain kind of light, and I can evaluate them on that basis. If I’m wrong (to some extent) it puts those things in a different light, and I’ll think about them differently. At the moment the book is in a pretty “is the dress white and gold or black and blue” kind of place for me. I don’t usually say that kind of thing about a book, I normally know what I think about a book without wondering too much about the future of the sequel/series. But I can’t help it this time, even if it feels like a cop-out.

Which is not to say that I think there’s a superior way for Jacka to land this plane—I’m confident he’s going to nail the landing regardless.

* Yeah, sure, that was temporarily concluded, but let’s pretend that Harrison didn’t come back for the sake of this paragraph

So, can I say anything? Yeah. This was the most violent of any of the books, Alex knows full well that this is the endgame for something, and has nothing holding him back. I’m sure that in many ways the Alex Verus of the early series wouldn’t do what he’s doing now, and wouldn’t want to. But things have changed him, and he doesn’t have time to waste pulling his punches.

Alex is running out of choices—an odd thing for a diviner. He’s burnt a lot of bridges lately—many of which I held out hope that he could repair. Instead, he burnt them to the ground, gathered the ashes, stomped on them, and then scattered them to the four winds. I’m not sure that he has a whole lot of moves left—if Alex is the King on a chessboard, it truly seems he’ll be checkmated in just a couple of moves.

I enjoyed this book, I don’t particularly like the choices that Alex is making—but I get why he’s making them. I don’t particularly like the choices Jacka’s making, either—but I think he’s probably doing the right thing for the series.

I’m not sure what else to say, really. Come back this fall after Risen and I’ll probably be a bit more definitive.

There was another realisation too, something that was harder to explain. I had the feeling that Morden was going to survive all this. He wasn’t aiming to settle grudges and wasn’t seeking the crown, and because of that everyone else would always have someone they wanted dead more badly than him. When this was over he was going to be walking away, back to the forests and streams of his shadow realm and to his new group of disciples. The same wasn’t likely to be true for me.


4 Stars

This post contains an affiliate link. If you purchase from it, I will get a small commission at no additional cost to you. As always, opinions are my own.

Dead Perfect by Noelle Holten: A Desperate DC Races to Save Her Friend’s Life

This is one of those that I struggled for over a week to finish. I can only hope it’s coherent. The short version: Get this book. Read this book.

Dead Perfect

Dead Perfect

by Noelle Holten
Series: DC Maggie Jamieson, #3

Kindle Edition, 449 pg.
One More Chapter, 2020

Read: December 30, 2020-January 2, 2021

What’s Dead Perfect About?

So, Dead Wrong left us with:

‘Just had a call come in. Police are on the scene. Body of a female has been found. Initial description sounds just like your friend Dr Moloney. I’m so sorry, Maggie …’

Obviously the important thing there is “sounds just like,” because it isn’t Moloney* but the body looks so much like her, that no one can be blamed for assuming it was Moloney. It’s quickly determined that it’s not her, but Maggie and Kate Moloney’s colleagues are having difficulty finding her. Making sure that the tension is as high as it can get in a first chapter.

* That’s not a spoiler, it’s in the blurb, which I should’ve read before diving in.

But even before we get to that, there’s the Prologue. It seemed ominous but fairly typical. Then I looked up one word that I didn’t know, orbitoclast, “A surgical instrument for performing transorbital lobotomies, resembling an icepick.” Then I reread the Prologue and got seriously creeped out.

Kate’s located (and given a talking-to about keeping her phone with her), the body is identified, but that just clarifies the issues at the heart of the investigation. We knew Kate had a stalker, and it seemed like the stalker was getting more intense, more threatening. There’s almost certainly a connection between the murdered woman, the stalker, and Kate. But Maggie has to prove that before they can act on it.

So Maggie and her team dive into the murder investigation, but Maggie’s attention is divided between finding out what happened to this woman and preventing the same thing from happening to Kate. This is probably not the best way to tackle the problems, but it’s not like Maggie is going to let either objective out of her hands.

And then another body is found.

Maggie’s State of Mind

It’s been a while since things were stable for our series protagonist, she’s been caroming off emotionally and mentally challenging cases for so long that she’s got to be close to unraveling. She’s barely had her chance to catch her breath from the events of Dead Wrong before she’s plunged into this race to save her friend’s life.

Add in the pressure of the press, getting used to the shift in the dynamic between her and friend/new boss, and her personal life—she’s not in the best headspace for this (or any) investigation. I think it’s starting to show, she makes some errors in judgment, she’s not dealing well with people, and unless this series is about the downfall of DC Maggie Jamieson, something’s going to have to change.

Although I can totally see Holten pulling off Maggie hitting rock bottom and trying to recover from that, come to think of it. So maybe that’s what we’re starting to see.

Supporting characters

I’ll touch on this more later, but one of the best things about the series is this great world that Holten’s creating. And it’s filled with some great characters, I have a few thoughts about some of the more prominent from this book.

We’ll start with DS Nathan Wright, he’s trying to acclimate to his new position and the way that changes the way he relates to and interacts with his team and friends—and seems to be doing it as well as you can hope. But he’s not perfect, and the transition isn’t smooth. It’s a minor thing, and I don’t imagine many authors would spend the time to do it, but I think it says a lot about the world that Holten’s creating that we see this.

That said, his team needs some more blood. and there’s a newly minted DC he’s got his eye on to help. Everyone’s very excited when Kat Everett is seconded to the investigation, and then she largely disappears. She’s eager, she’s bright, and then it’s like she doesn’t exist until the end when she plays a decent-sized role. It felt a little strange, is all I’m saying. Also, I’m not sure anyone needs a series where a “Kat” and a “Kate” play a major role, I’m just thinking someone needs a new nickname.

A reporter that made few friends, and probably a couple of enemies in Dead Wrong resurfaces. Julie Noble is well on her way to being a regular feature of this series, but for the moment, I don’t know what to think of her. I expect books four and five will solidify my impressions. She promises to be interesting—but I’m not sure in what way yet.

Lastly, there’s poor PC Bethany Lambert. She’s the unit’s go-to worker. Miscellaneous errands, thankless tasks, things requiring technological expertise, and more fall to her. I lost track of how many things Maggie threw her way to do—on top of her own assignments. I have multiple notes about how they’re working this woman to death, and even tweeted Holten about it. I’ve been assured that Bethany likes to be overworked, and that it’ll be addressed soon. But I’m telling you now if she snaps and takes out a lot of pent-up aggression on Maggie, I’ll be cheering her on.

The Killer

I’ve spent more than a week trying to write this post and failing because of this section right here. I still don’t know how I’m going to write something that I like and that doesn’t give anything away.

Sure, I could not talk about The Living Doll Killer, but Holten does something here that I feel compelled to write about. So I’m stuck. You’ll have to read the book to get the unsettling reason for the name, but that won’t keep me from using it.

We get a lot of information at some point in the novel from LDK’s own mouth. Now, I’m not sure the reader or police are supposed to believe everything told to them by LDK, but for the moment, I’m going to pretend I do.

Holten comes as close as possible to giving us a serial killer that the reader can empathize with. Sure, that’s not that close at all, but that doesn’t disprove my point.

I can say that I picked out the LDK straight off, but that’s all I got right. The “how” of the killings is bad, the “what” (abducting and killing) is disturbing, but the “why” will cast everything in a different light and somehow make it all worse (and, at the same time, almost understandable).

I can’t think of a serial killer with this kind of backstory and motivation. And for a fictional serial killer, there’s a strong “Yeah, I can imagine reading about this in the paper” kind of vibe. When I talked about her debut, I said that “Holten writes humans, not caricatures or types.” That applies to LDK, too.

The World Around Maggie Jamieson

This is the Maggie Jamieson series, and she is the core of it. But Holten has put her in the middle of a complex world. We touch base in this book with characters from the first two books—particularly from the first book, and we see a lot of growth and development. These people have put in the time and effort to change their lives and move on from the nightmares we met them in.

The way Holten has set up the series guarantees it won’t just be DC Jamieson and her boss (and the rest of her team) bouncing from investigation to investigation, they’ll brush up against these people, focusing on them for significant periods.

I really appreciate this design and am eager to see how it’s developed.

So, what did I think about Dead Perfect?

I got sucked into this story fast, and if anything above sounds critical, it’s only because I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about them (and talking about three or four niggling points out of one hundred is more interesting to write about than fanboying over the other 96 or 97). I was quickly invested in what was going on—and was soon thankful that it wasn’t Kate’s body in the opening chapter.

And yes, I was convinced that Holten had killed her off at the end of Dead Wrong.

I had many, many opinions about how Maggie and Kate were behaving over the course of this investigation (positive and negative), and sincerely wished that DS Wright would have sat them down in his office and talked some sense into both of them. I’m not sure that I usually spend quite as much time talking back to books about what protagonists are doing/thinking as I did in these pages.

And then the reveals about LDK? Didn’t see any of them coming (other than the one I mentioned). I love it when an author does that.

And then, just like she did last time, Holten doesn’t let you fully absorb and reflect on the conclusion of the novel without hitting you with an image that makes you want the next book now, not in a few months.

So what did I think about it? It was great. I need Book Four next week, and probably Five a couple of weeks after that.


4 Stars

Pub Day Repost: Bone Canyon by Lee Goldberg: Eve Ronin Digs Up Bones, Secrets and Ugly Truths in this Great Follow-Up

Bone Canyon

Bone Canyon

by Lee Goldberg
Series: Eve Ronin, #2

eARC, 288 pg.
Thomas & Mercer, 2021

Read: December 20-23, 2020
Grab a copy from your local indie bookstore!

What’s Bone Canyon About?

A wildfire was wiping out good swaths of L.A. County as the last novel wrapped up. Now, just a few weeks later, several things that were hidden pre-fire have been exposed—some of those things are human remains. Eve Ronin and her partner are called out to the site of one such discovery. They’re able to identify the remains, they belong to a young woman who’d reported being raped and soon disappeared six years previously.

Eve assumes there’s a link between the rape, disappearance, and her death. This is solidified when it’s determined the woman was murdered. Even if it proves untrue, she needs to start her investigation somewhere, so she starts by looking over the initial investigation and is less than impressed with the way it was handled. So, she plunges into re-investigating the rape and disappearance while also trying to get a handle on this murder. It’s not long before she’s getting pressured to drop the rape angle.

When another group of remains is found in the same general area—these belonging to an older woman, things get more complicated. How many murderers is she looking for?

Duncan “Dunkin’ Donuts” Pavone

I only gave Eve’s partner four sentences in my post about Lost Hills, I think I should’ve spent a little more time on him, I have a sneaking suspicion that he’s the secret weapon in this series. He seems like a Spenser’s Frank Belson-type (I have to admit I see Ron McLarty, TV’s Belson, in my mind during his scenes). He’s a slob, constantly covered in crumbs (donut or otherwise), cynical, seemingly lazy—but at heart a dedicated and good detective. Watching him at work in the interrogation room should be enough to make anyone doubt the image he projects.

When we first meet him, he’s got his eyes on his retirement date and is counting down to it, which is why he’s saddled with the homicide detective no one wants as a partner. He seems to tolerate Eve and will sprinkle some tips and cynicism her way. But that’s about it. By the end of the first novel, there’s more than toleration at work. By the time Bone Canyon opens, he’s really trying to mentor her, trying to guide her, and prepare her as much as possible for her future (not that he’s obvious about it, or even willing to admit it, but it’s there). In a lot of this novel, it’s clear that he cares for Eve as a partner, and is likely more concerned with the future of her career than she is. He won’t necessarily agree with all of her wild theories, but he’s at least willing to entertain them, to look for evidence to back them up.

It’s a nice shift, and if she can win Duncan over, there’s reason to hope that she can get others in the Department to work with her.

While I’d been hoping that Goldberg would find a way to keep him in the series after his retirement (somewhere around 100 days after this novel), I wasn’t sure he would. I guess I’m still not positive that he will, but Goldberg provided a way to do so. I’m relieved—Eve needs a cop she can trust in her life, even if he’s retired.

Which leads me to:

Cop or Politician?

Several times, superiors in the Sheriff’s office, a friendly D.A., and her own mother accuse Eve of playing political games with this case for her own career advancement. In Eve’s mind, she’s not making political moves for her own gain, but for the sake of the case. It’s all about justice for the victims, she insists. She doesn’t trust anyone in the Department, so she has to go at things in her own way.

Sure, she made some moves circumventing the chain of command to keep things moving, to prevent leaking and anyone stopping her. But she denies being overtly political about this, and only admits it in retrospect. Which I found a little odd, remembering something she thought about the Harry Bosch audiobook she was listening to in Lost Hills:

[Bosch’s] problem, she thought, was that he didn’t know how to play politics. She’d already proven that she could.

As much as Eve thinks of herself as a loner—due to circumstances forcing her into the role, rather than that being her nature—there are events here to teach her that ain’t necessarily true. She’s never going to win any popularity contests (Duncan will testify that she’s unlikeable), but if she pays attention, Eve’s going to find more allies. She doesn’t have to be Renée Ballard.

* We know she’s a Harry Bosch fan, I wonder what Eve thinks about Ballard.

…or Is She a Media Star in the Making?

The other thing that’s constantly being thrown at Eve is her social media stardom—the viral video that got her promoted into the Homicide Division was just the start. Someone leaked video of her heroics at the close of the previous novel which just compounded things for her. So many of her fellow detectives and deputies just assume she’s all about getting fame and glory for her own advantage (many of these people are just jealous and would do whatever they could to get a share of her fame so they could cash in on it). It’s truly the last thing she wants, unlike the other accusation.

Ironically, her family is pushing her to embrace this notoriety and cash in on it (mostly for their selfish benefit, not her good)—and both an agent and a TV Writer/Producer are circling her. Everyone’s telling her that a series/movie is going to happen no matter what, if she wants any influence on how it happens, she has to sign up.

Goldberg had already firmly established that this series takes place in the shadow of the Entertainment Industry, would-be actors, film crew members, bona fide stars, and others (like a fellow detective) wanting to get into the industry. So this subplot doesn’t feel out-of-place at all, it’s the world Eve Ronin deals in.

I really like this aspect of the story—as long as it doesn’t become too dominant—and watching Eve try to figure out how to use her notoriety to help (or at least, not hinder) her police work is as interesting as watching her figure out how to survive as a political animal.

Now, that’s a nice touch…

There’s a little treat for readers of Goldberg’s Ian Ludlow series. I loved it. But if you’re not reading that series, don’t worry, you won’t even realize that you missed something.*

* Still, I should take a beat to ask you why you aren’t reading the Ian Ludlow books. You should fix that. Click here to see what I’ve had to say about those.

So, what did I think about Bone Canyon?

This rocked. I think it was a step up from Lost Hills, which I’m pretty sure was the best thing Goldberg has written. He does all the same things that made Lost Hills a success and then progressed them a little bit. I raced through these pages—both because the prose invites you to and because I just had to see how it all ended.

Eve’s a great character—she’s flawed, she has a lot to learn, but she has potential as a detective and is driven to fulfill that potential. Her cases are twisty enough to keep you guessing and turning pages. and Goldberg’s writing is at his best.

I liked Lost Hills enough that pre-ordered this book as soon as I could, and have already done the same for the third book, knowing only its title (I’d buy books 4 and 5 right now, too, for what it’s worth). They’re that good—and I think you’ll likely agree. Jump on the Eve Ronin train, you’ll be in for a great ride.

Disclaimer: I received this eARC from Thomas & Mercer via NetGalley in exchange for this post—thanks to both for this, but aside from giving me something to opine about, this didn’t impact what I said.


4 1/2 Stars

This post contains an affiliate link. If you purchase from it, I will get a small commission at no additional cost to you. As always, opinions expressed are my own.

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