Mystery – Nonfiction and Nonsense

The Other Mistress by Shanora Williams

This was an interesting one. I thought it was going to be a classic story about a woman whose husband cheats on her and she wants revenge. I thought that the twist might be that things get a little out of control, maybe she murders the husband or the mistress. There were twists, but they were not the kind I was imagining.

I enjoyed this story, but I was also puzzled for the bulk of it. The twist gets revealed near the end, which is normal. But before I figured out what was going on I was irritated with the main character, Adira, for being too soft. Even with the help and support of her new friend, Jocelyn, who is all for Adira dumping her husband, which I fully agreed with, she can’t seem to let him go. She is a beautiful, successful, and very wealthy woman, who has been made stupid because of her love for a man who is absolutely not worthy of her. One thing that makes me furious in both literature and real life is a woman who is hung up on a man who is not deserving of her. But let me get into why this book had me questioning multiple things for the majority of the time I was reading it.

When the murder case that was currently the talk of the town was first mentioned I thought that it would be important to the plot. But even when it is mentioned a second time it ends up adding nothing to the overall story, it has nothing to do with the plot. It was literally filler, conversation between characters that we didn’t need. Was the author trying to trick us into focusing on it as a means of attempting to get us to not focus on the mystery of whatever is going on with Adira? Perhaps. But I just found it to be a meaningless plot that the story did not need at all because it added nothing of substance. And nothing could have distracted me from trying to figure out what was going on with that woman. Half of the reason I read this book so fast was to try and determine what was really going on.

If I read something and it doesn’t make sense to me, I am immediately suspicious. Did the author actually mean to write something that seems to make no sense, something that seems like an actual error, or was it purposeful? When Adira directly asked Gabriel about Jocelyn and nothing came of it, I was baffled. She asked him about the woman he was having an affair with, by name, then he kind of made a joke about it, and then the conversation ended. I can’t think of a single circumstance in which a person confronts their partner about an affair, the partner brushes it off, and then the accuser lets it go. She did not question him at all after he told her that he had no idea what she was talking about. But then later in the story when she asks him about it again, he admits to the affair. And she forgives him so easily! Adira was calm, too calm in my opinion, I knew something was off. When you figure out what was going on and you go back to read those two passages, plus a few others, they make sense. But for a while I was a little confused while at the same time angry with Adira for forgiving her husband too easily.

Will I read this again? No. But I will not say that it is not worth a read. It’s a good time and you can get through it very quickly. I think I was just expecting a little more darkness and danger and I was disappointed that I didn’t get it. Hopefully I will find a book like this soon, because I now find myself with a thirst.

The Book of Accidents by Chuck Wendig

Fiction

I had high hopes for this book when I first started it, but the longer I read it the less I was into it. I feel like I only continued to read it because there were some mildly interesting things going on and I just wanted to know if certain characters were going to be alive or dead at the end of the story.

The main characters of the story are wife and husband, Maddie and Nate, and their son, Oliver. Maddie is an artist, she creates sculptures from recycled materials, Nate is a cop, and Oliver is an overly sensitive teenager. At once, it is very obvious that Oliver’s immense empathy is going to be a major focal point in the novel. Also established early on is how Nate’s terrible relationship with his father is going to be very crucial to the story. Additionally, I got the sense very early on that there was something wrong with Maddie, mentally. The story is part mystery, part thriller, part supernatural.

Now let me just get straight into all the things I didn’t really like about this novel. There were several different plots going on at once and sometimes it was obvious that you were reading the main plot. Sometimes the author would tell you outright that you were in the past. And sometimes at some point you would figure out for yourself that you were reading a passage that was not happening in the present, and the main characters were not actually the people you were reading about on those pages. I don’t mind a story that jumps between past, present, and even future events, but what made me not enjoy this so much was the fact that sometimes we found ourselves in the past or present of other realities. And some of the realities were so similar that it made it hard to keep track of which passages were part of the reality that the main characters were in, and which ones were the side plots.

Sometimes, you would think you were reading from a certain character’s perspective only to find out that no, you weren’t. It really interrupted the flow of the story in my opinion. I found myself questioning what I was reading often, and not in a good way. I think I would have enjoyed the story a lot more if the author had picked one way to exercise our brains. I think the back and forth between past and present, this reality and that reality, and both of those elements combined, was what made me slowly lose interest. It wasn’t that bad for the entire book, it started to get more and more jumbled around in the second half of the novel. So, yeah, the first half of the book was pretty decent, then it got messy in the second half.

Then there is the title of this novel. I find that it makes you think that ‘the’ Book of Accidents is going to be important and prominent. But it isn’t. It plays a very small part in the overall plot of the book. I think the author could have come up with something better.

Finally, I’m just going to say it, I think the character Edmund Walker Reese was redundant. I think you could have taken that character out of the story and it would have been exactly the same. He wasn’t needed and he didn’t add anything to the story. The fate of Nate could have reached its conclusion in another way, he didn’t need to have that moment of redemption in order to go through that door.

I think this could have been a better story. I think the author got a little carried away. It’s like he wrote this book based on a bunch of different ideas that he had, and he couldn’t pick one so he just tried to write all of them into one story. I think that if he separated some of his ideas and organized them better he could have written two or three better novels utilizing different parts of this story. Edmund Walker Reese and his obsession with numbers and murder could have been one book on its own. I am actually disappointed that the story didn’t get into him very much at all. Jed, his alcoholism, how he went about researching and writing his novels, the tragedy with his family, that could have been a book. And then the main plot with Maddie, Nate, and Oliver could have been a separate book, if it were thought out better. So even though this book got great reviews, it is not something I would read again or recommend.

Opium and Absinthe by Lydia Kang

Fiction

When I started reading this novel and I learned that it would be taking place in the year 1899, I was kind of bummed out. The main character in this story is a girl named Tillie, and based on what I know about the societal expectations of young, unmarried women during the time I wasn’t expecting the story to be very interesting. Think about how restricted the character Rose was in the movie Titanic, being told how to dress, how to act, who she was allowed to spend time with. Out of all the women on that ship, she seemed to be the only one unhappy with the way she was expected to behave. The unconventional Miss Tillie in this tale is very much like Rose, she fought back against what was expected of women and I loved her rebellious nature.

Tillie has lived her entire life in the shadow of her beautiful, popular, and kind older sister, Lucy. She does not resent Lucy for being a perfect example of exactly what a lady should be, she admires her and loves her deeply. Her sister has always jumped in when their mother and grandmother made critiques of what they see as flaws in Tillie’s dress and behavior, but Lucy loves that Tillie is so inquisitive and different. Tillie’s one champion, her greatest friend and biggest supporter, goes missing and is found dead a few days later. Tillie is extremely torn from the loss of her sister, and she becomes even more sorrowful and frustrated when everyone around her seems to want to leave Lucy and the brutal circumstances of her murder in the past. Not only do the police seem to have given up on investigating, but her family, friends, and even her sister’s former fiance don’t even want to talk about Lucy at all. Tillie will not stand for this, she is determined to figure out who murdered her sister and why.

I love a rebel, and Tillie certainly is that. I cannot imagine how difficult it must have been for a girl in the nineteenth century to have done anything in secret. A young, unmarried woman always had to have someone with her, whether it be a maid, a friend, or a relative, they were never allowed to go anywhere alone. And the consequences for sneaking out were severe. It is comical to contemplate what was taboo back then once you consider what was normal when it came to medical care and what doctors would prescribe for various ailments. I found myself giggling with incredulousness at some of the common medicines of the day. I had a lot of fun reading this, and I would definitely read it again.

Better Watch Out by Kate SeRine

Fiction

I have reached the end of this series. The last Transplanted Tales book is a very short novella, less than one hundred pages. And, like the other novella in this series, Grimm Consequences, we get an additional look at two of the lead characters from one of the full length novels. Lavender and Seth have been enjoying a quiet life in the west coast village where they first met. But after five years of peace and happiness, chaos once again barrels into their lives.

It’s a few days before Christmas, and Seth senses that something is off. He thinks that he has just grown a little restless, his entire life before Lavender was spent either on the run, in hiding, or being on the receiving or giving end of violence, he is not used to his existence being easy and blissful. Only hours after opening up to his wife about his cabin fever, his instincts prove to be true when several children go missing. The wolf shifting sheriff immediately goes on the hunt to find the children and those who have taken them.

I liked getting introduced to even more tales in this very short story, this time they came from Icelandic folklore. One of my favorite things about reading is that when I pick up a book I either learn something new or I read about something that I in turn decide I want to know more about. It makes me excited for all the research I get to do looking for my next read. And as excited as I got at the inspiration to research the tales and stories of other cultures, I found myself wanting more from this series. I feel like more than can be written here, the author said so herself in the dedication. I would gladly read another full length book about any of the characters we have already been introduced to, or entirely new ones. There were two loose ends at the end of Ever After, one being that the Huntsman completely disappeared again, and the second being that Fabrizio is still missing. I would love to see Fabrizio released from the curse that has him trapped in the mirror, that would make an amazing book, I am sure of it. Gideon did mention in the epilogue that they had narrowed down where the mirror was last seen, they need only to track down who bought it. Or, perhaps a book that focuses on one of Lavender’s sisters is a possibility, particularly one about Lily, whom it seems was beginning to pursue a romantic relationship with Merlin.

For now, I will keep my eye on Kate SeRine’s website to see if there is any news about her continuing the series in the future. And while I wait, perhaps I will read some of her other books. This series was definitely worth my time.

Ever After by Kate SeRine

Fiction

If you have read the rest of the Transplanted Tales series you are familiar with Gideon, right hand man to the fairy king. When I read about how he was forced to give up his romantic relationship with the king’s daughter in The Better To See You, I felt his grief like it was my own. Little did I know that that forced break up was just the beginning of the sorrows of his heart.

Before Gideon was employed by the king he was the Little John of Robin Hood. After tragedy struck him in the woods one day, he was unwillingly bound into the king’s service. For many years, before the curse brought tales into the real world, Gideon served the king as his knight and protector of his entire family. In the real world he continues to do so, and the king has a new command for him: discover who is stealing large shipments of fairy dust. This potent substance is a vital medication used to treat tale ailments all over the world, and it also happens to be the source of the family’s very vast riches. His investigation leads him to cross paths with a very old friend.

I don’t want to tell you any more of the plot, but Gideon finally gets his happy ending. I was rooting for him the entire time, he is such a great guy I felt like he deserved all the happiness he found. There is a time jump when you get to the epilogue, and it reveals what I believe will be covered in the next book, which is actually a novella. There are two loose ends that I think might be tied up. If they aren’t, I am hopeful that the author might consider continuing this series in the future. There was a seven year gap between this book and the novella that I will be reading next, so maybe there is going to be a resurgence.