1.
Night Pleasures by Sherrilyn Kenyon
2.
Swallowing Darkness by Laurell K. Hamilton
Imagine my surprise to find myself reading another LKH book when I thought I was done with her. But there was just enough real plot in the last Merry Gentry book (as opposed to excuses for sex scenes and then interminable discussions of what just happened) to convince me that maybe she was going to turn over a new leaf. What to my wondering eyes should appear but a book with more actual plot then sex! Ms. Hamilton ties up some long-standing series conflicts and comes to some important resolutions. Some of the transformation passages in this book were quite beautifully written, I might add, and she only fell into the habit of interminable discussions of what just happened a couple of times. I liked it. I may read the next one, too.
3.
Draft Novel by Somebody
A superb piece of work.
4.
Bone Crossed by Patricia Briggs
The ending of the last Mercy Thompson book cheesed some people off. In this book, I think Ms. Briggs addresses the issues with that ending in a satisfactory manner. Mercy has more backing then she's had in past books and resolves some of her big scary problems in this one, but typically acquires new ones. She resolves some of those as well, but there's plenty of angst left over for future books. I liked this one, happy to see the rounding out of some of the characters and to get a feeling of advancement in Mercy's relationships and place in the world. She needed to grow as a character, to lay aside some of her less helpful behavior, and she does—yet remains true to herself, I think.
5.
The Whispering Room by Amanda Stevens
What Jia said. Be warned that paragraph four of her review contains some big spoilers, so skip it if you don't want to know, but it's a good, detailed review. I liked this book, found it an interesting venture into romantic suspense in which romance is an element, but not the major focus of the work. Ms. Stevens' writing is smooth. Her heroine, Evangeline Theroux, is a smart and tough New Orleans homicide detective, walking wounded after the murder of her cop husband a year before, then giving birth to their son and trying to raise him on her own. When a thirty-year-old murder case intrudes into both her professional and private life, Evangeline has to solve it in order to protect her loved ones. Jia rated this a B-, which is about what I'd give it. Or three stars if you prefer.
6.
Winter Rose by Patricia A. McKillip
I was a quarter of the way through
Solstice Wood by Ms. McKillip before I remembered that it was a modern day sequel to her historic fantasy,
Winter Rose, which I'd begun ages ago and put down. I don't remember why I stopped reading, whether I just got distracted or if it was something else, but I decided to read that before finishing
Solstice.So I pulled it out of the moldy depths of the TBR pile. I'm glad I did. It's a beautifully written, near-hallucinatory little novel, almost breathless in its telling of the story of a young man, Corbet Lynn, who returns to the ruins of his ancestral home, Lynn Hall, and starts to rebuild. There's a village rumor of a family curse, a dying man's words no one can quite remember the same way, as if the words and the memories shift with each retelling. One winter Corbet's grandfather was murdered by his son, Tearle—Corbet's father—who then disappeared without a trace and without leaving any footprints in the snow. Corbet denies the curse and the murder, says his father still lives, but is deeply mysterious about his own past, intriguing the village further. But for Rois Meillor, the free-spirited farmer's daughter who narrates the story and happened to be in the woods the day Corbet first showed up, the mystery goes deeper. She saw him materialize out of a cloud of light riding a horse the color of buttermilk. She becomes obsessed with solving his mysteries, which ultimately leads her to her own truths about family, love, and the nature of reality. Really quite a luminous piece of writing.
( Books begun in June. )( Books purchased in June. )I was doing so good this month about not buying too many books—really, I was (although "too many" is a relative term for me). And then I got bit by a research bug. Woe is me. They have these things called libraries which I really should try some time. I actually found one of these books (Hurtado) the first time at the UCLA Research Library...but I just had to have it. :-)
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