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Jane and the Final Mystery by Stephanie Barron

***This is the last review that will be published on Savvy Verse & Wit; please subscribe to Substack.

Source: Publisher
Hardcover, 312 pgs.
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Jane and the Final Mystery by Stephanie Barron (book 15) is the final installment in the series of mysteries in which Jane Austen herself uses her ability to read a room and ask the right questions to solve a murder. As each book is a mystery unto itself, you don’t necessarily need to reach them in order, but they do follow Jane Austen’s timeline and if you don’t know what happens to Jane in real life, you may want to begin at the start of the series because this one is the last.

Readers, like me, will not want to read this novel too quickly because we know that Jane’s life is nearing its end, but we cannot help but turn the pages in Barron’s story to find out who did murder the boy at Winchester College.

“Elizabeth and her deep anxiety for her son were much in my thoughts in the days that followed her visit; but it was not until two months later, and from a very different source, that I was to hear of actual violence at Winchester College — and the death of an unfortunate schoolboy.” (pg. 15)

Barron does well the show us how Jane may have suffered from her illness and the care she would have received from family members along the way, but we also see how determined Jane is and how dedicated to truth and family she continues to be despite all the pain. Barron also clearly has researched the time period very well, and she includes footnotes for those who need a little clarification, which I appreciated.

William Heathcote, the son of Jane’s friend Elizabeth, has been bullied at Winchester, but what Jane soon learns about life at the college will make teasing in today’s world seem less dire. Boys are shoved into canals and sluice gates opened so they flow into the canal and river, and so much more. Hazing is taken to a whole new level, but it isn’t just about fitting in. Sometimes rivalries can stem from classism and social ostracism. When William is accused of murder, Jane and her nephew, his friend, get to work on clearing his name.

Jane and the Final Mystery by Stephanie Barron is a page-turner. I couldn’t put it down. I had to unravel the mystery with Jane and her nephew, even though it broke my heart to see how much pain she had to deal with. Barron knows how to weave a historical tale that will leave readers wanting more.

RATING: Cinquain

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About the Author:

Stephanie Barron is a graduate of Princeton and Stanford, where she received her Masters in History as an Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Fellow in the Humanities. Her novel, THAT CHURCHILL WOMAN (Ballantine, January 22, 2019) traces the turbulent career of Jennie Jerome, Winston Churchill’s captivating American mother. Barron is perhaps best known for the critically acclaimed Jane Austen Mystery Series, in which the intrepid and witty author of PRIDE AND PREJUDICE details her secret detective career in Regency England. A former intelligence analyst for the CIA,  Stephanie—who also writes under the name Francine Mathews—drew on her experience in the field of espionage for such novels as JACK 1939, which The New Yorker described as “the most deliciously high-concept thriller imaginable.”; She lives and works in Denver, Colorado. Follow her on Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, and GoodReads.

Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward (audio)

Source: Purchased
Audible, 9+ hrs.
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Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward, narrated by January LaVoy, is set in the coastal town of Bois Sauvage, Mississippi, follows the family of Esch, Skeetah, Randall, and Junior as their alcoholic, single father does his best to keep a roof over their heads and protect what little they have from the storm, Hurricane Katrina. Over the course of 12 days, Ward tells the story of this loyal family, not unfamiliar with sacrifice.

Skeetah hopes that his prize-winning pitbull will provide a litter of pups the family can use to earn some cash, at least some of which could be used to help their brother Randall play summer basketball at a camp their father cannot afford. Esch, unfortunately, has no motherly guidance and is surrounded by brothers and relied on too much by her father as a mother to the others. She falls in love with her brother’s friend Manny, but it is clear he’s only interested in what she can give him, and as all things naturally happen, she gives him everything for only heartache in return.

The narration is engaging, even if there are far too many details on some occasions and some of the details are repeated far too many times.

The heart of this story is salvaging from what has been lost — whether that is the lost “love” or what’s left after one parent dies or after a devastating hurricane destroys everything.

Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward is a stark look at what it takes to survive in a world where racism and poverty are all anyone sees when your father drinks too much and works hard for so little and when you have no discernible parent there to guide you. Like the dogs who fight in the pit, this family is struggling for survival even before Hurricane Katrina hits.

RATING: Quatrain

About the Author:

Jesmyn Ward received her MFA from the University of Michigan and has received the MacArthur Genius Grant, a Stegner Fellowship, a John and Renee Grisham Writers Residency, the Strauss Living Prize, and the 2022 Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction. She is the historic winner—first woman and first Black American—of two National Book Awards for Fiction for Sing, Unburied, Sing (2017) and Salvage the Bones (2011). She is also the author of the novel Where the Line Bleeds and the memoir Men We Reaped, which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and won the Chicago Tribune Heartland Prize and the Media for a Just Society Award. She is currently a professor of creative writing at Tulane University and lives in Mississippi.

A December to Remember by Jenny Bayliss (audio)

Source: Purchased
Audiobook, 11+ hrs.
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A December to Remember by Jenny Bayliss, narrated by Elizabeth Sastre, is a delightful reunion of three half sisters — Maggie, Simone, and Star — in a small village, Rowan Thorp, after the passing of their father. These sisters have not spoken or visited one another for many years, and all were affected by their traveling, unreliable, antiquing father, Augustus. These sisters return for their father’s funeral and the chill between them is palpable, until the reading of their father’s will requires them to work together in order to receive their inheritance.

Star is the new-age, hippie sister, while Simone is the high achiever, and Maggie is the one that stayed in the village with her children and raised them along after her husband passed away. Menopausal Maggie is having a secret fling with the grocer, while Simone has come to the village with a saddened heart as she and her wife try for a baby through IVF. Star seems carefree to her sisters, but her last boyfriend’s drug addiction cost her everything — job and home — leaving her little choice but to return to the village where she was a happy child until her sisters no longer came for the summer.

Bayliss is adept at crafting quirky characters and providing a well-rounded picture of the village and its residents. As she unravels the backstories of each sister and their lives after their blissful summers with their father ended, Bayliss sets the stage for a reset for these sisters and healing through a winter solstice celebration and the sifting through their father’s antique/junk shop. These characters feel like family, even the town busybodies. You can’t help but hope these sisters patch up their differences, learn to forgive, and work together.

A December to Remember by Jenny Bayliss is a sweet cup of cocoa with some dark, bitter chocolate thrown in. I loved these sisters and their squabbles, but even more so because they were able to grow and evolve.

RATING: Cinquain

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About the Author:

A former professional cake baker, Jenny Bayliss lives in a small seaside town in the United Kingdom with her husband, their children having left home for big adventures. She is also the author of The Twelve Dates of Christmas, A Season for Second Chances, and Meet Me Under the Mistletoe.

Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones by James Clear

Source: Public Library
Hardcover, 320 pgs.
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Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones by James Clear, which I found through The Book Connection, is something I needed at the right time. As a poet, rejection is part of the publishing wheel, and like everyone, it gets me down. Clear points out that when we want to make behavioral changes, it takes a Herculean effort or it really takes a shift in our focus. It is not will power that will sustain the adoption of new habits or some bottomless pit of passion, it takes practice and hard work every day. Showing up for the good habits and making the bad habits unattractive to ourselves.

“True behavior change is identity change. You might start a habit because of motivation, but the only reason you’ll stick with one is that it becomes part of your identity. … Improvements are only temporary until they become part of who you are.” (pg. 34)

“Your behaviors are usually a reflection of your identity. What you do is an indication of they type of person you believe that you are …” (pg. 34)

I think many of us believe our identities are merely our family or our occupation. Some even view their status as a winning athlete as their identity, but we are more than those items. What happens when those criteria no longer exist? Do we cease to have an identity? If you are no longer a professional athlete, who are you? Behaviors and values are other criteria we can look to as we characterize ourselves.

What’s important about Clear’s book is that it is not about setting goals, such as “I will write 25 pages per day on my novel?” It is about changing the processes behind goal setting to make behavior change more successful and achievable. We should all strive to do 1% better in our attempts to change behavior every day and through this long-term practice, we can achieve behavior changes over time. Our intentions should be clear and attractive to us, such as “I will write 1 new page of my novel at 12 p.m. in my office on Mondays.” These intentions will make it doable and with minimal pressure and provide a time and location.

Clear also discusses the idea of habit stacking in which you start new habits right after ones that you wish to continue and can signal to you that it is time for the new habit. For instance, if you grab a cup of coffee early in the morning, you can stack it with the habit of meditating for 1 minute with the cup in your hands, if your goal is to meditate more. There are lots of ways that habits can be stacked to make achieving change easier. Inserting habits where you can can ensure that a new habit becomes more automatic. Clear says, “The more attractive an opportunity is, the more likely it is to become habit-forming.” (pg. 104) This is something the advertising industry knows well, which is why we consume new products, social media applications, and other items so easily.

Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones by James Clear is definitely a great book if you are looking to ditch bad habits or form new ones. Want to hike more, this book can help you start and maintain the habit. Want to write more, same thing. He does warn that “when preparation becomes a form of procrastination, you need to change something. You don’t want to merely be planning. You want to be practicing.” (pg. 143) But remember, “the human brain loves a challenge, but only if it is within an optimal zone of difficulty.” (pg. 231).

RATING: Cinquain

About the Author:

James Clear is a writer and speaker. He is the author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Atomic Habits and the popular 3-2-1 newsletter.

Holly by Stephen King (audio)

Source: Purchased
Audiobook, 15+ hours
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Holly by Stephen King, narrated by Justine Lupe, is a novel that will at times challenge readers because it is set during the height of the pandemic when information about the virus was minimal and many people were running scared. Holly, who is a bit of a hypochondriac, wears masks and gloves, and she’s definitely wiping down everything for germs, but she still smokes cigarettes. She is nothing but a ball of contradictions, but aren’t we all.

Finders Keepers is the private detective agency she runs with her partner, Pete, and some other helpers/researchers who will be familiar to readers of If It Bleeds and The Outsider, among others. She sets out to find a missing girl and uncovers a lot more than she bargained for.

This is probably the least creepy of King’s novels, as it deals with a real-world evil, rather than a supernatural one. Holly’s investigation of the girl’s disappearance takes her down a rabbit hole into other disappearances, but in the back of her mind is the anxiety about the pandemic, her mother’s passing, and her partner’s sickness.

Holly by Stephen King is a solid novel set in a time period many of us would probably like to forget or gloss over, but it reminds us that while we lived through it, we haven’t really dealt with the consequences of it. Some readers will bristle at the vax vs. antivax and COVID vs. non-COVID believers and all that it entails. I suggest they skip this one because they will be too focused on things that are just part of the time period for the story and less on the story and the character, Holly, herself. She navigates some big emotional traumas in this one, and I’m not sure if she’s addressed all she needs to (much like the rest of us) — she may show up again in another King novel, who knows.

RATING: Quatrain

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About the Author:

Stephen King is the author of more than fifty books, all of them worldwide bestsellers. His recent work includes Doctor Sleep and Under the Dome, now a major TV miniseries on CBS. His novel 11/22/63 was named a top ten book of 2011 by The New York Times Book Review and won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Mystery/Thriller as well as the Best Hardcover Book Award from the International Thriller Writers Association. He is the recipient of the 2003 National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. He lives in Bangor, Maine, with his wife, novelist Tabitha King.

Tender Is the Flesh by Agustina Bazterrica (audio)

Source: Purchased
Audiobook, 6+ hrs.
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Tender Is the Flesh by Agustina Bazterrica, narrated by Joseph Balderrama, is a translated work in which a dystopian world of cannibalism emerges after a virus makes all other meat inedible. Marcos is the main character who is the supervisor of the local “specialty meat” plant. His father has dementia and he is paying for all his care, but his wife left him and his only child is dead.

Much of this book is stomach-churning, and while I see it as a commentary on the meat production industry and the industry/money driven industry’s influence over government policy. It’s interesting to me that the author chose this topic after I learned that Argentina is one of the largest meat consumers in the world. Marcos is so detached from his family, his emotions, his interactions with others, and while the gift he is given later on is supposed to make us believe he is reconnecting with his humanity, I don’t believe it. I was unconvinced. The ending wasn’t a shock.

I can see how this would be a good book club selection because there are a number of themes to explore and discuss, but the characters were very flat and didn’t evolve much throughout. Tender Is the Flesh by Agustina Bazterrica is an odd dystopian novel set in Argentina where cannibalism is the norm out of necessity, but little is examined about the moral or ethical challenges of this decision. What’s worse is the conspiracies about it being a government hoax are never explored.

RATING: Tercet

About the Author:

Agustina Bazterrica is an Argentinian novelist and short story writer. She is a central figure in the Buenos Aires literary scene. She won the prestigious Premio Clarin Novela for her second novel, Tender Is the Flesh, which has been translated into twenty-three languages. Several of the stories in Nineteen Claws and a Black Bird have also won awards, including First Prize in the 2004/2005 City of Buenos Aires Awards for Unpublished Stories and First Prize in the Edmundo Valadés Awards for the Latin American Short Story, among others.

The Five-Star Weekend by Elin Hilderbrand (audio)

Source: Purchased
Audiobook, 12+ hrs.
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The Five-Star Weekend by Elin Hilderbrand, narrated by Erin Bennett, is a rich person’s vacation but what anchors this weekend in reality is the relationships between these different women in Hollis Shaw’s life and the fractured relationship Shaw has with her daughter, Caroline. A tragic event widens the cracks in Hollis’ “Insta-worthy” life.

In the midst of her sadness, Hollis comes across a rejuvenating idea — the five-star weekend — in which you invite one friend from each of your “significant” stages of life: her teenage years, her twenties, her thirties, and midlife. She invites her childhood friend and “sister” Tatum, her elitist college friend Dru-Ann, Brooke who went through pregnancy and childbirth with Hollis in her thirties, and Gigi who Hollis has met online through her website as they connect over tragedy.

Tragedy has a way of amplifying what is wrong in a family. Hilderbrand’s novel also reminds us that what we see of people’s lives online — social media, websites, etc. — is only a snapshot of happiest moments but not the reality of their whole lives. Hollis Shaw’s picture-perfect Nantucket/Bostonian life is no where near perfect, but neither are many of her other friends’ lives — lives she has done little to keep up with.

The Five-Star Weekend by Elin Hilderbrand is a far deeper story than its dressings of high-end dinners, exclusive reservations, and sailing trips make it seem. These women are stronger because of their bonds, even if the have some wear and cracks. It’s the ability to overcome the slights and miscommunications of the past that ensure these women will be stronger into the future.

RATING: Quatrain

About the Author:

Vera Wong’s Unsolicited Advice for Murderers by Jesse Q. Sutanto

Source: Borrowed
Hardcover, 352 pgs.
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Vera Wong’s Unsolicited Advice for Murderers by Jesse Q. Sutanto is just what you would expect it to be, especially given that fantastic cover. Vera Wong gets up at 4 a.m. every morning to start her day with texts to her adult son, Tilly, and to have her brisk walk before opening her “world famous” teahouse for business in San Francisco’s Chinatown. There are only two things wrong, she has just one customer, and the sign above the teahouse might just be misrepresenting the establishment as “Vera Wang’s World-Famous Teahouse.” Her son, Tilbert, is less than pleased by this, but since she has few customers, he believes the likelihood that his mother will be sued by the real Vera Wang are small to none.

One morning, Vera finds a dead body in her teahouse, and because the police don’t provide her with the respect she believes she is due and don’t seem concerned with the murder, she takes it upon herself to investigate — complete with her little notebook of suspects.

“Vera’s murder investigation is going so well that she wonders why more people don’t just decide to leave their boring desk jobs and go into detective work. She’s started daydreaming of having the huge VERA WANG’S WORLD-FAMOUS TEAHOUSE sign taken down and replace with VERA WANG: PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR.” (pg. 85)

Her son, Tilly, is a lawyer, but since he rarely keeps in touch, he’s mostly unaware of Vera’s investigation, until of course she starts asking him some very specific hypothetical questions about evidence tampering. Along the way, she begins offering advice to all kinds of potential suspects in the Marshall Chen murder. Sana, Riki, Oliver, Julia, and Emma begin to circle in Vera’s orbit as the search for the killer continues, even as Officer Gray insists that Vera stay out of it.

Like Sutanto’s other books, you are in for a wild ride with some crazy antics. But you will love Vera Wong — she’s a mother/grandmother in search of purpose and with this group, she has a lot of work to do, including solving a murder. I highly recommend Vera Wong’s Unsolicited Advice for Murderers by Jesse Q. Sutanto. If you read Aunties, you will love this one.

RATING: Cinquain

Other Reviews:

About the Author:

Jesse Q Sutanto grew up shuttling back and forth between Jakarta and Singapore and sees both cities as her homes. She has a Masters degree from Oxford University, though she has yet to figure out a way of saying that without sounding obnoxious. She is currently living back in Jakarta on the same street as her parents and about seven hundred meddlesome aunties. When she’s not tearing out her hair over her latest WIP, she spends her time baking and playing FPS games. Oh, and also being a mom to her two kids.

A Woman Is No Man by Etaf Rum

Source: Borrowed
Hardcover, 352 pgs.
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A Woman Is No Man by Etaf Rum was our August book club pick at work, and even though I had to miss the meeting for another meeting, I’m so glad I read this one. Deya is a high-school student in Brooklyn, N.Y., and her traditional Arab family from Palestine has her meeting with suitors before graduation, despite her hopes for a college education. To preserve their culture in which women are the silent backbone of the family, young women are married to men in their teens to have children and raise the next generation. Like her mother, Isra, Deya is expected to marry someone she barely knows and to start a family.

“A woman is no man,” is an oft repeated refrain from Deya’s grandmother. Told in alternating chapters by Isra and Deya, the narrative is threaded with the past of the grandmother, Fareeda, who also married young but was fortunate enough to flee Palestine after being evacuated to a refugee camp. Her strength is in her faith, but she also is the backbone of her family and the driving force behind their move to America. While both Deya and Isra see the move to America as a gateway to freedom and more opportunities, Fareeda sees it as something that must be guarded against because it will destroy their Arab culture. However, it is clear that Fareeda’s and Isra’s view of their culture stems from similarly abusive relationships with their fathers, and now husbands.

“…yet something about them seemed so American. What was it? Deya thought it was they way they spoke — their voices loud, or at least louder than hers. It was the way they stood confidently on the train, not apologizing for taking up the space.” (pg. 107)

The tension in this book is broken wide open by a family secret. For her entire life, Deya has been told her parents died in a car accident, but the truth will set them free in many ways, allowing a granddaughter and grandmother to bond, a daughter to understand her deceased mother better, and a daughter to have hope that her own hard-line mother may change.

Peeling back these layers chapter by chapter will slow the pace, but Rum’s narrative is this way to demonstrate the repetitive cultural oppression these women experience every day. As a modern reader outside the Palestinian culture, it will seem repetitive and unnecessary, but I would argue it is with purpose that Rum adopts this slower progression. We need to feel that pressure, that weight of oppression and constant restriction to understand how hard it would be to break free from it even as an American immigrant.

A Woman Is No Man by Etaf Rum is an emotional roller coast, and it will have readers shouting at these women to take advantage of their freedom and run away. But when you leave all that you know, it leaves you bare to the harsh realities of being alone in an unfamiliar world. Which is better? Sticking with the devil you know, or striking out into the unknown? Rum has created a multi-layered story that looks at the oppressive nature of the Arab community and religious expectations and the lure of freedom with consequences.

RATING: Cinquain

About the Author:

The daughter of Palestinian immigrants, Etaf Rum was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York. She has a Masters of Arts in American and British Literature as well as undergraduate degrees in Philosophy and English Composition and teaches undergraduate courses in North Carolina, where she lives with her two children. Etaf also runs the Instagram account @booksandbeans.

Piranesi by Susanna Clarke

Source: Public Library
Hardcover, 272 pgs.
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Piranesi by Susanna Clarke, is my 11th book for the 12 books recommended by 12 friends reading challenge, is a novel written with Greek mythology at its base, particularly the labyrinth and its connection to madness or mental health. In Clarke’s novel, Piranesi is given his name by the Other, the only other living person in the House, which is packed with giant statues and a maze of halls — some of which are flooded or partially flooded. From time to time, the main character is visited by birds and he fishes in certain halls for food when the tides are high. He’s a recordkeeper, tracking what’s in each hall and the tides. The Other, however, seems to have access to real-world supplies and knowledge, but relies on Piranesi to map the House for him as he continues his search for the secret knowledge.

This is a mysterious tale with slow reveals, and while clues are dropped along the way, readers may find they, too, are duped by the labyrinth. Who are these mysterious people and how do they have knowledge of the real world if they have only ever lived in the House. What is the point of all this record keeping and traipsing back and forth if there are only two people alive here? Why can they not simply live in one place together and be a society unto themselves? It is clear the relationship is not reciprocal and is lopsided in the power dynamic from the beginning.

The start of this book left a lot to be desired. It was a slow narrative that left me bored initially. I wasn’t interested in the characters for about 40 pages. However, once I got past that point, I started noticing some kernels of how this world was not necessarily real but an amalgamation of things from the real world and that it was not a post-apocalyptic world like I initially thought. Piranesi is the main protagonist and because he doesn’t initially have all of the information needed to unravel this House and its mysteries, neither does the reader. This can be tiresome, but ultimately, the novel revealed itself through a series of events and the dynamic with the Other was more intriguing and less sterile.

Piranesi by Susanna Clarke is a book that can try your patience and it was not a beach read, which is what I was looking for last week. However, it was interesting to unravel the secrets of the labyrinth. It was more satisfying than I thought at the beginning. I’d recommend this for readers who like to think outside the box and who like mysteries where you are unraveling them with the protagonist.

RATING: Quatrain

About the Author:

Susanna Clarke was born in Nottingham in 1959. A nomadic childhood was spent in towns in Northern England and Scotland. She was educated at St Hilda’s College, Oxford, and has worked in various areas of non-fiction publishing, including Gordon Fraser and Quarto. In 1990, she left London and went to Turin to teach English to stressed-out executives of the Fiat motor company. The following year she taught English in Bilbao.

She returned to England in 1992 and spent the rest of that year in County Durham, in a house that looked out over the North Sea. There she began working on her first novel, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell. She lives in Cambridge with her partner, the novelist and reviewer Colin Greenland.

Road of Bones by Christopher Golden

Source: Purchased
Paperback, 240 pgs.
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Road of Bones by Christopher Golden is set in the coldest part of Russia on Siberia’s Kolyma Highway, which was built by hundreds of thousands of forced laborers from the gulag who were interred in the pavement after dying during its construction during the Stalinist era. Felix “Teig” Teigland has rented a truck and convinced his cameraman friend Prentiss to join him on the Road of Bones as he sniffs out the next television series idea he needs to pay back Prentiss and numerous others.

“Don’t fall asleep,”Prentiss said.

Teig forced a smile. “Don’t bore me to death and I’ll stay awake.”

In the frozen tundra, keeping any vehicle on the road is difficult. From the moment they are on the road, it is clear that the cold of the tundra will play a significant role in this story, almost as if it were another character. Teig’s uneasy, “The worm of nausea squiggled anew in his gut,” especially when he meets the guide, Kaskil, he hired. Life and death on the road of bones is something that Teig sees will save his career, but perhaps he should be more concerned about his actual life and death situation in a place where the weather can kill you.

When he and Prentiss meet Kaskil and make it to his home town of Akhust, it is more than legends and ghost stories that they find. The town has been abandoned, with some of its people leaving their homes while barefoot. Lurking in the woods, wolves are stalking them, but these are not traditional wolves.

My one quibble was the character of Ludmilla, who is introduced and we get to know her and her mission to free the souls on the Road of Bones, but her connection to the main story line seems so rushed. It seemed as if she were a ghost in the first place or part of the legend of the woman on the Road of Bones freeing souls, but then she isn’t. It was a bit disappointing, but didn’t detract too much from the main story. Perhaps there’s another book in the works with her?

Despite the plot holes, Golden has created an otherworldly feeling with the killer cold, mysterious disappearance of a whole town, the appearance of a beautiful woman, and the eyes in the forests at the edge of town. Road of Bones by Christopher Golden is definitely all you would expect it to be — creepy, suspenseful, and chock full of gruesome murder.

RATING: Quatrain

About the Author:

Christopher Golden is the New York Times bestselling, Bram Stoker Award-winning author of such novels as Road of Bones, Ararat, Snowblind, and Red Hands. With Mike Mignola, he is the co-creator of the Outerverse comic book universe, including such series as Baltimore, Joe Golem: Occult Detective, and Lady Baltimore. As an editor, he has worked on the short story anthologies Seize the Night, Dark Cities, and The New Dead, among others, and he has also written and co-written comic books, video games, screenplays, and a network television pilot. In 2015 he founded the popular Merrimack Valley Halloween Book Festival. He was born and raised in Massachusetts, where he still lives with his family. His work has been nominated for the British Fantasy Award, the Eisner Award, and multiple Shirley Jackson Awards. For the Bram Stoker Awards, Golden has been nominated ten times in eight different categories, and won twice. His original novels have been published in more than fifteen languages in countries around the world. 

Four Aunties and a Wedding by Jesse Q. Sutanto

Source: public library
Hardcover, 304 pgs.
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Four Aunties and a Wedding by Jesse Q. Sutanto bring the aunties together with Meddy, Nathan, and Nathan’s family. The wedding plans are under way and it’s a destination wedding to Oxford, England. For some reason I went into this sequel just assuming there would be another murder. Not sure why, perhaps it was the description and the mention of the mafia.

This wedding is being planned down to the minute details, but one choice could have her wedding on the cover of the news. As Meddy gets closer to her own wedding photographer, Staphanie, and her family, similarities emerge between their immigration stories and how they interact with each other and the world around them. Meddy feels a kinship to Staph (unfortunate name, indeed), but what she find outs could upend not only her new friendship, but also the entire wedding.

“Toodle pip, cheerio!”

I turn to Nathan in a panic. “I think she’s having a stroke.”

Sutanto has a gift for comedy. Her over-the-top story lines are a bit unbelievable, but her comedic timing keeps readers turning the pages. When Meddy’s aunts adopt a British accent on the plan to the destination wedding, you can just imagine what kinds of slip ups and misunderstandings are going to happen with Nathan’s uptight, unsuspecting parents. I love all of these characters from the blood thirsty aunties to the bumbling and naive Meddy. Nathan is even lovable in all his forgiving glory.

Four Aunties and a Wedding by Jesse Q. Sutanto is another entertaining read with a crazy cast of characters. I definitely recommend reading these books in order. You want some laughs, Sutanto is your author. I laughed out loud so many times reading this, my husband thought I was losing it.

RATING: Quatrain

Other reviews:

About the Author:

Jesse Q Sutanto grew up shuttling back and forth between Jakarta and Singapore and sees both cities as her homes. She has a Masters degree from Oxford University, though she has yet to figure out a way of saying that without sounding obnoxious. She is currently living back in Jakarta on the same street as her parents and about seven hundred meddlesome aunties. When she’s not tearing out her hair over her latest WIP, she spends her time baking and playing FPS games. Oh, and also being a mom to her two kids.