The Frozen River

The Frozen River by Ariel Lawhon, 432 pages

In the winter of 1789, the Kennebec River froze solid early, trapping a dead body in the ice near the town of Hallowell. Midwife Martha Ballard is the first to examine the dead man, who has been beaten and hanged — and given that he was also a rapist, deservedly so. However, nobody in the small town knows (or at least is willing to reveal) who killed the man and Martha doesn't trust the loose judicial system to find the real culprit, so in the course of her work around town, Martha starts her own investigation. In such a small town, it's hard to keep a secret, yet Martha manages to unearth a lot of shocking ones, including some that threaten her family's livelihood and the lives of her patients.

Martha Ballard was a real woman, an amazing midwife who managed to deliver more than a thousand babies without ever losing a mother to childbirth (quite the feat at that time!) and took meticulous notes. This book is loosely based on her life and some real events that took place in Hallowell, Maine in the late 1700s. It's masterfully told, and makes me want to learn more about Ballard. If you enjoyed the Outlander series, you'll likely dig this one too.

Rogues

 Rogues: The True Stories of Grifters, Killers, Rebels, and Crooks by Patrick Radden Keefe, 368 pages.

This book pretends at more cohesion than it truly has. It would probably be more honest to market it as an anthology of Patrick Radden Keefe's journalism, which happens to be mostly focused on crime. That structural gripe out of the way, Radden Keefe's writing is very good, and I found myself drawn into chapters that I had little interest in when I started. He does an excellent job building suspense without making real events feel like fiction; as well as presenting what feels like a fair and balanced perspective in many cases. I would recommend this book to fans of the author's other work.

Girly Drinks

 Girly Drinks: A World History of Women and Alcohol by Mallory O'Meara, 384 pages.

This book is pretty much exactly what it says on the tin, with an emphasis on world history. O'Meara traces the history of women producing, marketing, and drinking alcohol from the dawn of civilization in ancient Mesopotamia to trendy New York bartenders in the present day. Furthermore, she doesn't only concern herself with the standard "western civilization" path covered in many world history classes. This book goes to every continent except Antarctica, and returns to many places multiple times. This is both a good and a bad thing. The book is organized pretty much chronologically, which is great for placing things in a world context, but often jarring when a story in France is interrupted by a ten page unrelated interlude in Africa, before returning to France again. 

That being said Girly Drinks is extremely readable. My only other complaint is that O'Meara is guilty of one of the classic blunders of feminist books, where she feels the need to point out how feminist the book is every few pages instead of just showing us. Aside from this minor quibble, it is very obvious that the author runs a podcast, and her casual intimate style makes this book very approachable and fun.

The Fairytale Life of Dorothy Gale

 

The Fairytale Life of Dorothy Gale by Virginia Kantra (2023) 368 pages

Dorothy Gale, also known as Dee, was working on a graduate degree in a creative writing program in Kansas. An instructor there, Grayson Kettering, took her under his wing and as a lover. Two years later, when he published his best-selling novel, it was apparent that he'd used her as a much-ridiculed character in his book. The character's name in the book is Destiny Gale.

Fleeing the embarrassment, Dee goes back to the Kansas farm owned by her Aunt Em and Uncle Henry, in this re-imagined version of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. After regrouping, and also establishing her younger sister at college, she goes to Trinity College at Dublin to work on her degree there. Her enthusiasm and earnestness help her meet a variety of people, making new friendships that are almost too good to be true. Her biggest problem is in working with the professors in the writing program. She tries to hide the fact that she's the Destiny Gale in Kettering's book. She's also trying to figure out what home is to her: as a child, her mother would leave her and her little sister at the homes of various people while working on grandiose art installations around the world. After their mother died in a weird accident, they went to live on the farm in Kansas, with Dee never feeling that they were really wanted there.

A lot of relationships are examined, not just those of Dee and her little sister Toni, but of people in Dublin, too, including Dee's new friend Reeti and two rather different men, Sam (a sexy guy who runs a news-agents shop) and Tim (a serious guy who's working full time but also getting a business degree at Trinity). These are just some of the great characters in this multifaceted novel, which works so well.

Next-Door Nemesis

Next-Door Nemesis by Alexa Martin (2023) 338 pages

Collins Carter, a native Ohioan, is living back in her childhood bedroom after a tumultuous breakup with Peter, her boyfriend in Los Angeles, after he took a script she had been working on for years and sold it as his own. She was enraged. A neighbor in LA filmed her as she was vandalizing Peter's car while sob-singing, wearing high heels and a silk robe. The video went viral, pretty much assuring her of being blacklisted in the industry.

When she finally reappears in public in her Ohio subdivision, she's blind-sided again, this time by Nate, one of her best friends from childhood, who had suddenly unfriended her in high school. Now he's a realtor and also sits on the board of the neighborhood's homeowners' association. They spar often, especially after Nate gives Collins a citation for planting a tree in her parents' yard without getting approval from the homeowners' association. This means war! She decides to run for president of the association, an office he is also running for. It's a humorous hate-to-love story with a cast of colorful characters, including Ashleigh and Ruby from high school, as well as Collins's parents and myriad nosy neighbors.

The Helsinki Affair

The Helsinki Affair by Anna Pitoniak, 355 pages

Amanda Cole is stuck in a boring CIA posting in Rome when a Russian man comes in and tells her that a U.S. Senator is about to be assassinated in Cairo. When her boss refuses to act, Amanda finds herself leading the Rome CIA station and leading an investigation into the corporate blackmail and espionage scheme that led to the senator's murder. Along the way, she discovers that her father — Charlie, a CIA agent who is just months away from retirement — may have played an instrumental role in the plot...but for which side?

Bouncing back and forth in time between Amanda's investigation and the titular events 30 years earlier, this is a twisty, often confusing spy-filled plot, in which it's never clear who can and should be trusted. I'm not much of a spy novel fan, and this one didn't do much to change my mind. But for those who can't get enough of the Cold War in their fiction, it might be worth a read.

My Darkest Prayer

 My Darkest Prayer by S. A. Cosby (2022) 267 pp

Southern noir is a genre I haven’t tried before and this book is a page-turner. Cosby has a knack for putting you in the action and action is the key word here. Jack Reacher would feel right at home with protagonist Nathan Waymaker. In a homage to author Walter Mosley, Waymaker has named his hot-rod pickup “black betty” and the author has taken on the mantle of Mosley and I dare say Chester Himes and Donald Goines when it comes to graphic descriptions of fighting and fornicating. Between the seemingly endless fisticuffs, Cosby offers a glimpse of the human bonds (and foibles) of small-town southern life—regardless of skin color. However, he is not shy about calling out the unbridled racism of the South, although he interweaves the sociology with the story line without distracting from the narrative.  And the story is, as one of the characters might say, a humdinger and about as implausible as you can imagine. The reader is subjected to many murders, corrupt law officers, gangsters, and old scores to settle.  Waymaker works (and resides) in his cousin’s funeral home and has a vibrant past, biracial in a small town (parents murdered), former marine and ex-sheriff’s deputy. Like the early Mosley characters, Waymaker is an unofficial “fixer”, the go-to guy when answers can not be found via the traditional route. And like Mosley’s Easy Rawlins sometime sidekick Mouse, Waymaker has a hard partner capable of merciless violence -- Skunk. As with many crime fiction stories this one wraps up with gratuitous non-stop carnage. Cosby is an interesting writer; he has a great ear for dialog, and a fun way with home-spun homilies – clever without ladling on the saccharine. I almost felt I was reading two stories, the biography of Waymaker and the separate world of his noir adventure.

The Book of Doors

The Book of Doors by Gareth Brown, 403 pages

One night in a New York City bookstore, an old man — a regular — quietly died, leaving a mysterious book with an inscription to bookstore clerk Cassie on the table next to him. Cassie took it home and soon discovered that the book had the ability to turn any door into any other door in the world. While she was excited by the prospect of immediate inexpensive travel and the prospect of never having to use a public bathroom again, Cassie's roommate Izzy was a bit more apprehensive about this magical item. Turns out, Izzy was right, as the Book of Doors opened up a world of magical (and often dangerous) books and the people who hunt them down.

This debut novel is full of adventure, time-traveling twists, and creative solutions to magical problems. I loved Cassie's relationship with Mr. Webber (the old man who died in the bookstore), and the way that she learned about herself through the experiences with the Book of Doors. I can't wait to see what else Brown comes up with in future books!

Hunt on Dark Waters

 Hunt on Dark Waters by Katee Robert, 320 pages.

Evelyn is a witch who makes bad decisions. Her latest bad decision is stealing her extremely dangerous vampire lover's family heirlooms after a fighting and then jumping through (and exploding) a portal to an unknown location said vampire situationship was hiding in her home. The next thing she knows she's being fished out of the sea by a handsome sea captain at the head of a ship full of monster hunters and being given a legally required join-or-die ultimatum, so her day really isn't getting any less complicated. However, soon she's developing serious feelings for uptight Captain Bowen, and the return of those feelings is rocking the pillars of belief he's built his world around. 

I had to rewrite this review when it became very obvious to me that most of my gripes with this book come down to the fact that I am NOT the target audience for the "romantasy" genre. The writing was solid and the action was good, although the plot didn't go in the direction I expected (which I feel like is more the result of a very misleading blurb than anything else). I thought it was an extremely interesting choice to start with urban fantasy and then jump right into a portal fantasy, and that choice alone is honestly what has me the most interested in reading later books in this series. I was very compelled by the world-building, and wish I had gotten to see more of it, rather than quite so much romance, but again I suspect this is mostly a genre preference. I will say the fact that pretty much the entire plot hinges on a love-at-first-sight plot made it a little harder for me to buy into. Also, this was marketed as a pirate romance but the Cŵn Annwn are absolutely not pirates by any stretching of the definition, as they are literally the government. All gripes aside, this was still a fairly fun book to read and it had enough gems that I did recommend it to a few people I know in real life. A fun summer read with a very inaccurate blurb.

Fun Home

 Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic by Alison Bechdel, 232 pages.

Alison Bechdel, originally most famous for the comic strip Dykes to Watch Out For and what came to be known as the "Bechdel Test" (originally presented in that same comic strip), presents an extremely literary take on the memoir genre. This is especially impressive in comic form. This classic of the graphic novel genre is centered mostly on Bechdel's early life and her relationship with her father, who she only learned was a closeted gay man with his own troubled past shortly after her own coming out as a young adult (an event which tragically happened shortly before his death).

I've heard this book referenced many, many places and have meant to get around to reading it for years. I'm glad I finally did, because I do feel like it lives up to it's own reputation. I am often not the biggest enjoyer of the memoir genre, but Bechdel does an excellent job portraying not only very human and personal details, but also shaping them into a story that is so narratively neat it's hard to believe it is nonfiction. The comic is rich in detail and meticulously constructed, and I would definitely recommend it.