Celeste Ng, Bookstore Day Ambassador, Pekoe Most Poison by Laura Childs, Poison or Protect by Gail Carriger, Nameless by Lili St Crow and Renegades by Marissa Meyer

I can hardly believe that it is February already, and that tomorrow will mark 13 years since I started this blog on Superbowl Sunday, mainly out of boredom because I loathe football, and my husband suggested it would be a good way to keep me busy while he watched the game. Hundreds of books and many posts later, here we are. Though the progression of my Crohn's Disease and asthma has kept me from working (along with few opportunities for old print journalists) outside of the home, this blog has allowed me to keep up with my passion, books, while also utilizing my writing skills. So thank you, Butterfly Books, for 13 years of book news and reviews!

Though I am not a fan of this particular author, I agree with her sentiments on indie bookstores and their infinite value to the community.

Celeste Ng, 2018 Bookstore Day Ambassador

"My favorite thing about independent bookstores is that they all have

their own distinct personalities: each reflects not just the tastes but

also the ideals of its community," said Ng. "From the second you walk

in, you get a sense of what the people who shop there know and enjoy--as

well as what's currently on their minds, what they want to learn, and

what they value: in short, what kinds of people they want to be.

Bookstores are more than just repositories of knowledge, they're living,

breathing, evolving representations of our best selves."

Ng made her debut in 2014 with Everything I Never Told You, which went

on to win the Massachusetts Book Award, the Asian/Pacific American Award

for Literature, the ALA's Alex Award and more, along with being a

bestseller. Her 2017 follow-up, Little Fires Everywhere, is a bestseller

that will soon be published in more than 20 countries.

"Indie bookstores continue to occupy a special place in the hearts of

anyone passionate about books, ideas, freedom of speech, vibrant

neighborhoods, and creating community," said Independent Bookstore Day

program director Samantha Schoech."We hear lots about their demise, but

more than 40 new indie bookshops opened in 2017. In today's

fast-changing world, indie bookstores still offer the delight of

discovery, the comfort of community, and the tools for reflection,

namely a universe of ideas and stories. We can't wait to celebrate indie

bookstores and the readers who love them on Saturday, April 28."

Pekoe Most Poison by Laura Childs is the 18th book in her teashop mystery series. Though I've only read about half of them, my mother is a huge fan and has read them all. This one has Theodosia, owner of the Indigo Tea Shop, trying to find out who killed her friend Doreen's husband with cyanide. Here's the blurb: In the latest Tea Shop Mystery from New York Times bestselling author Laura Childs, Theodosia Browning attends a “Rat Tea,” where the mice will play...at murder.
When Indigo Tea Shop owner Theodosia Browning is invited by Doreen Briggs, one of Charleston’s most prominent hostesses, to a “Rat Tea,” she is understandably intrigued.  As servers dressed in rodent costumes and wearing white gloves offer elegant finger sandwiches and fine teas, Theo learns these parties date back to early twentieth-century Charleston, where the cream of society would sponsor so-called rat teas to promote city rodent control and better public health.
But this party goes from odd to chaotic when a fire starts at one of the tables and Doreen’s entrepreneur husband suddenly goes into convulsions and drops dead. Has his favorite orange pekoe tea been poisoned? Theo smells a rat.
The distraught Doreen soon engages Theo to pursue a discreet inquiry into who might have murdered her husband. As Theo and her tea sommelier review the guest list for suspects, they soon find themselves drawn into a dangerous game of cat and mouse.

Doreen actually holds a grant for Theo's tea guy Drayton (who is on the board of the local historical society) over their heads as "incentive" for solving the mystery, and Drayton, who is a huge wimp, comes to Theo and begs her to help because the historical society has made bad investments and is in financial trouble. Oddly enough, Theo tells the curator of the historical society that they should sell some of their less important artifacts and antiques, and he and Drayton both are stunned by this brilliant idea, because they're apparently too stupid to think of such an obvious way to make money themselves. This was my main problem throughout the book, that everyone seems to have no working brain cells but Theo, and even then, most everyone who is a suspect act like melodramatic jerks, right out of a vaudeville act, screaming and shouting and being overblown and ridiculous. Everyone is a stereotype and every situation a cliche. And readers are supposed to somehow love how self righteous and prissy Theo is when she accuses one person after another of murder. The fact that she's wrong several times, and that the police keep telling her to stay away from the investigation and let them do their jobs means nothing to arrogant and tempermental Theo, who feels it is her right to investigate, probably because everyone around her defers to her "smart" self, which is only in contrast to their dull wits. The tea shop books have become so formulaic that if you don't know whodunnit by chapter 3, you must be about as bright as Theos dim friends and neighbors. I can't give this novel more than a C, but I will also recommend it to those who have read and enjoyed her other tea shop books, because they're easy reading and contain drool-worthy recipes in the back of the book.

Poison or Protect by Gail Carriger is another one of her delicious novellas, this one featuring Preshea Buss from the Finishing School series.  Preshea has been married and widowed several times, and is now assigned the job of getting rid of an unwanted fiance by a father and with protecting the father against assassination. Here's the blurb:

Can one gentle Highland soldier woo Victorian London’s most scandalous lady assassin, or will they both be destroyed in the attempt?
New York Times bestselling author Gail Carriger presents a stand-alone romance novella set in her popular steampunk universe full of manners, spies, and dainty sandwiches.
Lady Preshea Villentia, the Mourning Star, has four dead husbands and a nasty reputation. Fortunately, she looks fabulous in black. What society doesn’t know is that all her husbands were marked for death by Preshea’s employer. And Preshea has one final assignment.
It was supposed to be easy, a house party with minimal bloodshed. Preshea hadn’t anticipated Captain Gavin Ruthven – massive, Scottish, quietly irresistible, and… working for the enemy. In a battle of wits, Preshea may risk her own heart – a terrifying prospect, as she never knew she had one.

As with all of Carriger's books there's plenty of wit and flirtatious behavior, and sex, of course, as well as intrigue. One of the things that I love about Carriger's characters is that they're fully flawed and yet maintain their senses of humor and sharp wit through the most trying of circumstances. I also love the fact that there are always plenty of handsome Scottish men to be had in her books, and they seem to appreciate, respect and revere strong women with a mind of their own. As these books take place during the Victorian era, that isn't something to be sniffed at, because women had a very limited role in society and were expected to adhere to certain morals and manners. Flouting convention behind closed doors makes it all that more delightful, as readers feel they're getting away with something right along with the characters. Carriger's prose is elegant and stylish, and her plots march along on sensible boots, while her storytelling is unmatched. A solid A, with a recommendation to anyone who likes female-lead steampunk that has some saucy sexuality woven throughout.

Nameless, A Tale of Beauty and Madness by Lili St Crow is Lilith Saintcrow's foray into YA rebooted fairytales, this one a take on Snow White. I've read about 85 percent of Saintcrow's work, with the exception of the zombie books and horror novels, because I am not a fan of that genre. With Saintcrow, you know that you can always count on muscular prose and a female protagonist who doesn't pull punches. You can also usually count on some serious kick-ass fighting, some great escapes and magical powers that are almost always messy and/or painful. What I don't expect from her is the same tired tropes of nearly all the YA fiction that has come out for the past 10-15 years, with a female protagonist caught in the inevitable love triangle, and the inevitable stupid/cruel parents who are totally at fault for everything their teenagers do. And the also cliched vampires who are never tame as they seem, lusting for blood and vengeance....plus the private school setting straight out of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and the school chums who are not quite as pretty as the anorexic protagonist, (who also always has scars, for whatever reason) but who are lovably quirky and not too bright, so they can make the protagonist teen shine by comparison. Insert eye rolling here.  Here's the blurb:

When Camille was six years old, she was discovered alone in the snow by Enrico Vultusino, godfather of the Seven—the powerful Families that rule magic-ridden New Haven. Papa Vultusino adopted the mute, scarred child, naming her after his dead wife and raising her in luxury on Haven Hill alongside his own son, Nico.
Now Cami is turning sixteen. She’s no longer mute, though she keeps her faded scars hidden under her school uniform, and though she opens up only to her two best friends, Ruby and Ellie, and to Nico, who has become more than a brother to her. But even though Cami is a pampered Vultusino heiress, she knows that she is not really Family. Unlike them, she is a mortal with a past that lies buried in trauma. And it’s not until she meets the mysterious Tor, who reveals scars of his own, that Cami begins to uncover the secrets of her birth…to find out where she comes from and why her past is threatening her now. Publisher's Weekly: St. Crow (the Strange Angels series) offers a darkly stylized version of Snow White in the first in a planned trio of fairy tale adaptations. As a child, Camille is found in the snow by the rich and powerful Vultusino family, one of seven vampire families who control New Haven. Battered, scarred, and for a time voiceless, she's taken in and raised as one of their own. Turning 16, Cami hears her name whispered from mirrors and suffers nightmares spawned by her forgotten past. The men in her life (loosely parallel to the seven dwarfs) want to protect her, but when Cami's past hunts her down, she has to draw on her own resilience. St. Crow offers a busy mashup of vampires, witches, werewolves, and mutated monsters, but Cami's strange yet vulnerable nature and a sinister undercurrent of danger provide steady intrigue. The author's highly visual storytelling combines fairy tale, horror, and gangster tropes (the Vultusinos are more Corleone than Cullen), yet makes the ubiquitous feel fresh.

I was just not impressed with Cami as a protagonist, since, unlike all of the other Saintcrow heroines, Cami was a huge whinging whiny wuss. She even followed Tor right into the queen's lair, like a lamb to slaughter. Then, SPOILER, she is rescued, comes home, and Nico, who had been trying to kill her just hours before, suddenly asks her to absorb his "heartstone" and become a vampire with him forever, I think. The vague ending isn't completely clear on what really happens when someone takes a vampire's heartstone. Still , there was some originality in the tale, and the prose was sterling. So I'd give the book a B, and recommend it to anyone who likes retooled fairy tales with some darkness and pain added for good measure. 

Renegades by Marissa Meyer is probably the beginning of a new YA series by the author of the Lunar Chronicles, which were science fiction reboots of fairy tales like Cinderella. I read all of the Lunar Chronicles (and reviewed them here on my blog), so I was expecting Renegades to be innovative and different than the usual YA novel, ie without the same old love triangle and dead or worthless parents (along with the traumatic backstory for the protagonist). Unfortunately, Renegades didn't innovate as much as imitate a superhero comic book or modern day graphic novel, full of heroes with ridiculous names like Captain Chromium and Dread Warden, as well as outfits full of spandex and cool gadgets and evil villains who want to destroy everything society has built. Why Meyer didn't have this published in an illustrated comic book/graphic novel form is beyond me. She could have saved herself pages of action and fighting description by using illustrations and those ubiquitous text bubbles that say "Ouch!" and "Pow!" and "Oof." There were lots of other characters/scenes that felt "borrowed" from famed YA dystopian fiction, like the inevitable little brother named "Max" who has scary superpowers and must be protected by the big teenagers at all costs (Shadowhunters by Cassandra Clare, anyone?) and the plucky heroine who must survive an arena fight to infiltrate the corrupt organization she wants to defeat, (See Hunger Games and the Red Queen series by Victoria Aveyard) and the male protagonist who falls in love, of course, with the female protagonist, but he's actually got an alter ego that no one knows about and so does she, but neither realizes that they want to kill the other's superhero, for various reasons. Here's the blurb:

Secret Identities.
Extraordinary Powers.
She wants vengeance. He wants justice.
The Renegades are a syndicate of prodigies—humans with extraordinary abilities—who emerged from the ruins of a crumbled society and established peace and order where chaos reigned. As champions of justice, they remain a symbol of hope and courage to everyone...except the villains they once overthrew.
Nova has a reason to hate the Renegades, and she is on a mission for vengeance. As she gets closer to her target, she meets Adrian, a Renegade boy who believes in justice—and in Nova. But Nova's allegiance is to a villain who has the power to end them both.

Why oh why can't YA authors be original? Why must it always be a dystopian future that only plucky teenagers can salvage? Why are adults always so clueless and cruel in YA fiction? I wouldn't have minded the format so much if Meyer didn't throw in a huge twist in the last paragraph that I should have seen coming, but didn't. It's not so much surprising as it is annoying. The book also left me feeling like I'd been ripped off for paying full price for this copycat novel in hardback, when I could have waited until it came out in paperback, or until I could get it from the library for free. Sigh. Hindsight being 20/20, I would recommend that anyone who reads this wait for a cheaper version or put it on hold at their local library. So I'd give the book a C, and I honestly don't know if I will bother reading the sequel, unless it comes out in comic book/graphic novel form.