The Murder of Mr. Wickham

The Murder of Mr. Wickham by Claudia Gray
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Hooray for an absolutely delightful historical mystery where the characters are all from Jane Austen's novels (or the children thereof), gathered at the Knightleys' estate for a house party crashed by the infamous Mr. Wickham of Pride & Prejudice fame! The second night he is there, young Juliet Tilney stumbles over his body on her way back from the privvy. He has caused most of the guests personal and financial losses, so absolutely no one mourns his death, but magistrate Frank Churchill still has to determine who killed him and why. Since Jonathan Darcy, eldest son of Elizabeth & Fitzwilliam Darcy, and Juliet are not under suspicion, they begin investigating, lest an innocent servant be falsely accused. Since seemingly no one was abed that fateful night, there are plenty of twists and turns in what is essentially a locked-room mystery. Everyone has secrets and is in need of courage and honesty if they are to heal their cracked relationships.

Claudia Gray has done an outstanding job of remaining true to Austen's characters even as she ages them forward in time according to the loose chronology of when the books were published. Jonathan's neurodivergence at a time before such traits were understood is sympathetically handled, making his growing relationship with Juliet both believable and endearing. Likewise, Fanny's conflict with Edmund over her brother's confession of love for his fellow sailor rings true for the era and indicates a possible path toward compassion and kindness for those today who still cling to the belief that homosexuality is a sin and not simply the way someone was born to be.

For readers' advisors: story and character doorways are primary, setting secondary. No on-screen violence, no sex, and I cannot recall any profanity, though there may have been one or two mild historical epithets uttered in the heat of the moment. I forgot to check before my copy returned itself.

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Julián Is a Mermaid

Julián Is a Mermaid by Jessica Love
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I love this beautiful picture book about a boy who goes swimming with his grandma and on the way home sees people dressed as mermaids on the train, then creates his own mermaid costume while his grandma is in the shower. He isn't sure how he is going to respond when she sees the mess he's made, but she doesn't get mad, she helps him accessorize and takes him to see a show with other mermaids.

I love how this book celebrates imagination and depicts the loving, supportive relationship between a boy and his grandmother. I love the inter-generational and diverse characters and body types depicted in the lovely illustrations. My son also loves to dress up in costumes and play pretend, and though I'm pretty sure I would not react well if he took down our curtains to make a costume, I try very hard to create an environment where he has no worries about being accepted for expressing himself. I love that this book features a scene where such support is not only possible but just the way things are. Our world would be an infinitely better place if that were true everywhere.

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Starla Jean: Which came first? The chicken or the friendship?

Starla Jean by Elana K. Arnold
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

My kids thought this book was great; I thought it was meh. A little girl goes to the park with her dad and comes home with a chicken. I totally sympathized with the dad who stupidly said she could keep it if she could catch it, never imagining she'd actually catch it. I also sympathized with the mom who did not want a chicken inside the house, though I would have been a LOT more forceful about keeping it outside and away from my dining room table.

It was OK. Silly enough to make my kids laugh; ridiculous enough to make me roll my eyes. (Putting a diaper on a chicken??)

Oh--one thing I didn't understand was that at the end of the book there were some "chicken facts," including that chickens can do basic addition, with an illustration showing a chicken at a chalkboard adding 1+2=3. What?? How is this a chicken fact? If chickens have somehow been proven to be able to add, then the illustration should explain this, not be wildly impossible. That...just...NO.

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Nora Goes Off Script

Nora Goes Off Script by Annabel Monaghan
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Nora Hamilton makes a living writing screenplays for The Romance Channel (a thinly veiled Hallmark Channel), swapping out the details but keeping the essential fantasy romance elements intact. However, when her deadbeat husband leaves, she turns her personal story into a major Hollywood movie, earning enough (barely) to get herself and her kids out of the debt he left behind. The studio even pays extra to use her actual tea house/writing studio for the last two days of filming. However, when they pack up and leave, she discovers the leading man--famous actor Leo Vance--remained behind. He begs to be allowed to stay and rest in the tea house, offering her $1000/day in rent--money she badly needs to fix her gutters. She agrees, and suddenly she finds herself playing tour guide and shopping tutor for a gorgeous man eager to participate in her family's life. As he integrates into her world, their relationship evolves into a romantic one, but will he actually stay, or will he leave like her ex-husband did? Nora felt relief when her husband took off; she's very much afraid Leo's departure could shatter her heart.

I absolutely loved this book. It both pokes fun at the formulaic Hallmark movies we all love and love to hate, and also works within that same basic framework. Thankfully, this story is one of the good ones, not the ones with the plastic blonde (or brunette) attempting to pretend to be a regular person. I loved that Leo actually did seem like he could fit into Nora's world, and later she proved she could hold her own in his. Nora's daughter Bernadette seems a bit older than her 8 years, but 10-year-old Arthur is entirely believable. Plus it was a breath of fresh air to read a romance novel where the protagonists are 40-ish instead of 20-somethings.

I think this would be a great book to discuss in a book group. What makes a person stay with someone like Ben who has no observable redeeming qualities? Yet Nora endured almost two decades of his freeloading and emotional abuse until *he* decided to leave. Even if his absence is welcome, those years he was around were traumatic and left emotional scars, so how did that conditioning impact Nora and Leo's relationship, particularly after Leo flew to L.A. for the audition?

For readers' advisors: story doorway is primary, character secondary. All sex happens offscreen, and there are only a few well-placed swear words, so the book is nearly a "gentle read." No violence. All the characters seem to be heterosexual, and racial identity isn't indicated that I can recall, aside from a few names that indicate some secondary characters might be something other than white. Pretty much like the majority of the Hallmark movies, really. (Honestly, that's the biggest drawback--how hard would it have been to make the characters more diverse?)

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Bloom of the Flower Dragon

Bloom of the Flower Dragon: A Branches Book by Tracey West
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

My kids loved this book; I was bored out of my mind and annoyed to boot. These stories are quite formulaic, which bothers my kids not a whit. I wouldn't mind so much if the formula was better--I'm really not on board with the 8-year-olds-save-the-world-completely-without-grownup-supervision concept.

In this iteration of it, Drake and Worm transport Ana and Kepri to some mountains where there are tiny dragons living in a field of flowers near a village but somehow without the villagers knowing about it. The dragon stone chose a blond boy to be the dragon master for the tiny dragon who first came to Bracken to ask for help. The "twist" this time is that the blond boy is rude to this little dragon because he's not thrilled the dragon is small, and he doesn't want to help because he's determined to go search for his missing father instead. Lovely.

A seer has predicted the imminent arrival of a monster, so the children go off to the field and figure out that Kepri can use sunshine powers to charge up the tiny dragons so they can basically hypnotize & heal the monster, which turns out to be a werewolf-type creature--i.e. a human who ate the wrong berries & morphed into a murderous beast. Most adults will be able to guess this outcome of this story.

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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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Bewitched

Bewitched by Darynda Jones
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

After a 6-month suspended animation nap, Defiance Dayne is once again awake and getting into and out of trouble. While she was sleeping, her dads and her best friend moved across the county to join her in Salem, MA, in her magical house, Percival, haunted by the ghost of her grandfather. Defiance tries at first to lie and say her magical powers have vanished, but that doesn't work, and soon she is tracking down all sorts of missing objects and people, trying desperately to figure out how to keep everyone alive, or at least keep them from dying again.

This volume in the series could have used some heavy editing, particularly the endless repetitions of how sexy Roan was and what his inked existence did to Defiance's "nether" or "girl" parts. That got old REALLY fast, and the book would have been much improved if we could have just skipped over most of that. Roan's backstory was a key subplot, so I wish Defiance had acted her age (45) and dialed back the lust in favor of really getting to know Roan for who he was and not just fixated on the heavily tattooed, kilted outer package. If readers are supposed to go for the pair as a serious couple by the end of the series, there has GOT to be more to the relationship than electricity. In both directions, though mercifully we are spared the recitation of Roan's lustful thoughts.

I LOVE Darynda Jones' books, but this is my least favorite. Some excellent parts, though! And I do still want to listen to the next book to see how the loose ends get tied up.

For readers' advisors: story doorway is primary. Tons of sexual content, though really only one actual sex scene. Plenty of profanity, some violence and threats of violence, but not overly graphic. Trigger warnings for spousal and child abuse. LGBTQIA-adjacent, as Defiance was raised by her two dads, one of whom is Latinx. Her grandmother's love interest, the police chief, is African-American. Other characters are either white or not memorably specified.

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