Under Lock & Skeleton Key

Under Lock & Skeleton Key: A Secret Staircase Mystery by Gigi Pandian
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Tempest Raj loves being a magician. She comes from a long line of Indian magicians, and she never believed in the family curse, but her recent spate of misfortunes has her wondering whether there might be some truth to the legend. She's back home in the Bay Area after her assistant sabotaged their Las Vegas show, nearly killing Tempest in an attempt to discredit her and steal her show.

Since she's home, her dad has requested her assistance looking over the blueprints for the current project his company, Secret Staircase Construction, is working on, because something about them just doesn't quite add up, and Tempest is an expert in the art of building elaborate illusions. Unfortunately, not long after Tempest arrives on site, the bagged body of her backstabbing body double falls out of a wall that's been sealed for decades. How is that even possible, and was Cassidy the target, or was the killer aiming for Tempest?

As you might expect with a book about magicians, misdirection abounds. Tempest and her friends investigate, uncovering means, motives, and opportunities that conflict and overlap. One thing I most appreciated about the story was that there was never any question of Tempest being charged with the crime, unlike so many mysteries featuring amateur sleuths. She simply needed to know what was really going on, and how, and why.

My absolute most favorite things about this book were the hidden rooms and secret entrances, the magical nooks and crannies, sliding bookcases, tricks, and illusions. I want to live in her house or maybe in the treehouse with her grandparents!! I want to eat her grandfather's delicious cooking even though I am a wimp and cannot handle spicy Indian food, though maybe the Indian/Scottish blended recipes he's invented might be less fiery?

One issue I had was that I doubt so many people would have believed Tempest would ever have tried those dangerous tricks that destroyed her show. For one thing, her work ethic would have been obvious to everyone in her crew, so I had a hard time believing that anyone who knew her could have been convinced she was at fault. Along those lines, though Tempest feels like she belongs everywhere and nowhere as a result of her multicultural heritage, she's not antisocial or a jerk, so it was hard to see why she didn't seem to have any true friends aside from Sanjay, Ivy, & Gideon. Las Vegas must have been a painfully lonely place for her.

This series opener did nicely set up future plotlines or subplots regarding uncovering her mother's disappearance and who was behind it. Probably the answer will also tie directly to solving her aunt's murder. I'm also looking forward to seeing how this burgeoning love triangle plays out, and learning more about the backstory behind her estrangement from Ivy.

For readers' advisors: story doorway is primary, setting is secondary. No sex or onscreen violence. Only a couple of swear words. Plenty of real-world magic and illusions, nothing supernatural.

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The Shaadi Set-Up

The Shaadi Set-Up by Lillie Vale
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Six years ago, Milan broke up with Rita via voicemail while she was enroute to meet up with him for a European vacation the summer after their sophomore year in college. He shattered her heart, and she hasn't gotten over it in the slightest, despite all her protestations to the contrary. Now Milan is a successful real estate agent...with one exception. He has a house on the market he hasn't been able to sell, and he needs Rita's design help to stage it. Their mothers conspire to set up a meet and manipulate them into working together in the hopes that the reunion will give them a second chance.

What the mothers don't know is that Rita already has a boyfriend, and she isn't interested in giving Milan a second chance. She convinces her boyfriend they should coordinate their profiles on the Desi dating site, MyShaadi.com, so they will match, thereby "proving" they are right for each other. Unsurprisingly, they don't match with each other at all, and soon Rita's boyfriend is dating other women, and Rita is spending all her time fixing up a second home with Milan. However, for a relationship to be successful, the past and present must be reconciled.

I have had a hard time deciding on a rating for this book. I really wanted to like it more than I did. There were some very enjoyable aspects to it but also some aspects that just didn't work for me. I vacillated between two and three stars, for an average of 2.5 stars, which I will round up since half stars aren't an option in Goodreads.

What I enjoyed most about the book was the glimpse into Indian-American culture, much of the banter, and the interactions between Rita and her best friend Rajvee. I also appreciated the steamy foreplay that led into the tasteful fade-to-black sex scenes. And I loved that it was Rita who was the expert with power tools and refurbishing furniture. The story kept me reading and went by pretty quickly.

Overall, though, the book made me grateful I'm not still in my twenties. Ugh. So much angst, so few deep conversations. I just don't understand how it took six whole years for Rita and Milan to uncover the misunderstanding that caused their breakup, given that both maintained contact with Raj. That's a pretty big Best Friend Fail to NEVER talk about such a pivotal event or connect the dots to realize there was more to the story.

I think the love triangle would have been more effective had Neil not been such an obvious mismatch. I wanted to kick him to the curb from the first chapter, and he never changed my mind. SO many things wrong there, including that a relationship should never EVER be based on pheromones alone. It was clear from the very beginning that he would never put Rita first, and she was straining to convince herself everything was fine & he was a good boyfriend. (See above about being grateful to have left my twenties behind.)

One other thing that really bothered me was that it seemed like Rajvee's gender fluidity was an afterthought or a late-in-the-editing process revision because someone said there needed to be an LGBTQIA character somewhere in the book. I was really excited at first when Vale introduced Raj's backstory because books are windows into someone else's experience, and I was looking forward to seeing how that character would develop. But aside from mentioning that Raj feels masculine sometimes and went shopping with Milan in high school for boys' clothes and (theoretically) uses all pronouns, the whole rest of the book depicts Raj as female. In fact, if Vale removed the section of the chapter where Rita recalls the history of Raj and Milan's friendship, I think you would never know Raj was anything but a cisgender woman. That was disappointing to me.

For readers' advisors: story doorway is primary. There is no violence, some swearing. Sex is depicted positively, mentioned regularly, and not described in detail. The main characters are all Indian-American, and most (all?) secondary characters are presumed white.

My thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for a free eBook ARC in exchange for my honest review!

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The Bookshop on the Shore

The Bookshop on the Shore by Jenny Colgan
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Single mother Zoe can barely make ends meet. She works hard at a daycare taking care of wealthy people's children but can't afford to send her own 4-year-old there. Her ex, Jaz, rarely helps out and is gone most of the time, trying to make it as a DJ. Her son, Hari, is mute, and no one can figure out why. The last straw comes when her landlord hikes the rent on her lousy, run-down apartment higher than she can afford. Relief comes in the form of a job offer from Scotland. Well, two, actually. Jaz has finally told his sister he has a son, and when Surinder discovers that Zoe loves to read, she connects Zoe with Nina, from The Bookshop on the Corner. Nina needs someone to run her book van while she's on maternity leave. That's job #1.

Job #2 is as a nanny on evenings and weekends for the 3 children of the local Laird, Ramsay. This job comes with room and board in the form of a tiny attic bedroom in a Scottish castle and toast. A lot of toast. The three children have gone through six nannies in the past few years, and they are not excited about a seventh. If Zoe weren't so broke and desperate, she'd be happy to leave, too, but Hari loves Scotland and latches immediately onto the youngest of the three kids, Patrick. Eventually, with no good options remaining, Zoe straightens her metaphorical spine and begins to make changes, discovering that the siblings and their neglectful father aren't so much feral as traumatized, and though the locals don't want to buy books until Nina returns and tells them what to choose, the tourists are delighted with all the Scottish and Loch Ness-related volumes Zoe can lay her hands on.

The second book in this series conveys a tone of palpable grief, struggle, and emotional heaviness that slowly begins to lift as the characters grow and learn from each other. There is a slow-burn romance between Zoe and Ramsay, but it's not the focus of the story. Much of the book deals with mental illnesses and the effects those illnesses have on the family members who love them. Though the story begins with a weighted-down feeling, it ends with hope and strong family bonds.

For readers' advisors: character and setting doorways. No violence or sexual content, though sex is implied or mentioned as having occurred in a couple of places. Some swearing is sprinkled throughout, plus a great deal in one scene with Ramsay's drunk and angry girlfriend. "Found family" is a strong theme.

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The Magical Yet

The Magical Yet by Angela DiTerlizzi
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

We borrowed this book from the library a few weeks ago because my daughter has been struggling with learning math, reading, and P.E., and getting very frustrated and upset because she unfortunately inherited my perfectionism without my facility for numbers and letters. We've been trying to communicate our faith in her ability to learn if she persists and doesn't give up, but nothing was really getting through until we read this book together. She LOVES it. So today I bought her her very own copy, and she squealed with wide-eyed delight.

The embodiment of the Yet as a magical creature who remains with you even into adulthood, helping you persevere, learn, and grow seems to have flipped a switch in my daughter's mind. This is not to say that she doesn't still get frustrated and try to procrastinate or stall...a LOT...but she now better comprehends that the struggle is part of the process of learning, and she's more willing to keep trying. When she gets upset because she can't do something the way she would like and howls, "I can't do it!" we can say, "You can't do it YET," and that usually helps her calm down a bit. Her reading level is improving daily, and I have hope that the math will eventually click into place in her brain. The P.E., well, we make sure she gets exercise. An Olympic athlete she is highly unlikely to be.

I really appreciate that the main character is a brown-skinned child, and other diverse characters are depicted throughout, too. I love the easy-to-read rhyme scheme that helps the story flow right along, and I love that learning is depicted as iterative, with plenty of mistakes and stumbles along the way.

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Chill of the Ice Dragon

Chill of the Ice Dragon: A Branches Book by Tracey West
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Five stars for kids, 3 stars for adults.

My children LOVE these books, and they are very fast-paced and exciting (even to me). I have a hard time not commenting on some logical fallacies & oversimplifications, not to mention the absurdity of 8-year-olds being dragon "masters" or being sent to a far-away country to battle an ice giant that bested a powerful adult wizard and save a whole kingdom that has been frozen in magical ice with zero adult supervision. BUT...as I said, this book was very fast-paced and exciting and not only kept my 7-year-old and 3 1/2-year-old riveted, but also conned me into reading the entire book in one sitting, resulting in an absurdly late bedtime. So I will go with a 4-star rating for the enthusiasm it engendered in my kids and for the attempt to have a couple of non-white secondary characters.

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'Twas the Night Before Thanksgiving

'Twas the Night Before Thanksgiving by Dav Pilkey
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Cute story based on the rhyme/pattern of “‘Twas the Night Before Christmas.” The kids were drawn with different skin & hair colors; however, the adults were both white. The story requires a fair amount of willing suspension of disbelief, but that makes it silly & fun, so OK. The ending does rather seem like it’s trying to influence kids toward vegetarianism, which I have mixed feelings about, but overall it’s a funny book I think my kids will enjoy.

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Secret of the Water Dragon

Secret of the Water Dragon by Tracey West
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Four stars for kids, more like 3 stars for adults. My daughter loves these books, and they are very fast-paced and exciting. I have a hard time not commenting on some logical fallacies & oversimplifications, not to mention the absurdity of 8-year-olds being dragon "masters" or being sent to a far-away kingdom to battle an evil wizard's spell and rescue one boy's family with zero adult supervision. BUT...as I said, this book was very fast-paced and exciting and kept my almost-7-year-old riveted and really mad when I only read 3 or 4 chapters at bedtime. So I will go with a 4-star rating for the enthusiasm it engendered in my daughter and for the attempt to have a couple of non-white main characters, although the series clearly isn't OwnVoices.

In this volume of the series, dragon master Bo gets a threatening note telling him his family has been imprisoned by the Emperor of his kingdom and to save them Bo has to steal the Dragon Stone. The evil wizard Maldred has put a spell on the Emperor, which Bo's water dragon, Shu, must undo. Bo and the Emperor are depicted as Asian, although it's not precisely our world, so the empire in question is vaguely Chinese or Japanese or some amalgamation thereof.

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How Do You Say I Love You?

How Do You Say I Love You? by Hannah Eliot
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I love the idea of this book, with its message that children and parents all over the world love each other, just in different languages. I love that each “I love you” is written out in the original language itself, in the transliteration into English, and phonetically/with a pronunciation guide. It’s very sweet, with its depiction of regular children doing regular things.

What I don’t love is that it skews toward European countries, and that the illustrator, whose last name doesn’t sound Caucasian, somehow manages to make most of the children & parents look like White Americans. Perhaps it’s the dots for eyes or the narrow range of skin tones or the generic clothes and facial features?? I would have preferred MUCH more variety, and no pale-skinned redheads or blondes playing soccer in Egypt, for example. When I was in Egypt, most kids had brown hair & skin, & those who didn’t were typically tourists. Even the few Caucasian locals had more of a tan. I guess maybe the illustrator was trying to show the universal appeal of soccer? But white faces shouldn’t outnumber brown ones, so that made me cringe. In a book celebrating diversity, whiteness should not be the default.

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Listening With My Heart: A Story of Kindness and Self-Compassion

Listening With My Heart: A Story of Kindness and Self-Compassion by Gabi Garcia
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Esperanza finds a heart-shaped rock and is inspired to share love and kindness, which comes full circle when she makes a mistake and needs help remembering to show herself kindness and compassion as well.

It's a sweet story with a direct message that models simple ways even children can demonstrate compassion. A bit more plot or character development would have bumped my rating to 5 stars, but the message earns every bit of the 4 stars! I absolutely love that nearly all the characters have varying shades of brown skin. It's a very positive, healing book to read with children.

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When Dimple Met Rishi

When Dimple Met Rishi by Sandhya Menon
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Dimple is adamantly opposed to a traditional life and settling down. She sees romantic relationships as a threat to her plans for using her coding skills to design an app that would change people's lives by helping them manage their chronic illnesses. Rishi believes in traditions to the point of suppressing his own passion for creating comic art (graphic novels) in favor of following in his father's engineering footsteps. He's totally on board with the idea of an arranged marriage to the daughter of friends of his parents. Dimple? Not so much! Despite a less-than-auspicious first meeting, their attraction builds, and the two turn out to be a better team than either could ever imagine.

This character-driven YA romance is absolutely delightful, and the narrators make it even better! I'd been seeing this book mentioned over and over on #AskALibrarian on Twitter on Thursday mornings, and decided to see what all the fuss was about. I'm so glad I did. I loved it!

For readers' advisors: character doorway is primary. Some swearing, no violence, a tasteful fade-to-black first-time sex scene, and lots of kissing/petting. Main characters and their families are Indian-American. Another character is, I think, Hispanic? I forget exactly. The obnoxious "Aberzombies" are rich white kids.

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Glasswings: A Butterfly's Story

Glasswings: A Butterfly's Story by Elisa Kleven
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I read this book to my daughter's preschool class when they were learning about butterflies and insects, and the kids really enjoyed it, although they were very concerned when Claire, the glasswing butterfly, got separated from her family. It's a nice story that highlights how butterflies and other insects & birds benefit gardens: pollinating the flowers, eating insect pests, and spreading seeds. The part of the story where Claire's extended family finds her in the city was rather improbable, but it did reassure and calm the worried children.

When reading to an individual child and not a group, I'd suggest taking a lot more time to look at the beautiful illustrations and talk about what is going on in the background, such as the community members working on the garden.

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Royal Holiday

Royal Holiday by Jasmine Guillory
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Hardworking hospital social worker Vivian Forest takes a long-overdue vacation to the English countryside, accompanying her daughter, Maddie, who's been hired to fill in as stylist to the Duchess during the Christmas holidays. The first morning they are at Sandringham, Vivian visits the kitchen to get some breakfast and discovers not only the cook's scrumptious scones, but also the equally scrumptious private secretary to the Queen, whom Vivian mentally nicknames "Hot Chocolate." The usually reserved Malcolm is astonished to find himself offering to give Vivian a tour, and even more startled when their flirtation grows to include horseback riding lessons, an exchange of humorous handwritten notes, kissing under mistletoe, and a full-blown fling. Sadly, all vacation flings must end, however. ...Musn't they?

I absolutely love that both Vivian and Malcolm are in their fifties. It's so nice to read about characters with established careers and lives, who know who they are and what they like and aren't straining to prove themselves. I so enjoyed Vivian's problem-solving skills and quiet, confident manner in rescuing Malcolm's relationship with his nephew. It did take Vivian a ridiculously long time to decide what to do about her promotion opportunity and Malcolm to sort through his feelings for Vivian, though. But it was probably pretty realistic.

For readers' advisors: character doorway is primary. There is some swearing and sex, although not especially explicit. No violence. The story takes place mostly in England, but also partly in the San Francisco Bay area. It's book #4 in a contemporary romance novel series featuring African-American protagonists, which I didn't realize until after I started reading, but it didn't seem to matter much that I read out of order.

Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for letting me read an eGalley copy!

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A Man Called Ove

A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Ove is a man who just wants to kill himself in peace. Is that too much to ask?? Apparently it is, as his efforts are thwarted time and again by new neighbors who can’t back up a trailer, use ladders safely, drive, or read proper signs; a mangy, half-dead cat; a lifelong frenemy being forced out of his home against his will; a man who collapses into the path of oncoming train; and young men who need help fixing a bicycle to impress a girl, or get kicked out for Coming Out. Each time, Ove has to apologize to his wife for not joining her yet, until finally he finds himself firmly enmeshed in the lives of the living.

Like Parvaneh, I grew to love Ove fiercely. He is now one of my all-time favorite characters, and my commutes are not going to be the same without him.

However, I am so glad I listened to the last few chapters of this book at home because amidst the laughter, I cried the Ugly Cry of Uncontrollable Sobs—something I would not want to do while driving, which is how I normally listen to audiobooks.

I’m also glad I listened to the audiobook instead of reading the ebook, because I never would have guessed Ove’s name was pronounced “OO-vuh.” Plus the narrator did an outstanding job with the pacing and the conveyance of Ove’s taciturn grumbles. Ove reminds me of Clint Eastwood in Gran Torino, although with entirely different prejudices (i.e. against French cars, bus drivers, men in white shirts, etc). Ove is only 59, but it’s like he was born an old man...or at least became one as a boy when first his mother and then his father died.

For readers’ advisors: STRONG character doorway and very leisurely pace. It takes most of the book to learn Ove’s history, which is told much of the time in alternating chapters. (The book has a non-linear structure.) No sex, but a smattering of grumpy-old-man swearing. One gay character toward the end, and a mix of at least 3 languages/cultures, not counting the Spanish of Ove & Sonja’s vacation to Spain.

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Josh and Hazel's Guide to Not Dating

Josh and Hazel's Guide to Not Dating by Christina Lauren
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The first time Hazel met Josh, she propositioned him and then threw up on his shoes. The second time, he walked in on her having sex with his roommate. The third time, he was the TA in her anatomy class. It's not an auspicious beginning for a relationship, but despite Hazel's wildly quirky personality, lack of a verbal filter, and propensity for mishaps, she's innately lovable. So when they meet years later at a BBQ at Josh's sister's house, and Hazel decides he's going to be her new best friend (in addition to his sister, who is her current best friend), she's absolutely right.  When Josh breaks up with his girlfriend, she talks him into setting each other up on a series of double blind dates.  Unsurprisingly, these don't go as planned.

I loved that this book was set in Portland, Oregon! Truthfully, it could almost have been set in any large city, but I enjoyed the local references nonetheless.

I laughed out loud so many times while reading, especially in the first half of the book. Once, I even laughed until I cried. Such witty banter and ridiculous chaos follow Hazel wherever she goes! I'm sure I would have a much harder time dealing with her in real life, but as a character, she's hilarious.

I also really appreciated that Josh and Emily were Korean, and I loved how Christina Lauren wove Korean culture into the fabric of the characters' lives. Made me miss my honorary Korean family so much!

One small thing that irked me, though, was that although Hazel has an (hysterically inappropriate) mnemonic device for remembering all eight types of pronouns, the author hasn't yet fully learned the difference between "who" and "whom"...and neither has her copy editor. Still, my issue was with only one scene out of a whole book, so that's a pretty minor complaint.

For readers' advisors: character doorway is primary, story secondary. There is a LOT of swearing and sexual content--from sex jokes and references to a few fairly explicit sex scenes. Also quite a bit of drinking or references to alcohol. No violence, other than Josh getting clobbered in the head a couple of times.

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