Life of Madam C.J.Walker on TV, Quote of the Day, Bookish Winners at the Golden Globes, Enchantee by Gita Trelease, The Daughters of Temperance Hobbs by Katherine Howe, Twice in a Blue Moon by Christina Lauren,and The Lady Rogue by Jenn Bennett

Welcome to 2020, fellow bibliophiles! Here's to another year of reviews of 200 books. May your TBR be plentiful and your time never wasted with bad storytelling, sagging prose or limp plots. Speaking of sagging, I turn 60 this year, and I plan to make the most of it by getting healthier and by making the best use of my time, reading and otherwise. To that end, here are some tidbits and four reviews.

I truly admire self-made women, especially women of color, who have it thrice as hard as anyone else in the business world. I am also a Tiffany Haddish fan, so that's an added bonus for me.

TV: Self Made: Inspired by the Life of Madam C.J. Walker

Netflix has unveiled the official title, premiere date and a selection of first look images for its four-part limited series Self Made: Inspired by the Life of Madam C.J. Walker http://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/uz3642037Biz42968767, Deadline reported. Based on the book On Her Own Ground: The Life and Times of Madam C.J. Walker by Walker's great-great-granddaughter, A'Lelia Bundles, the series will debut March 20.

Oscar-winning actress Octavia Spencer stars as Sarah Breedlove, known as Madam C.J. Walker, "the black hair care pioneer and mogul who overcame hostile turn-of-the-century America, epic rivalries, tumultuous marriages and family challenges to become America's first black, female self-made millionaire," Deadline wrote. The cast also includes Blair Underwood, Tiffany Haddish, Carmen Ejogo, Garrett Morris, Kevin Carroll and Bill Bellamy.

Produced by SpringHill Entertainment and Wonder Street in association with Warner Bros. Television, the series is helmed by co-showrunners Elle Johnson & Janine Sherman Barrois, along with writer and co-executive producer Nicole Jefferson Asher. It is directed by Kasi Lemmons and DeMane Davis, and executive produced by Janine Sherman Barrois, Elle Johnson, Maverick Carter, LeBron James, Octavia Spencer, Mark Holder, Christine Holder, Kasi Lemmons and Jamal Henderson.

 I totally agree, that book lovers who encounter other members of their reading tribe in a bookstore create magic that enriches both parties.

Quotation of the Day

'Something Spiritual Happens'

“I like to imagine two people who might judge each other just on the way they look, but one person is holding a book the other one loves. They start talking, and something spiritual happens."That's my goal, to create that encounter."--Alsace Walentine, owner of Tombolo Books, St. Petersburg, Fla., in a Tampa Bay Times http://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/uz3642037Biz42992721 article recounting how she came to open the store

 I was thrilled to see that once again, books turned into movies and TV programs won accolades at the Golden Globes!

Bookish Winners at the Golden Globes

Book-to-screen adaptations collected some prestigious hardware at last night's Golden Globe Awards http://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/uz3642037Biz42992778. Winning productions that started as books or have book connections included:

TV

Chernobyl, based on many sources, including Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster by Svetlana Alexievich: Best limited series or TV movie; Stellan Skarsgård (supporting actor in a series, limited series or motion picture made for TV)

The Loudest Voice, based on the book The Loudest Voice in the Room: How the Brilliant, Bombastic Roger Ailes Built Fox News--and Divided a Country by Gabriel Sherman: Russell Crowe (actor in a limited series or motion picture made for TV)

Fosse/Verdon, based in part on Sam Wasson's book Fosse: Michelle Williams (actress in a limited series or motion picture made for TV)

Movies

Judy, adapted from the play End of the Rainbow by Peter Quilter: Renée Zellweger (actress in a motion picture--drama)

Joker, based on D.C. Comics characters: Joaquin Phoenix (actor in a motion picture--drama); Hildur Guðnadóttir (original score, motion picture)

Here are the reviews, as promised!

 Enchantee by Gita Trelease is a delicious YA fantasy romance that takes place in 18th century France. The authors evocative prose makes you feel like you're right there in the castles and mansions and alternately freezing garrets of Paris during the revolution. Here's the blurb:

Love. Magic. Revolution...Gita Trelease’s debut fantasy about an orphaned girl who uses dark magic to save her sister and herself from ruin is “a soaring success” (NPR)
Paris is a labyrinth of twisted streets filled with beggars and thieves, revolutionaries and magicians. Camille Durbonne is one of them. She wishes she weren’t...
When smallpox kills her parents, Camille must find a way to provide for her younger sister while managing her volatile brother. Relying on magic, Camille painstakingly transforms scraps of metal into money to buy food and medicine they need. But when the coins won’t hold their shape and her brother disappears with the family’s savings, Camille pursues a richer, more dangerous mark: the glittering court of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette.
Using dark magic forbidden by her mother, Camille transforms herself into a baroness and is swept up into life at the Palace of Versailles, where aristocrats both fear and hunger for magic. As she struggles to reconcile her resentment of the rich with the allure of glamour and excess, Camille meets a handsome young inventor, and begins to believe that love and liberty may both be possible.
But magic has its costs, and soon Camille loses control of her secrets. And when revolution erupts, Camille must choose—love or loyalty, democracy or aristocracy, reality or magic—before Paris burns.

Though at times the prose was as overdone and as gaudy with gilt as Versailles must have been in its heyday, I felt that the plot was sturdy enough to keep the story moving at a brisk trot. And while the HEA ending was welcome, it left a few minor questions unanswered, at least for me. Overall, though, a delicious novel that asks some fundamental philosophical questions of how much is really enough to make a full life? I'd give this novel, which shouldn't be in the YA genre but in the adult fantasy aisle, an A-, and I'd recommend it to anyone interested in Les Miserable and the revolutionary era of France.

The Daughters Of Temperance Hobbs by Katherine Howe is the third book that contains characters from the Physick Book of Deliverance Dane, the first book in this series about generations of witches living in earlier centuries and today, trying to come to terms with their magical heritage. Here's the blurb: 

A bewitching novel of a New England history professor who must race against time to free her family from a curse, by Katherine Howe, New York Times bestselling author of The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane.

Connie Goodwin is an expert on America’s fractured past with witchcraft. A young, tenure-track professor in Boston, she’s earned career success by studying the history of magic in colonial America―especially women’s home recipes and medicines―and by exposing society's threats against women fluent in those skills. But beyond her studies, Connie harbors a secret: She is the direct descendant of a woman tried as a witch in Salem, an ancestor whose abilities were far more magical than the historical record shows.
When a hint from her mother and clues from her research lead Connie to the shocking realization that her partner’s life is in danger, she must race to solve the mystery behind a hundreds’-years-long deadly curse.
Flashing back through American history to the lives of certain supernaturally gifted women, The Daughters of Temperance Hobbs affectingly reveals not only the special bond that unites one particular matriarchal line, but also explores the many challenges to women’s survival across the decades―and the risks some women are forced to take to protect what they love most.

I was fascinated by the idea of having a curse that goes through the generations of women so that any man they marry dies within a short time of falling in love with them. A lot of the belief in magic and its consequences was taken for granted, as almost a given in this book, along with the condescending attitude shown toward Connie's mother Grace,who, because she's a "new age hippy" kind of woman (read: Baby Boomer generation), is given to creating charm bracelets and giving out warnings to her daughter of what will happen if she doesn't break off her relationship with Sam, her beloved.When Connie decides instead to break the curse via a recipe from Deliverance Dane's book, initially she finds few allies, but, her mother does help her in the end, and all is well. The clean prose helped the labyrinthine plot move along stolidly toward an HEA ending. Having lived in Cambridge,Mass, (as a grad student) I found the glamorizing of the area in and around Harvard to be amusing. For those who have a lot of money, its fine, but for poor grad students who don't have enough money to ride the T on the regular, it's a nightmarish place to live.  I'd give this book a B, and recommend it to those interested in magic and the Salem Witch trials.

Twice in a Blue Moon by Christina Lauren is a contemporary romance that takes place in LA/Hollywood and set locations, and in a tiny town upstate called Guernville. The protagonist is a naive girl named Tate who gives her heart and secrets away to the first boy she meets while on vacation with her grandmother in London. Unsurprisingly, the boy trades those secrets for cash at the first opportunity, breaking her heart, but also beginning her climb to fame as an actress. Years later, on the set of a movie, Tate meets up with that same betraying boy, who is now a man and the scriptwriter for the film. He tells her (SPOILER) that he betrayed her to get money for a cancer treatment for his grandfather, because he had no other choice. She of course forgives him and they spark and dart at one another until they can begin their affair again. I found that to be ridiculously unlikely and stupid, considering that Sam, the betraying jerk, never actually talks about all the other options available for cancer treatment, including Pharmaceutical companies that will help by giving away their product to people who can't afford it. There are also insurance companies that will pay for treatments, and GoFundMe campaigns, plus a host of other ideas. Also, if his grandparent had discovered he'd done such a dishonorable thing in his name, he would have been horrified and very disappointed in his grandson. As it was, gramps died 10 years later, so Sam sold someone he supposedly loves out for 10 years for an old dying man, who should have been informed so that he could make his own choices. The fact that he supposedly didn't suspect a thing was also a red flag, when gramps was obviously a very savvy man with a conscience, unlike his grandson. I never would have forgiven someone who had done something so horrible to me for his own gain. But our heroine is not made of stern stuff. She's still naive, after all these years, and even forgives her douchebag famous father, who uses her and betrays her again for his own needs. Ugh, what an idiot! Here's the blurb: Sam Brandis was Tate Jones’s first: Her first love. Her first everything. Including her first heartbreak.

During a whirlwind two-week vacation abroad, Sam and Tate fell for each other in only the way that first loves do: sharing all of their hopes, dreams, and deepest secrets along the way. Sam was the first, and only, person that Tate—the long-lost daughter of one of the world’s biggest film stars—ever revealed her identity to. So when it became clear her trust was misplaced, her world shattered for good.

Fourteen years later, Tate, now an up-and-coming actress, only thinks about her first love every once in a blue moon. When she steps onto the set of her first big break, he’s the last person she expects to see. Yet here Sam is, the same charming, confident man she knew, but even more alluring than she remembered. Forced to confront the man who betrayed her, Tate must ask herself if it’s possible to do the wrong thing for the right reason… and whether “once in a lifetime” can come around twice.
With Christina Lauren’s signature “beautifully written and remarkably compelling” (Sarah J. Maas, New York Times bestselling author) prose and perfect for fans of Emily Giffin and Jennifer Weiner, Twice in a Blue Moon is an unforgettable and moving novel of young love and second chances.   

I didn't find this novel all that moving or compelling, (or unforgettable) though it was well written and the plot swift and sure. I'd give it a C+, and only recommend it to those who find very naive women and their bad love interests compelling.

The Lady Rogue by Jenn Bennett is a fun YA fantasy for all the fans of Dracula and the history of Vlad Tepes in Romania. The prose here is light and zippy and the plot moves as stealthy as a fox in the dark woods. Here's the blurb: The Last Magician meets A Gentleman’s Guide to Vice and Virtue in this thrilling tale filled with magic and set in the mysterious Carpathian Mountains where a girl must hunt down Vlad the Impaler’s cursed ring in order to save her father.

Some legends never die…
Traveling with her treasure-hunting father has always been a dream for Theodora. She’s read every book in his library, has an impressive knowledge of the world’s most sought-after relics, and has all the ambition in the world. What she doesn’t have is her father’s permission. That honor goes to her father’s nineteen-year-old protégé—and once-upon-a-time love of Theodora’s life—Huck Gallagher, while Theodora is left to sit alone in her hotel in Istanbul.
Until Huck arrives from an expedition without her father and enlists Theodora’s help in rescuing him. Armed with her father’s travel journal, the reluctant duo learns that her father had been digging up information on a legendary and magical ring that once belonged to Vlad the Impaler—more widely known as Dracula—and that it just might be the key to finding him.

Journeying into Romania, Theodora and Huck embark on a captivating adventure through Gothic villages and dark castles in the misty Carpathian Mountains to recover the notorious ring. But they aren’t the only ones who are searching for it. A secretive and dangerous occult society with a powerful link to Vlad the Impaler himself is hunting for it, too. And they will go to any lengths—including murder—to possess it.

I liked Theo's determination, but not her hair-brained rushing into dangerous situations without regard to the risk to life and limb. I also didn't understand why her father was such a douchebag about letting her get involved, when he likely knew she was going to come after him and try to find the cursed ring. Still the atmospheric prose and the interesting history and characters make the trip worthwhile. I'd give this adventurous YA novel a B, and recommend it to those who like the true history of vampires mingled with the fantasy element of cursed objects.