Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng

Lydia is dead. But they don't know this yet.

With this powerful opening, Ng sets up an equally powerful story about family, difference, expectations, and pressure.

Within the first sentence, we know the Lee daughter, Lydia, is dead. We know more than her family does. As they find out about her death, we find out their secrets, their heartbreaks, and their pasts. We learn what they want for each other, and what each wants for themselves. And we learn what brought Lydia to her death, as well as how she felt about her life.

Ng is an excellent writer who beautifully handles difficult topics and issues. While this is a sad book, it also has wonderful moments of hope, and is well worth a read.

Dream House by Marzia Bisognin, Killing the Poormaster: A Saga of Poverty, Corruption, and Murder in the Great Depression by Holly Metz, and The Semester of Our Discontent by Cynthia Kuhn

I received ARCs of these three books from the publisher in exchange for honest reviews. This did not affect my opinions of the books, or my reviews themselves.

In Dream House, Bisognin introduces readers to Amethyst, who stumbles onto the house of her dreams while caught in a storm. The owners invite her inside out of the rain, but when she wakes up the next morning, the owners are gone, and she is alone in the house. Or is she? And why does she feel such a strong compulsion to stay?

I was intrigued by the premise of this book, particularly the mystery surrounding the house, and the promise of the paranormal. However, the book was merely okay.

The writing style was fine, but the book seemed to stretch on longer than needed, with repetitive descriptions of the house and its rooms. I also predicted the big twist ending about halfway through the book, and while there were still some minor twists that were surprising, I felt the main reveal was telegraphed pretty obviously throughout the story. This could be because I read so many mysteries, and watch a lot of paranormal TV and movies-this book did feel a bit familiar, like something I had read or seen before.

I wouldn't necessarily recommend this book, but I also wouldn't tell readers not to pick it up. Just go in knowing that it most likely won't be the mysterious, surprising young adult horror novel you were hoping for.

Killing the Poormaster recounts the tragic tale of Joe Scutellaro, a man accused of killing his city's poormaster, who was in charge of handing out relief aid to the unemployed. But this book is also about the time in which Scutellaro found himself, the time of the Great Depression, when a person could starve to death because they were denied relief aid to buy food, when a man was looked down upon for needing help from the state, when those in power had a strangehold over the lives of those with no power.

These are issues that still haunt America today, and Metz makes their relevance then and now felt. She has clearly done her research, and is able to lay out the murder, the trial, and the overarching themes and events with a clear, concise, and illuminating writing style.

Give me a cozy mystery with a literature professor as the protagonist, and I'm in, especially when it's one who is researching mystery authors and teaches a Gothic Literature course, going as the woman in the wallpaper (from The Yellow Wallpaper) to a faculty Halloween party.

This was a really fun read, full of unique and differentiated characters, a mystery that began almost right away and didn't let up, and lots of great literary and teaching references.Kuhn captures both the fun and the work of being in the teaching profession, and highlights the sometimes-cutthroat (quite literally in this book) world of academia.

Lila Maclean, a very likable and strong protagonist, is a new hire at a college, and is immediately thrust into a mystery when she stumbles on the body of a colleague. The mystery is unpredictable, and well-written, and as the bodies pile up, the stakes get higher.

This is a series I definitely want to read more books in.

What We're Reading Wednesday! Plus A Murder Over a Girl Review

I'm currently reading:

This is one of my current reads for ARC April-this would be the one I have going on my phone for when I walk my dog. It's a cozy mystery centered around a pie shop, but I'm not loving it. There's more magic than mystery right now, but I'm going to keep reading to see if I end up liking it more.

Another read for ARC April (this one is my Kindle read), and I'm liking this one more. I'm not loving it yet, I think due mostly to the writing style being a little underwhelming, but the plot is a really interesting one. The book is centered around a girl who stumbles onto her exact dream house during a storm, and is invited to stay the night there. But when she wakes up, the other occupants are gone, and strange things start happening around her.

This is my last current read for ARC April (I've embarrassingly had this on my shelf since it was an ARC in 2012), and is my before bed book. It's nonfiction, and chronicles the case of a man accused of murdering the poormaster, who was in charge of handing out public aid in the 1930's. Metz examines not only the case itself, but the societal, political, and financial aspects of the time period as well. I'm almost done with it, and it's a well-written book.

Finally, this is my non-ARC April read. I just started it tonight and am finding it absolutely delightful. It's a modern retelling of the classic Emma by Jane Austen.

What are you currently reading? Is it something you would recommend?

***

I received an ARC of this book from the publisher in exchange for a honest review. This did not affect my opinion of the book, or my review itself.

This was a frustrating, heartbreaking, infuriating, tragic, terrifying read that I could not put down. 

It is the situation the readers must engage with-the murder of a young transgender girl, in her classroom, by a young male classmate-that brings up all these emotions. As a teacher myself, and an ally for LGBT rights, the idea that people could not only defend the murderous actions but make the victim out to be responsible for her own death, was at times almost more than I could handle. I found myself getting so angry the farther I got in the book, and I still feel that anger now, hours after I read the last page.

Corbett, a psychologist himself, does a good job of highlighting the complexities of the case. His research, courtroom observations, and interviews cover the childhood abuse the perpetrator suffered, the conflicting arguments for trying a juvenile offender as an adult, and the constructs of gender and racial identity in our modern culture. 

Where Corbett goes astray, in my opinion, is the sections where he starts philosophizing. When he is writing about what he has seen during the trial, his writing style is on point, making the reader feel like they are there with him. But when he allows himself to go off on tangents about what he personally thinks regarding the topics he is covering, his sentences become overly flowery, convoluted, and sometimes even preachy.

I reacted to this book the way I did, at least in part, because of what I bring to the table in terms of my own personal beliefs and experiences. Not every reader may respond the same way. But regardless, this is an important read, particularly as we live in a time when these questions of guilt, violence, culpability, and identity are at the forefront of our society.

Top Ten Tuesday: Ten Bookish Accounts to Follow on Social Media

As always, Top Ten Tuesday is hosted by the wonderful The Broke and The Bookish !


Instagram has become one of my absolute favorite places to immerse myself in the awesomeness that is bookish social media, so here are ten of my favorite Instagram bookish accounts!

1) MaidensofMurder

2) NotAWastedWord

3) Bookish.Mel

4) LittleBookWormig

5) MissBooktacular

6) PerpetualPages

7) Stellette_Reads

8) RewriteThisStoryBlog

9) TheCozyBookHaven

10) BookMarauder

London's Glory by Christopher Fowler

I received an ARC of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. This did not affect my opinion of the book or my review itself.

This has been a Bryant and May couple of months for me. I went from never having read any of Fowler's stories to becoming a big fan of this unusual detective duo and their compatriots at the Peculiar Crimes Unit.

London's Glory is a collection of Bryant and May short stories, all styled around different famous mystery styles. From the locked room, to "the killer is one of us" to the spy thriller, Fowler tackles them all with prowess and a sense of wry humor that keeps everything feeling fresh and new. As a mystery lover, it was especially fun to see a new spin on some of my favorite classics.

I would recommend this book for anyone who loves mysteries. There is pretty much guaranteed to be at least one story to fit every mystery reader's preferences, though I would bet readers will find themselves enjoying every story in this collection.

You don't need to have read any of Bryant and May before to pick up this book. There may be inside jokes or asides you miss (I'm sure I did, having only read one full-length Bryant and May book myself before reading this collection). But this is still an enjoyable, engaging, and creative group of stories that is both an homage to, and a new take on, the classic mystery tropes we all know and love.

Wedding Cake Murder by Joanne Fluke

I received an ARC of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. This did not affect my opinion of the book or my review itself.

What I Liked:

• The food competition! I love cooking competition shows, so I loved all the included (fictional) reality show moments.
• The mystery! Once it got started, it had a lot of suspects, and a lot of twists and turns.
• The dessert descriptions! I was craving cookies, cakes, and pies the whole book.
• The characters! They are generally very likable, and those that aren't get their just desserts (pun very much intended).

What I Didn't Like So Much:

• The bad jokes. Imagine my bad pun from above, but over and over, and given multiple lines of dialogue.
• The delayed mystery. The murder didn't actually occur until almost halfway through the book, not ideal when the book has murder in the title and is billed as a mystery.
• The dropped story lines/wrapped up too quickly story lines. Yes, this book has both. Hints are dropped that something is off about the main character's fiance, but that is never followed up on. Two other characters are in love with the main character, but seem to become her true friends almost instantaneously after she explains to them how much she loves her fiance, and they even agree to be in her wedding party.

I had expected to love this book, given how much I've heard about Joanne Fluke and her many Hannah Swensen cozy mysteries. But while I did enjoy the book (particularly once the mystery got going), I found myself disappointed. This book was fine, but nothing special. There are a lot of other cozy mystery series I will be picking up instead.

Skinny Dipping With Murder by Auralee Wallace

I received an ARC of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. This did not affect my opinion of the book or my review itself.

This is an absolutely delightful, fun cozy mystery.

The protagonist, Erica Bloom, is wonderfully strong, flawed, and funny. She has been lured back to her hometown (which she fled not long after the infamous incident at the Raspberry Social) by her mother, who needs her to pretend to be a licensed psychologist at her women's retreat.

When she stumbles on a body, Erica initially wants to solve the murder so she can get out of Otter Lake and back to her life and job, where she feels in control. But Erica soon finds herself both drawn to and irritated by her former high school crush, who is now the sheriff, and is determined to solve the mystery before he does.

In lesser hands, this plot and its characters could have become outlandish. But Wallace writes with a deft touch, and keeps the story funny and the mystery full of twists without the book getting out of hand.

I look forward to reading the next book in the Otter Lake series!