Fiction

A Highlander’s Temptation

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A Highlander's Temptation

A Highlander’s Temptation

By Sue-Ellen Welfonder

Hachette Book Group

3.5 stars

Arabella MacKenzie is the beloved daughter of Duncan MacKenzie, the long ruling and well-feared leader of the MacKenzie Clan. Arabella wants nothing more than to be married but her father has refuted every attempt, finding something wrong with each suitor leaving her alone and craving a family and love of her own. She convinces him to let her travel to the Seal Islands, which are part of a marriage dowry she has yet to use, and he unwillingly relents realizing he will need to let his daughter go sometime.

During the voyage, the ship is attacked and wrecked upon the shores of the Hebrides Islands, home to Clan MacConacher. Arabella is spared and rescued by Darroc MacConacher, leader of the clan. He falls hopelessly in love with her not knowing who she is only that she is the love he has been waiting for. When Darroc finds out she is a MacKenzie, he realizes their love cannot be but Arabella has other plans. She spent her life waiting for a man like Darroc and refuses to give up now.

I don’t read many paperback romance novels; I can count the number on my left hand. I read a few reviews for this one several weeks back and, while browsing the bookstore, decided this would be a good distraction for a long plan ride. I have to admit that I enjoyed it. Darroc and Arabella have good chemistry, and while I did giggle out loud in a few places, found a few things here and there awkward, and sort of formulaic, overall it was a fun and very fast read.

Set in 14th Century Scotland, the setting is harsh, lovely, romantic, and really a very good setting for a love story. In the acknowledgments, Welfonder talks about her love of Scotland, and it does shine through in this story.

The Haunting of Hill House

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The Haunting of Hill House

The Haunting of Hill House

By Shirley Jackson

Penguin Books

ISBN: 0-14-30-3998-9

4.5 stars

Eleanor Vance has no life. After the death of her mother, whom she physically cared for the last few years, she moves in with her sister, brother-in-law, and niece. She owns nothing, has no job, and desperately wants to belong somewhere. When a letter from a Dr. John Montague arrives in the mail inviting her to spend the summer at Hill House, she readily accepts thinking this is her chance at a new life. Her sister balks at the idea and tries to stop her by telling her that she cannot borrow the car. Eleanor decides to defy her sister and herself. She takes the car and goes to Hill House not understanding or prepared for what she is about to face.

Dr. Montague is studying the paranormal and plans to write a book documenting the events at Hill House which is widely reported to be haunted. The individuals he invites to spend the summer at the house have all experienced some sort of paranormal activity and he hopes to tap into their collective abilities. With the arrival of Theodora and Luke Sanderson, the experiment begins and quickly takes a strange and frightening turn. Over the next few days, Eleanor gets pulled in deeper and begins to lose her grip on reality. When the others try to help, the experiment takes a tragic turn.

As the reader, you hear Eleanor’s thoughts and they are sad, scary, and deluded. She is always imaging the happy life she thinks she should be living but she’s so incredibly unstable that you feel uncomfortable knowing her thoughts. It’s these same thoughts that keep you hooked though. There’s something so very wrong about the house but also Eleanor that the two become almost one in the book. When the paranormal activity picks up, you do wonder if it’s all in Eleanor’s head.

When reality takes over, you feel bad for Eleanor because what happens to her is almost inevitable. There is no way out and no escape from her depressing life. She exercises the only option she can see and while she does, for one brief moment, question her choice, it’s already too late for her.

I didn’t find The Haunting of Hill House scary for the paranormal activity but Eleanor’s thoughts and life which give the book a tragic and creepy feel. The backdrop of the haunted house only adds to the effect and brings to life the raving thoughts of a person so depressed and scared of life that she has to imagine a new one every second of the day.

Dracula The Un-Dead

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Dracula The Un-Dead

Dracula The Un-Dead

By Dacre Stoker and Ian Holt

Dutton

ISBN: 978-0525951292

3 stars

Since Saturday is Halloween, I thought this would be a good book to talk about.

In addition to this blog, I also do reviews for The Book Reporter website. Below is a short summary of my review of Dracula The Un-Dead which can be found on their website in full here.

Dracula The Un-Dead re-introduces us to the original characters — Dr. Jack Seward, Jonathan and Mina Harker, Arthur Holwood, and Dr. Abraham Van Helsing — 25 years after their heroic battle against Dracula in the Carpathian Mountains. We find out that Dracula is still roaming the earth and so is a new evil — an evil more cunning and diabolical than Dracula himself. The next incarnation of the undead is committing gruesome murders and terrorizing residents of London and Paris, leaving one individual to stop the carnage.

Dracula The Un-Dead is written by the great grand nephew of Bram Stoker, Dacre Stoker, and is billed as a sequel to the original written in 1897 using Bram Stoker’s notes. All in all, it’s a fast read and exciting in parts but I think too much is asked of readers of the original in having to forgo old beliefs of who and what Dracula is. In the end, enjoy it for what it is, another vampire story for October.

If you are interested in my review of the original, it can be found here.

The Killing Way

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The Killing Way

The Killing Way

By Tony Hays

A Tom Doherty Associates Book

ISBN: 978-0-7653-1945-6

4.5 stars

CSI meet Arthur; Arthur meet CSI. The Killing Way is a murder mystery set to Arthurian legend mixed with modern ideas of investigation techniques.

At Castellum Arturius, shortly before Arthur is to be elected ruler of Britain, a murder is committed putting Arthur in an awkward position when Merlin is accused of the crime. Arthur turns to Malgywn to investigate. A former soldier, the one armed Malgywn is not fond of Arthur. He would have preferred to die fighting the Saxons who had taken his wife’s life but all they got from him was his arm. He hates Arthur for rescuing him when death was all he craved. Malgywn, now a drunk who prefers to spend his time whoring and waiting for an early death, is not thrilled with the investigator role Arthur assigns him but has no choice. When he finds out that his dead wife’s sister, Eleonore, was the one found murdered, the case takes on a personal tone for him.

With his leadership role at stake, Arthur is in a hurry to have the murder solved but Malgywn tells him at the start that he’ll take as long as he needs to finish his investigation and won’t be swayed when it comes to the guilty. Although he doesn’t believe Merlin capable of murder, he keeps going back to him letting Arthur know things won’t be as clean and easy as he wants them to be. When a second woman shows up dead and a suspect goes missing, Malgywn gets pulled deeper into a world he tried for many years to fade out of.

The story moves fast and so does the investigation giving readers a look at the political landscape and the battles Arthur faces as the new leader of Britain. I liked the character of Malgywn, he’s gruff, mean-spirited, but fair. He also turns out to be kinder than one imagines; an old farmer, widower, and soldier who cares more than he wants to admit or believe. He doesn’t think he has much to gain but knows that Arthur has a lot to lose. In the end, he only wants to find the truth knowing he can’t let down either Eleonore or the memory of his wife.

It’s a short book, 264 pages only, and moves incredibly fast. It’s entertaining and the mystery takes a few turns before all is revealed in the end although for hard-core mystery readers, you’ll probably figure things out fairly quickly. I don’t read many mysteries but I did enjoy this one and the setting which was a nice change from the rather Sherlock Holmesy feel I get with most mysteries.

Haunting Bombay

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Haunting Bombay

Haunting Bombay

Haunting Bombay

By Shilpa Agarwal

Soho Press, Inc.

ISBN: 978-1-56947-558-4

3 stars

Pinky Mittal is being raised by her grandmother after her mother’s death when she was just a baby. Her life in the large bungalow in one of Bombay’s most desirable neighborhoods in anything but happy. Her grandmother treats her kindly and the two have a loving relationship but her extended family is another matter. Her uncle is an alcoholic, her aunt makes her feel unwanted at every opportunity, the servants don’t treat her badly but don’t seem to care much for her, and her three cousins, all boys, are, well, boys.

One night, after humiliating herself in front of one of her cousins, Nimish who she secretly loves, she does something that throws the whole house into chaos. Pinky unlocks a bathroom door that is bolted each night unknowingly releasing a ghost that has remained dormant and hidden for years. When the monsoon season arrives, the ghost uses the water to escape and torments the family fully intending to take revenge for the years of being ignored and shut away.

I had trouble getting into this book. I wanted to like the characters but couldn’t become attached. The family is dysfunctional but not any worse than one would expect with their history. It’s easy to see why Pinky’s aunt would be hostile towards her and why her uncle would be drowning himself in alcohol. I thought the ghost idea was a nice way to showcase the family’s problems, but, honestly, I didn’t really care what happened to any of them.

However, I’m glad I finished it. The story has a strange redeeming quality to it and after the last page, I did feel something for these people and the sad state of their lives. In the end, I was happy to see Pinky find herself and the courage to stand up to her aunt. It was also nice to see the family start to pull itself back together. I do wish I would have experienced more of the redeeming affect while I was reading; it would have made it much more enjoyable. In the end, it was an okay read but not a book I will go back to.

The Magicians

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The Magicians

The Magicians

The Magicians

By Lev Grossman

Viking

ISBN: 978-0-670-02055-3

4 stars

Quentin Coldwater is a brilliant high school student who is bored with life. He’s always looking for something in the way of entertainment or satisfaction that seems just out of reach. As a means of escape, he constantly re-reads a fantasy novel set is a mythical world called Fillory. He doesn’t think magic is real but when he finds himself at a school for the magically gifted, he’s forced to change his whole belief system about the world and what he thought it was.

After passing the grueling and somewhat enlightening (for Quentin anyway) entrance exam, he’s admitted to Brakebills College for Magical Pedagogy and begins partaking of the college life which according to this book is all about booze, sex, and love. The years fly by and Quentin finds his little niche at the school becoming part of a small, tight-knit group of students deemed the physicals due to the magical discipline they specialize in. When graduation approaches, he finds himself once more bored with the hedonistic life he’s living — that is until a school friend finds a way into Fillory. Quentin doesn’t immediately believe they will be able to get to Fillory but when his debauched life catches up with him, he makes the call and they embark on a journey none expected.

I was so looking forward to this book and while I wasn’t disappointed (in fact I liked the book a lot) I was sort of annoyed. The book was billed as Harry Potter for adults and there are a lot of small jibs at the story and a lot of little similarities that you can’t help but notice even if you’ve only seen the movies. Brakebills is Hogwarts complete with a high astronomy tower, school uniforms, and right at the beginning, Quentin is teamed up with another boy, Penny, and a girl, Alice, in his class. They don’t get along as famously but they do find themselves together for better or worse. Grossman does take a few shots at Rowlings world and the magic. For instance, practicing magic with a wand is looked down upon. He doesn’t stop there — the world of Fillory and the “quest” they set upon is Tolkien and C.S. Lewis inspired, and, wait for it, he also throws in a bit of Star Wars at the end. (That part is a nice bit of irony that’s actually quite amusing though.)

Why mention this? Well, I like my Harry Potter. There I said it. Now, I’m not trying to defend, I’m just pointing out the obvious comparisons in this book to that work and many others. He takes a bit here and there and makes it his own and it works. What annoyed me was the slightly mean-spirited way in which some references were made.

THAT SAID, I thought this book was great fun and even stayed up way too late to finish reading it. I had to know if they would get out of Fillory alive and what would happen if and when Quentin made it back to the real world.

The characters are great and even if you hate what they are sometimes doing and becoming, you still want to be one of them. The magic is thrilling and seems so very real that you too want to find Fillory. It’s a good book, entertaining, amusing and worth the read.

We Have Always Lived in the Castle

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We Have Always Lived in the Castle

We Have Always Lived in the Castle

We Have Always Lived in the Castle

By Shirley Jackson

Penguin Books

ISBN: 978-0-14-303997-6

4.5 stars

Mary Katherine Blackwood (Merricat to her family) is walking home after a trip to the grocery store describing all the stares and name calling she must endure before finding herself back home and safely ensconced behind a locked door. She shares her home with her older sister Constance and their Uncle Julian, neither of which ever leave the house. The three have lived under a cloud of suspicion and ridicule after several family members were found dead of arsenic poisoning one night many years ago. Constance was acquitted of the murders, and after her release, she retreated to the house and hasn’t left since. Her fear of others and the outside world is palpable. Merricat tries to help as best she can but is hampered in her own way. A teenager of 18, Merricat still thinks and acts like a child, unable to deal with change, afraid for her sister, and prone to outbursts of anger.

One day their cousin Charles shows up for a visit. His motives seem very sinister to Merricat who takes an immediate dislike to him. Constance, oddly, seems to relish having a visitor but you can feel the tension building in her attempting to placate Charles, restrain Merricat, and care for the ailing Uncle Julian. Merricat takes it upon herself to drive Charles from their safe haven wanting to return to their comforting schedule of cleaning and cooking.

In one of the most affecting and riveting scenes in the book, a fire ravages the house and the townspeople show up to fight the fire and heckle the family. “Let it burn” chants echo over the flames and after the fire is extinguished, the onlookers wreck the house — trashing furniture, smashing plates and carefully cared for and cherished pieces of family history with little regard. It’s fantastically abhorrent to see the actions of the people mixed with the raw emotions of the sisters. It made me want to put the book down but I couldn’t, wanting desperately to know they would survive the unconscionable actions of the townspeople.

You can’t say this book has a happy ending but you come to an understanding with Merricat and Constance and are glad to see they are happy and feel safe in the small, tragic world that is their own. Jackson weaves in agoraphobic fears and traits so well that you almost believe the sisters are better off alone, locked away in a house reclaimed by vines and shrouded in cardboard and spare wood staring out at the world through peep holes.

This was a marvelously refreshing book to read. After the description above I’m sure you may be wondering why I would say that but the characters are so amazing and clever that you may want to stay in their world with them even though it is suffocating and sad.

Her Fearful Symmetry

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Her Fearful Symmetry

Her Fearful Symmetry

Her Fearful Symmetry

By Audrey Niffenegger

Scribner

ISBN: 978-1439165393

5 stars

In addition to this blog, I also do reviews for The Book Reporter website. Below is a short summary of my review of Her Fearful Symmetry which can be found on their website in full here.

Her Fearful Symmetry begins with a death. Elspeth Noblin dies of cancer, leaving her London apartment to her estranged sister’s twin daughters, Julia and Valentina. Excited by the prospect of a new life life, the twins leave for London unaware of the dark secret which has kept their mother and aunt apart for decades.

This book is full of interesting characters who all seem to be waiting around for something in their lives — a wife to return, a secret to be revealed, a love to return, or a love to be found. Hovering over everyone is death and disappearance. In the end, you feel sad for all the characters, even the ones that manage to find themselves again but you may not get over the final last act that brings everything full circle.

Her Fearful Symmetry was eagerly awaited by fans of The Time Traveler’s Wife. I didn’t fall in love with these characters that way I did with Henry and Clair but, it was worth the wait and is one great read.