Familiar Authors, Newer Works

 

crass, funny, insightful, strange, cringe

    I have mixed feelings about reading David Sedaris and Carnival of Snackery: Diaries 2003-2020. Sedaris is masterful at comedic writing. He makes me laugh out loud. Part of his humor springs from observing how mean people can be to each other. He can gross me out talking about a seatmate who eats his boogers, tell crass jokes that offend me, and rail against George Bush continually, but he records his father's decline and his sister's death in its painful awfulness and brings tears to my eyes. We are very different and not so very different. 

    Here is a link to another Sedaris book I reviewed: https://barbpruittwrites.blogspot.com/2022/11/looking-for-humor-finding-something.html

🐘🐘🐘

    I was fortunate to read the latest Louise Penny Inspector Armand Gamache novel, A World of Curiosities. If her writing is like her personality, I wouldn't mind meeting Louise Penny in real life. To sit at the Bistro in Three Pines and eat some of their delicious food while chatting would be amazing. As usual, Inspector Gamache ruminates deeply about his inner life, his monsters, and his motives. A hidden room is discovered in Three Pines containing odd, sinister artifacts. I liked this suspenseful book and was glad to revisit Three Pines, but it stretched my credulity at points--another mystery room? 

Here is a link to a previous Louise Penny review: https://barbpruittwrites.blogspot.com/search?q=Louise+Penny&max-results=20&by-date=true

🌲🌲🌲

I Visit Ancient Rome and Communist China--Via Books

 

  If forced to say my favorite historical mystery writer, I'd give in easily. It's Lindsey Davis. I've been reading her excellent novels for over thirty years. In the Flavia Albia series, her eponymous protagonist is witty and intelligent, and the supporting cast is nutty. While Davis solves a mystery in each book, she also gives the next installment of Albia's life. In a previous book, on her wedding day, her new husband, Tiberius, was struck by lightning. Albia is a newlywed with a sick husband, moving into an unfurnished home while unexpectedly becoming the primary wage earner. She is relatable. Pandora's Boy is sixth in the Flavia Albia series. A fifteen-year-old girl mysteriously dies in her bed. The girl's father suspects poison and hires Albia to discover the truth. I've read a lot of mystery books, and I didn't anticipate the solution. The book is witty, clever, and a little naughty. There are many jokes about a statue of the Egyptian God of fertility Min. 

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  Dreams of Joy, by Lisa See, is the follow-on of Shanghai Girls. See writes vividly of life in China in the late 1950s. Her book feels authentic with sensory descriptions of the food, clothing, surroundings, and daily life. Nineteen-year-old Joy runs away to Communist China after learning her birth father lives there. Her mother, Pearl, follows to find Joy and bring her back. Mother and daughter become tangled in the political and economic turmoil of the time. I don't know much about Chinese history, but I remember a terrible famine. There are gruesome details of the horrendous things people do when starving. The women claim to be communists but still face persecution for being Imperialist Americans. Shanghai Girls describes the burden of American hostility and ill-treatment despite seeking to live as loyal Americans. Spoiler alert: Joy's adopted father kills himself, overwhelmed by being hounded by the FBI to confess to being a communist sympathizer. Dreams of Joy illustrate life under a totalitarian communist regime. As American Chinese, neither country entirely accepted them. See's characters fight for a good life free from fear and want in both nations. 

    To keep the grain crops from being eaten, Mao ordered farmers to bang pots continuously to scare away the sparrows until the birds died of exhaustion, leading to insects ravaging the crops. Pearl and Joy remind me of sparrows seeking rest, but being driven from place to place.

    I gave this book five stars on GoodReads.

🥢🏮🫕🍶🍚

Terrific Book Week!

    The three authors I read this week took me into places I would never see: an imaginary kingdom. Daevbad, the life of a classical violinist and a Chinese immigrant. Every book this week was superb.

 

    The greatest trilogy of all time, really no debate, is The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien. However, I would put S. A. Chakraborty's The Daevabad Trilogy in the top five and maybe, number two. It's so very good. The final book was everything I'd hoped--thrilling, true to the characters, and satisfying--a balanced ending. It didn't tip over into sentimentality or betray the story. Instead, it had a good sense of an authentic finish.

   I found Chakraborty's ability to describe action--fight scenes, chases, banquets--easy to track and vivid. With many characters and locations, it could have been easy to lose track.  Chakraborty's willingness to sacrifice her darlings gave the book gravitas and tension. I didn't know if all the main characters would survive. 

    I have wondered about Chakraborty's heritage. From her trilogy, it is clear she is knowledgeable about Islam and Muslim lands and respects their many cultures, myths, and fables. I assumed she was an American Muslim woman, and she is, but it's complicated. Here is a link to an interview with her: https://www.kirkusreviews.com/news-and-features/articles/s-chakraborty/ and here is an excellent article discussing her being touted as an Arab writer, which she is not, and doesn't claim to be: https://www.themarysue.com/the-significance-of-s-a-chakrabortys-name-adjustment-in-upcoming-book/. 

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    The Violin Conspiracy by Brendan Slocumb is an intense mystery. It vividly describes racial abuse. At times it was difficult to read because I liked the main character. Ray McMillan's love for his grandmother, perseverance in his art, and his striving to be respectful and kind to others in the face of mistreatment made me root for him. Ray has the talent to become a world-class violinist and an exceedingly valuable violin. Right before the most significant opportunity of his life, his violin is stolen. There are many viable suspects, and Slocumb keeps them all plausible and me guessing till the end. The book has a good-hearted center that makes it hopeful. 

“We’re here for a reason. I believe a bit of the reason is to throw little torches out to lead people through the dark.” 
― Brendan Slocumb, The Violin Conspiracy

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    When I worked in a bookstore, I thought Lisa See's covers were eye-catching, with dazzling colors and beautiful women. I finally read one, Shanghai Girls, this week. It is historical fiction about two sisters living in Shanghai in 1937. Pearl and May are glamourous models depicted in ads for everything from baby food to champagne. Disaster after disaster leads them from China to Los Angeles, CA, and from carefree young women to becoming wives in arranged marriages with strangers. As a historical novel, I learned about the Angel Island detention center, the Chinese Exclusion Act, and the dissolution of the USA's partnership with China after World War II by seeing it through the eyes of those experiencing it. My favorite way to learn history is wrapped in an absorbing story. Lisa See's ancestors immigrated from China to the USA. This book had depth and vibrancy springing from careful research and from participants' accounts.

🎥🛥️🐲🪭🐑

Big Week for Reading 📚🚀❣️⛪️🕵️‍♀️

 

    I like Becky Chambers' writing. It is thought-provoking and hopeful. To Be Taught if Fortunate is a stand-alone novella that addresses the question of space exploration. Why do it? The title is a quote by Kurt Waldheim, former UN Secretary-General, to extraterrestrials. 

"We step out of our solar system into the universe seeking only peace and friendship – to teach, if we are called upon; to be taught, if we are fortunate."

    Four astronauts are on a scientific mission of exploration beyond our solar system to planets calculated to have life. Their struggles and triumphs are told from the perspective of crew member Ariadne. She is the ship's engineer giving her a pragmatic, problem-solving bent, but because she's not the captain, she has to be persuasive. They all understand that studying alien life disturbs and endangers, but may also preserve and protect it. When you lift a rock to look at worms, they are forced out of their chosen dark habitat into the damaging sunlight. 

    I'm making this book sound pedantic, but it is like a good Star Trek episode with Captain Piccard and Riker wrestling with the Prime Directive to help, but maybe harm. Differing opinions are honored, but the well-drawn characters give the story spark and interest. Chambers is good at the big picture of space exploration and the intimate portrayal of human costs. 

    Here is a review of another book by Chambers from an earlier post: https://barbpruittwrites.blogspot.com/2022/01/excellent-app-for-book-people-is-where.html.

    I found I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith (who also wrote 101 Dalmations) predictable and somewhat sexist. It may be because it was written and set in the 1930s. It is short and sweet, but irritating. I found the main character too helpless. Cassandra Mortmain is a lively, beautiful young woman with an even more beautiful older sister. They live in a castle with a younger brother, a famous, inept father, and a dotty stepmother in amusing poverty. So droll. The older daughter is contemplating marriage with a handsome, wealthy American suitor that she doesn't love to save her family.

    Hello, Jane Austen calling.

    It didn't work for me, but if you love JA, it is whimsically diverting.

🏰🎩👰‍♀️

   At my daughter's church is a lovely book table with well-curated and thought-provoking books like The Gospel Comes with a House Key: Practicing Radically Ordinary Hospitality in Our Post-Christian World, by Rosaria Butterfield (aliens-tennis-and-hospitality.html). It is one of the many perks of visiting them. On my latest visit, I picked up Another Gospel? A Lifelong Christian Seeks Truth in Response to Progressive Christianity by Alisa Childers. Childers grew up in a loving Christian family, sang in the Christian band ZOEgirl, and mostly interacted with people who affirmed her beliefs. Then she encountered a pastor who called himself a hopeful agnostic and challenged her fundamental understanding of her faith: like the deity of Christ and the trustworthiness of the Scriptures. This book arises from Childers wrestling with her doubts. She is a dedicated researcher reading many books and even auditing seminary classes to understand what was accurate and true. 

      Here are some of my takeaways:

• Attacks on the essentials of the faith are not new. New challenges to belief are old heresies redressed: Manichaeism, Gnosticism, and Pelagianism, to name a few.
• Christianity has its defenders. They may not be the loudest voice, but they are out there.
• When facing doubts, reach out instead of pulling in. 

    I appreciated Childers book, which made me consider my essentials and how I define them. If Christianity is authentic (and I believe and trust it is), it will withstand doubts and questions, emerging more robustly than before.

    Many years ago, I heard Tim Keller speak about his book, The Reason for God. In his talk, he mentioned going under for thyroid surgery and having a fleeting moment of doubt about whether Jesus was real. While recovering, he read N. T. Wrights's book The Resurrection of the Son of God (Christian Origins and the Question of God, Vol. 3). Keller said it moved his doubts from 15% to 8-9%. My doubts will exist, but instead of being ashamed and suppressing them, I want to drag them out and contend with them. Alisa Childers does this and does it well. 

    On a side note, Timothy Keller passed away this week from pancreatic cancer. His life and teachings have informed and strengthened my faith. I am sad to lose a stalwart Christian man, but I am grateful for his ministry.

📖🪔🤨 

    The Woman in Cabin 10 by Ruth Ware is the June pick for my murder mystery book club. I wasn't excited to read it. I assumed the main character, Lo Blacklock, a travel journalist, would be an unreliable narrator. Unfortunately, I misjudged this book on many levels. One: the cabin is not in the woods, but on a boat (ship?). Two: Lo Blacklock has her issues--it adds tension and complexity-- but she is fierce and dogged in defending the weak. As I read, the book only improved from my original assumptions. 

    My false ideas were based on the excellent books Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn and The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins and the myriad of books that came out in the early 2000s with "girl" or "woman" in the title. Here is a list: https://www.listchallenges.com/books-with-girl-or-woman-in-the-title

    Anyways, I recommend this suspenseful, twisty story. It's a good one.

🔎🛥️🔍

Space ships 🛸 and Time Travel 🕰️

 

    Another trilogy week. I might need an intervention. I have pivoted this week from fantasy to sci-fi; however, I'm still reading giant bricks of books with another 600+ pages. Adrian Tchaikovsky is excellent at science fiction. He is inventive, vivid, and knowledgeable enough to create worlds with credible technical details that give them life. I have read his Children of Time and Children of Ruin--both excellent books. Now I'm caught in his trilogy, The Final Architect series. 

Here is my review of Shards of the Earth:  its-beginning-to-look-lot-like-book-time.html

Tchaikovsky's story works well and keeps me invested because of his characters. There are the tropes of space warriors, madmen (women? people? space creatures?), politicians, and idealists, but Tchaikovsky gives them life through their mixed motives and desires, but facing a common threat. Will they set aside their differences and pull together to save, well, everything? The stakes couldn't be more significant--the survival of sentient life--resting on the shoulders of an odd band of misfits. It could be stale, but the story is fresh, with relatable characters. I have the third book, The Lords of Uncreation, and will read it soon, but first, some shorter stand-alone to cleanse the palate.

😁

👩🏽‍🚀👽🚀🛸🪐☄️👨🏻‍🚀

Before the Coffee Gets Cold by Toshikazu Kawaguchi is a lovely book, and I liked it a great deal. It is a sci-fi/fantasy book about time travel. In an underground coffee cafe in Tokoyo, the possibility of time travel exists. However, there are limitations. You can only travel back to that cafe. You must sit in a particular chair, but only when vacated by its ghost for a bathroom break. No matter what you do, you can't change the present. You can't leave the chair. And you can only stay until your coffee gets cold. When the rules were laid out initially, I doubted it would be much of a story. I was wrong. Kawaguchi deftly creates a series of interrelated stories using those parameters. The book is brief, but explores the idea of why time travel if nothing changes? I would do it even though I'm not a fan of coffee. 

☕️🕰️☕️🕰️☕️🕰️☕️

Good Week for Trilogies!

 

    Here is my review of the first book in the trilogy, A City of Brass.

 https://barbpruittwrites.blogspot.com/2023/04/i-start-another-good-trilogy-mistake.html

    The middle is the most challenging book to pull off in a trilogy. The author has to move the plot forward, solve enough of the conflict to feel satisfying, but keep enough mystery to bring people back for the final book. The characters created in the first book must retain their essence, but also evolve. The Kingdom of Copper by S.A. Chakraborty is fairly successful. My biggest disappointment is how it ends on a cliffhanger, and I still have ten weeks until the final book is available to borrow! But at least it's out there, and I may get it sooner. 

🤞

    Chakraborty made the bold choice to move five years into the future, and I liked it. The characters had gained experience and skills. It made sense. Chakraborty uses Middle Eastern folktales and myths as the scaffolding for her tale. This gives her book a blended feel of mystique and reality. The engine driving the plot is a love triangle between Nahri, Prince Ali, and a Djinn named Dara. Chakraborty continues the tension skillfully, and even though the book is long--532 pages--it goes quickly. 

🐫🧞‍♀️🏝️🧞🐪

Here are my reviews of the first two The Cursebreakers series books:

A Curse So Dark and Lonely beauty-and-beast-retold-and-ancient.html

 A Heart So Fierce and Broken  lots-of-villainy-villains.html

    The second hardest book of a trilogy is the final one. I have invested hours, literally, into the characters and story, and I want a rewarding ending! A Vow So Bold and Deadly by Brigid Kemmerer mostly delivers. I perused some reviews, and not everyone agrees with me. Kemmerer is excellent at plotting and unanticipated twists. She explores the psychology behind her main characters, Rhen, Harper, Grey, and Lia Mara deeply, but doesn't sacrifice action. Harper questions staying with a man who can have a friend whipped for information. Rhen feels like a poster child for the aphorism, hurt people, hurt people. Lia Mara wants to not be like her mother, but doesn't know how to be strong and kind. Grey lacks flaws other than he needs to trust himself. I wonder if Kemmerer has a therapist in her life that she bounces ideas off of. It makes sense that Harper is examining things through the lens of 21st-century sensibilities, but the others have grown up with different influences. I like that the ending wasn't everything solved, and they all lived happily ever after. It felt genuine to the characters.

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Not Sure How to Classify this Book: Not Biography, Not Theology, but Contains Both

 

    I don't think of myself as a fangirl for anyone in pop culture, but when I play the icebreaker game, what three people living or dead, would like to have dinner with, I always choose Tim Keller (Malcolm Gladwell and Ruth Bader Ginsberg). He is a former minister of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City, author of many books, and an Evangelical icon. I have a bachelor's degree in Bible. I didn't learn Greek or Hebrew; I focused on theology--the study of God and beliefs. At the bachelor's level, the goal is to systematically study significant doctrines (Christology, the Bible, Trinity, etc.) and how they came to be codified historically. The goals are exposure, research, clarification, and communication. My theological education has taught me that there's a lot I don't know. So many have thought and written about theology for centuries. Deciding what voices to invest time and effort into can be difficult. I appreciate Tim Keller's thoughtfulness, kindness, and ability to make esoteric topics approachable. I have read many of his books --I highly recommend The Reason for God--and listened to his sermons. 

    In conversations about spiritual things, I often start, "Well, Tim Keller says . . ." 

    So much so that one of my daughters replies, "All hail, Pope Keller!"

    Having consumed much theology through the lens of Tim Keller, I was eager to read Timothy Keller: His Spiritual and Intellectual Formation by Collin Hansen. I enjoyed a peek under the hood of his life and who influenced his beliefs. Things I learned: he is super intelligent and well-read, his wife, Kathy, is wicked smart and fierce, he favors Puritan writers, he is widely read concerning culture, and he respects others' beliefs and treats them--people and their beliefs--with honor, he has a heart for helping others understand culture and Christianity. Hansen also lightly traces a history of Evangelicalism. The book is well-organized and engaging. I listened to the audio version read by the author, and that format would have benefitted from a more experienced narrator. 

    I don't know if this book would appeal to anyone unfamiliar with Tim Keller, but I found it worthwhile--instructive, inspiring, and encouraging.

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Romance, Mystery, and, Perhaps, the Best Book of the Year

 

    Romantic Comedy by Curtis Sittenfeld is a sparkly, clever, funny book. It subverts the idea of the average guy ending up with a hot woman (think Colin Jost/Scarlett Johansson) by introducing the average woman/hot guy twist. The protagonist writes for a weekly live comedy show, not Saturday Night Live, modeled after SNL. Even though, like most romance novels, there is a predictable ending, the interest is in how the author gets from meet-cute to happy-ending. Sittenfeld does it well. 

❤️💖💞📺💞💖❤️

    Maisie Dobbs by Jacqueline Winspear is my book club's choice for May. I appreciate many things: a strong female protagonist, a historical setting, a hint of romance, and an award winner; however, I found it tedious. As I've analyzed why, I think the characters are too black and white. Maise is a brilliant female from the working class. She works as a maid and is discovered reading in the library late one night. This leads to her receiving a private education and going to Oxford. World War I intervenes, and she becomes a nurse at the front. All these events contribute to her becoming a psychiatrist and private investigator. It is the first book in a series, so there is a lot of backstory to upload. In the book, Maisie's history feels more interesting than the mystery she is hired to solve. 

🔎🔍

,

I know Dani Shapiro from her memoir, Inheritance, about discovering through genetic tests that her father was not her birth father. Signal Fires is the first of her fiction that I've read. It was one of the best books I've read this year. It is a tender, insightful story of neighbors in Avalon, New York. The central family is Ben, a surgeon, and his wife, Mimi. One hot summer night, their two teenagers and a friend make a poor choice. It changes them forever. It moves them apart and binds them together. I'm not describing this book well, but it knocked my socks off, made me weep, and left me hopeful. 

🌳✨🌌✨🌳

I Start Another Good Trilogy--Mistake

    Of the many personalities that inhabit my brain, today I'm angry at the one that started me reading this captivating fantasy, The City of Brass by S.A. Chakraborty. I've had this best-selling book reserved for a while, but I was intimidated by its length: 532 pages or 20 hours on audio. Finally, I succumbed, and I'm glad I did. A scrappy woman, Nahri, from the streets of Cairo, navigates a complex, hostile world. However, she's more than what she seems. Using her previously unknown magical ability, she accidentally summons a fierce Djinn, who takes her to a magical city of brass where she is hailed as a fabled healer. I'm hooked! About two-thirds of the way through the story, I wondered how Chakraborty could resolve all the story threads in the time she had left? The intricate plot is told from various points of view, each voicing its own problems and insights. Answer: she can't; it's part of a trilogy. I put the second book on hold, and it might become available in the next six to ten weeks.

 

    I need a break from trilogies or switch to only reading uninteresting ones, making me not want to continue. Hmmm.

🐊🧞‍♂️🧞🧞‍♀️🏝️

 

    I'm Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy kept popping up in my recommendations. The title is provocative, but it didn't look like a trilogy, so I read it. It is a memoir by a child actor about her toxic, narcissistic mom. If you are triggered by abuse, this book is not for you. McCurdy showed that personal growth is not linear and takes time and support, especially in her struggle with eating disorders. McCurdy writes believably in the voice of her younger self. Depictions of her insights, moments where she sees things realistically, are earned and moving. McCurdy shares explicitly about her life. I could have been satisfied with fewer descriptions of destructive sex. However, McCurdy's memoir was ultimately hopeful. I wish better things for her. 

                                                                    👩‍👧👩☠️🤮

                                                

    I read Another Brooklyn by Jacqueline Woodson in a day. One reason it's short, under two hundred pages; another reason is it's so stinking good, and lastly, it's about being a teen in the 1970s. I was a teen in the 70s, and the music she references, and the emotions it stirred felt familiar. In the present day, August returns to Brooklyn for her father's funeral and accidentally sees a former teenage friend on the subway. She's pulled back into her life growing up in Brooklyn with her four girlfriends. It was rough with White Flight, prostitutes, drug users, and poverty. There are many adjectives to describe Another Brooklyn: complex, dense, poetic, and tragic. August is fighting grief and loss with denial. She is caught between being sexually exploited and also having sexual desire. There is a lot packed into this verbally economical, powerful book.

                                                                            🗽🚇❤️‍🔥

Revisiting The Paris Apartment

 

    This is a strange reading week because I only read one book, and it was a reread. I'm not big on rereading: too many books, too little time! 

    I read The Paris Apartment by Lucy Foley last summer and liked it so much that I included it in my book club's Year of Mystery. Last month we read Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie. An interview with Foley said that reading Christie influenced her mystery writing. lucy-foley I can see similarities: artful red herrings, multiple suspects, and a locked room, or this case apartment building. Foley keeps the situation tense, and even though I'd already read the book before, I didn't remember exactly how it all turned out. It was a good read a second time as well. Foley has a vibe of nothing is as it seems: the good guys are the bad guys, the loser barmaid is a fierce defender of the weak, and a fancy apartment doesn't mean a good life. It kept me guessing, even the second time. 

Most of what I think about Paris is from romantic movies about falling in love in a Paris springtime. This is the upside-down Paris. I don't think the Eiffel Tower is ever mentioned. 

Here is a link to my previous review:

https://barbpruittwrites.blogspot.com/2022/06/mystery-firefighters-and-time-travel.html

🔎🕵️🔍

Lots of Villainy Villains

 

    Babel: An Acrcan History by R. F. Kuang is a robust and powerful story of an orphan rescued from poverty in China. Robin is privileged to be brought up in London and has the unprecedented opportunity to attend Babel College in Oxford. Babel is a historical fantasy novel. This book interacts with many big ideas: translation, empire, colonialism, student revolt, assimilation, and alienation. The main character Robin Swift speaks Chinese and English fluently. His guardian formed Robin to discover word pairs between the languages that will generate magic when etched on a silver bar. Kuang has deep knowledge of multiple languages and Chinese/British history. She is sharp in her assessments of the motives of why Empires conquer and how they exploit those under their "protection." Robin's father uses him villainously by refusing to acknowledge his son, cruelly exploiting him, while demanding his fealty. Robin is a living metaphor for British/Chinese relations. He is continually told how grateful he should be for the favor that allowed him to live in England while, at the same time facing abuse and discrimination from those very people. Where does Robin's heart lie? With England or with China? Which side deserves his loyalty? This reminds me a bit of the Galatic Empire series by Isaac Asimov, proving again my theory that science fiction can be a tool to consider hard facts. 

    When I say this book is educational, please don't think dry or dull. It is full of tension and conflict. Kuang fearlessly raises the stakes repeatedly, but she also invests the reader in the characters. I wanted to understand the different forces at work and know Robin's "right" choice. It made for an excellent, but painful read because the oppressors don't always lose, and the underdog isn't always triumphant. 

    Babel might become a literary classic taught in Modern English classes if it isn't already.

    Here is an excellent review: babel-by-rf-kuang-review-an-ingenious-fantasy-about-empire

☕️🫖⾈🚢🜛

     

    Last week I read the first in the Cursebreakers series, A Heart So Dark and Lonely by Brigid Kemmerer. Link here: https://barbpruittwrites.blogspot.com/2023/03/beauty-and-beast-retold-and-ancient.html

This week I read #2, A Heart So Fierce and Broken. Kemmerer did an excellent job with the middle book of the trilogy. It takes a skilled writer to have the second book be satisfying and also set up the final book well. 

    The angriest I've ever been at the middle of a trilogy was Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back (the second Star Wars to be released). The movie left too many things unresolved, and it would be years before the final film dropped. It was 1981, and I was on a date with my college boyfriend. I yelled out my betrayal of a gratifying ending in the movie theater's parking lot. I'm not sure what my boyfriend remembers of that night, but we did get married. So, that story ended well.

😍

    A Heart So Fierce and Broken pivots from Prince Rhen and Harper to his faithful guardsman, Grey. Grey carries the burden of a terrible secret that ruptures his relationship with Prince Rhen. He flees with a small company seeking safety. Among his companions is a rejected princess, Lia Mara, of a rival kingdom ruled by Queen Karis Luran, who we met in book #1. Kemmerer imagines a land ruled by females, instead of males. It is a good twist. Succession is appointed by the queen instead of inherited. Like the first book, it has good characters, and even though it's fantasy, they feel authentic, except for the female villains. The queen, Karis Luran, and Lilith the Enchantress are both abominable evil--viciously enjoying hurting and killing others. I could see one villain like that, but two? And both females? 

    I look forward to book three and wonder how Kemmerer will land this story. Is she a happy-ever-after writer? I hope so!

🦹‍♀️ 👹😈