Author 'Nathan Burgoine posted this simple, direct method of not getting paralyzed by the prospect of having to write reviews. The Three-Sentence Review is, as he notes, very helpful and also simple to achieve. I get completely unmanned at the idea of saying something trenchant about each book I read, when there often just isn't that much to say...now I can use this structure to say what I think is the most important idea I took away from the read and not try to dig for more.
Think about using it yourselves!
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The Ghost Woods by C.J. Cooke
Rating: 3.5* of five
The Publisher Says: In the midst of the woods stands a house called Lichen Hall.
This place is shrouded in folklore—old stories of ghosts, of witches, of a child who was not quite a child.
Now the woods are creeping closer, and something has been unleashed.
Pearl Gorham arrives in 1965, one of a string of young women sent to Lichen Hall to give birth. And she soon suspects the proprietors are hiding something.
Then she meets the mysterious mother and young boy who live in the grounds—and together they begin to unpick the secrets of this place.
As the truth comes to the surface and the darkness moves in, Pearl must rethink everything she knew—and risk what she holds most dear.
I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU. CW: graphic nonconsensual sex
My Review: Heed my content warning. It's part of my biggest problem with this well-written, if awkwardly paced, gothic tale: Making action too graphic does not make a read go faster. If anything it slows the reader down to have this strong a tonal shift from beautiful evocative scene-building to bloody or emotionally violent moments.
Not without pleasures for tougher gothic-fiction fans in search of a powerful modern twist on Ann Radcliffe's The Romance of the Forest.
HarperCollins (non-affiliate Amazon link) asks $12.99 for an ebook.
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Echoes in death: an Eve Dallas novel (in Death series #44) by J. D. Robb
Rating: 3* of five
The Publisher Says: This chilling new suspense novel from #1 New York Times bestselling author J.D. Robb is the perfect entry point into the compelling In Death police procedural series featuring Lieutenant Eve Dallas.
As NY Lt. Eve Dallas and her billionaire husband Roarke are driving home, a young woman—dazed, naked, and bloody—suddenly stumbles out in front of their car. Roarke slams on the brakes and Eve springs into action.
Daphne Strazza is rushed to the ER, but it’s too late for her husband Dr. Anthony Strazza. A brilliant orthopedic surgeon, he now lies dead amid the wreckage of his obsessively organized town house, his three safes opened and emptied. Daphne would be a valuable witness, but in her terror and shock the only description of the perp she can offer is repeatedly calling him “the devil”...
While it emerges that Dr. Strazza was cold, controlling, and widely disliked, this is one case where the evidence doesn’t point to the spouse. So Eve and her team must get started on the legwork, interviewing everyone from dinner-party guests to professional colleagues to caterers, in a desperate race to answer some crucial questions:
What does the devil look like? And where will he show up next?
I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.
My Review: What you signed up for, if you're already a series fan. All the near-future tech feels just as plausible, without the AI paranoia popular now; but as a starting place, it's subideal because it's more about Eve smoothing down her more dramatic expressions of PTSD. She and Roarke, her very high-class husband, are on a case that really could be more exciting in how they pursue it. Oddly, in this case that means less: less violent confrontations, less fraught choice of victims.
I recommend it to those who, like me, bounced off the earlier, ruder Dallas.
St. Martin's Press (non-affiliate Amazon link) wants $11.99 for an ebook. Most people seem to love these books, so who am I to say don't?
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Dark in death: an Eve Dallas novel (in Death series #46) by J. D. Robb
Rating: 3.5* of five
The Publisher Says: It was a stab in the dark.
On a chilly February night, during a screening of Psycho in midtown, someone sunk an ice pick into the back of Chanel Rylan’s neck, then disappeared quietly into the crowds of drunks and tourists in Times Square. To Chanel’s best friend, who had just slipped out of the theater for a moment to take a call, it felt as unreal as the ancient black-and-white movie up on the screen. But Chanel’s blood ran red, and her death was anything but fictional.
Then, as Eve Dallas puzzles over a homicide that seems carefully planned and yet oddly personal, she receives a tip from an unexpected source: an author of police thrillers who recognizes the crime—from the pages of her own book. Dallas doesn’t think it’s coincidence, since a recent strangulation of a sex worker resembles a scene from her writing as well. Cops look for patterns of behavior: similar weapons, similar MOs. But this killer seems to find inspiration in someone else’s imagination, and if the theory holds, this may be only the second of a long-running series.
The good news is that Eve and her billionaire husband Roarke have an excuse to curl up in front of the fireplace with their cat, Galahad, reading mystery stories for research. The bad news is that time is running out before the next victim plays an unwitting role in a murderer’s deranged private drama—and only Eve can put a stop to a creative impulse gone horribly, destructively wrong.
I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.
My Review: This one was fun for me. I'm a Hitchcock fan, (re?)discovering Roarke is too made me like him more...not that I dislike him, just kinda not as impressed as everyone else seems to be...and the Author Nora stand-in here, Blaine DeLano, was entertaining as well. The plot resolved itself pretty much on autopilot. That did not seem bad to me, as it meant Eve did less kickassery and more homebodying.
Don't start here; starting in the earlier series-40s, say #40 itself (Obsession In Death) is better. I will note that the endless cycle of violence against women wears me down.
St. Martin's Press (non-affiliate Amazon link) wants $10.99 for this ebook.
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Faithless in death: an Eve Dallas novel (in Death series #52) by J. D. Robb
Rating: 3* of five
The Publisher Says: In the new Eve Dallas police thriller from #1 New York Times-bestselling author J. D. Robb, what looked like a lover's quarrel turned fatal has larger—and more terrifying—motives behind it...
The scene in the West Village studio appears to be classic crime-of-passion: two wine glasses by the bed, music playing, and a young sculptor named Ariel Byrd with the back of her head bashed in. But when Dallas tracks down the wealthy Upper East Side woman who called 911, the details don't add up. Gwen Huffman is wealthy, elegant, comforted by her handsome fiancé as she sheds tears over the trauma of finding the body—but why did it take an hour to report it? And why is she lying about little things?
As Eve and her team look into Gwen, her past, and the people around her, they find that the lies are about more than murder. As with sculpture, they need to chip away at the layers of deception to find the shape within—and soon they're getting the FBI involved in a case that involves a sinister, fanatical group and a stunning criminal conspiracy.
I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.
My Review: Ruh-roh, Raggy...the Moonlighting Syndrome is bitin' hard. Eve and Roarke are gettin' a bit stale. The cultist who seems normal as a victim kept me trying to stay engaged, since I'm all about bashing on cults.
Among people like me, not deeply invested in the series, Roarke takes a lot of brickbats for being Too Much: too rich, too pretty, too cultured, too talented. Unfair, say I. Roarke is a bigger version of what someone not worn down by wage slavery, tired out by not-optional Life stuff could be. He's the poster child for a post-scarcity lifestyle I want to see come true.
St. Martin's Press (non-affiliate Amazon link) wants $9.99 for this ebook.
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Perfect Opportunity (A Posadas County Mystery #26) by Steven F. Havill
Rating: 3.25* of five
The Publisher Says: Octogenarian former sheriff Bill Gastner and Undersheriff Estelle Reyes-Guzman investigate a puzzling double murder in this twisty, page-turning instalment in the critically acclaimed Posadas County mystery series "If you haven't yet discovered these wonderful mysteries, you are in for a treat!" Anne Hillerman, New York Times bestselling author
The morning after his eighty-seventh birthday bash, former Posadas County sheriff Bill Gastner drives past a couple of vehicles stopped on the highway shoulder. It's not an unusual a sheriff's patrol unit, emergency lights ablaze, pulled in behind a pickup truck. The female deputy hasn't radioed for backup. But there's something about the scene that makes him feel uneasy.
The next day, Undersheriff Estelle Reyes-Guzman is called to a rather more dramatic and disturbing roadside scene, with the same truck the star of the show. But this time, its occupant is in no fit state to talk—his dead body stabbed through the chest with a Ka-Bar, a second corpse in the ditch beside the car.
What happened to the two men? And what were the dead man and the deputy discussing in the quiet of pre-dawn the previous day? The truth is more twisty and complex than even Estelle and her long-standing friend and former colleague Bill are ready for, and it will take all their combined years of experience to untangle the sorry tale and ensure justice is served.
Fans of CJ Box, Anne Hillerman and Terry Shames will love this thrilling, small-town Western mystery set in New Mexico, as will readers who love strong female protagonists and retired sleuthing heroes.
I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.
My Review: Wowee, did I screw this one up! I started with book TWENTY-SIX because, I suppose, I didn't believe a series could last that long...? Whatever my reasoning, I'm amazed I felt I could follow what was happening while knowing there were character nuances I didn't get, all while still enjoying myself.
It's as the comps say it is; I liked strong, unflappable Estelle, the oldness of Bill was not truly believable, the murder was a bit less twisty than I was led to believe, and I do not want any of those eyeblinks back.
Severn House (non-affiliate Amazon link) requests $14.99 at checkout. Unless you're familiar with the series, maybe asking the library to get one's a better idea.
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Last to leave the room: a novel by Caitlin Starling
Rating: 3.5* of five
The Publisher Says: Last to Leave the Room is a new novel of genre-busting speculative horror from Caitlin Starling, the acclaimed author of The Death of Jane Lawrence.
The city of San Siroco is sinking. The basement belonging to Dr. Tamsin Rivers, the arrogant, selfish head of the research team assigned to find the source of the subsidence, is sinking faster.
As Tamsin grows obsessed with the distorting dimensions of the room at the bottom of the stairs, she finds a door that didn’t exist before—and one night, it opens to reveal an exact physical copy of her. This doppelgänger is sweet and biddable where Tamsin is calculating and cruel. It appears fully, terribly human, passing every test Tamsin can devise. But the longer the double exists, the more Tamsin begins to forget pieces of her life, to lose track of time, to grow terrified of the outside world.
With her employer growing increasingly suspicious, Tamsin must try to hold herself together long enough to figure out what her double wants from her, and just where the mysterious door leads to.
I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU. CW: body horror
My Review: What worked for me: Tamsin's doppelgänger discovery and subsequent action. What didn't work for me: the first third of the book's quotidian tedium, and the underused plot-point of the sinking city. Too much of one, too little of the other; while I, on balance, liked the read just fine, I put it down for a year at the 15% mark, and only picked it up because someone I trust told me I should. He was correct.
But I could've just left it very easily. Tighter beginning without some stuff I never felt I needed anyway would serve the really good bits better.
St. Martin's Press (non-affiliate Amazon link) expects $11.99 from you. I'd say it's a perfect library borrow.
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The Mysterious Bakery on Rue de Paris by Evie Woods
Rating: 3* of five
The Publisher Says: Edie is … not in Paris?
Edie Lane left everything behind in Ireland for a once-in-a-lifetime job at a bakery in Paris. Except, thanks to a mistranslation, the bakery is not in Paris, and neither is Edie.
The tiny town of Compiègne, complete with its local bakery on the Rue de Paris, holds many secrets. This might not be where Edie intended to be but it's not long before she realises it's exactly where she needs to be…
I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.
My Review: Republishing an earlier work by a bestseller's a very old publishing-industry tactic. Unless the bestseller in question does a real overhaul, it's seldom a good idea. In this fine little essay in self-published magical realism, a few things were off...no one is middle-aged at twenty-nine, please do more with M. Moreau...but it's clear why all y'all like Evie Woods.
Perfectly fine way to spend your waiting-room time.
One More Chapter (non-affiliate Amazon link) only wants 99¢, so do not hesitate even a moment to ebook it right onto your ereader.
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78 Degrees and Bloody (The Casey Stafford Series Book 1) by George Prior
Rating: 3* of five
The Publisher Says: An Internet influencer and her boyfriend are brutally killed in their home in Los Angeles, and homicide detective Casey Stafford is under pressure by the LAPD and the news media to catch the disturbed killer—even as he desperately murders more people to cover his tracks.
It appears that their suspect is killing any potential witnesses, and each murder is more disturbing and out of control than the last.
The investigation leads Casey and his partner, Banchet, to a Chinese gang, a Mexican hitman, the FBI, a million dollars in stolen gold, and a leak in the LAPD itself, and with each murder, media interest in the case grows until the entire nation is watching.
Casey needs to stop the deranged murderer before he kills again, and he needs to do it before he is taken off the case by his commanding officers.
With Prior’s “crackling prose and relentless pacing,” each book in the Casey Stafford Series is filled with action, torn-from-the-headlines criminals, authentic LAPD police procedural details, and Casey’s joy in getting justice for his victims and just being a good cop.
I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.
My Review: The prose crackles like a police-band radio; the pacing is surprisingly tense and falters only at the very end; this read is as hyped. So why three stars?
I just don't care who killed these unpleasant, useless people. I dislike Casey's smug law-n-orderness. If you're not pushing me somewhere interesting...LA is uninteresting to me as a California native...I need to like SOMEbody. I did not.
Prospect & Main (non-affiliate Amazon link) charges $3.99 for an ebook. If you want entertainment without strings, it's a bargain!
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Cold Burn (National Parks Thriller #2) by A.J. Landau
Rating: 3.5* of five
The Publisher Says: Agent Michael Walker returns when multiple deaths at Glacier Bay National Park are just the first steps in a potential global disaster.
In Alaska’s Glacier Bay National Park, a frozen woolly mammoth is uncovered by a geological survey team. When all of them are found dead at the site of the thawed-out carcass, National Park Service ISB special agent Michael Walker is called in to investigate.
In Florida’s Everglades National Park, FBI special investigator Gina Delgado traces the murder of an environmental science intern back to another U.S. Geological Survey team’s ongoing experiments that are decimating the fragile ecosystem. Beneath the icy waters of Alaska’s Elfin Cove, the crew of a stranded Los Angeles-class attack submarine is wiped out by a mysterious contagion, inexplicably causing their lungs to freeze. The link between these apparently disparate events lies in a deadly, prehistoric microbe that killed the mammoth the same way it did the USGS survey team in Glacier Bay and the crew members of the submarine. A microbe that a rogue billionaire is desperate to attain, and a Russian strongman will do anything to weaponize to achieve even greater, wide-ranging power.
Fighting a battle on several fronts—militarily, intellectually, and biologically—Walker and Delgado are running out of time to stop a devastating attack that would reshape the entire world.
I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.
My Review: Urgent, uneasy story about things James Rollins would have Sigma Force out to resolve. Propulsive, intense action scenes that do not exist to decorate the plot. A very fun read.
That sounds more like a four-plus star review. Would've been if we'd had more pages or fewer PoV switches. Also, maybe this is made clear in book one (Leave No Trace), but why are these two working together exactly?
Minotaur Books (non-affiliate Amazon link) requires $14.99 for you to legally possess the ebook. You don't want Walker and Delgado on your butt, looking into your trashcan, so procure legally.
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This space is dedicated to Nancy Pearl's Rule of 50, or "the Pearl Rule" as I've always called it. After realizing five times in December 2021 alone that I'd already Pearl-Ruled a book I picked up on a whim, I realized how close my Half-heimer's is getting to the full-on article. Hence my decision to track my Pearls!
As she says:
People frequently ask me how many pages they should give a book before they give up on it. In response to that question, I came up with my “rule of fifty,” which is based on the shortness of time and the immensity of the world of books. If you’re fifty years of age or younger, give a book fifty pages before you decide to commit to reading it or give it up. If you’re over fifty, which is when time gets even shorter, subtract your age from 100—the result is the number of pages you should read before making your decision to stay with it or quit.
So this space will be each month's listing of Pearl-Ruled books. Earlier Pearl-Rule posts will be linked below the current month's crop.
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Denying to the grave: why we ignore the facts that will save us by Sara E. Gorman and Jack M. Gorman (40%)
Rating: ?4?* of five
The Publisher Says: Why do some parents refuse to vaccinate their children? Why do some people keep guns at home, despite scientific evidence of risk to their family members? And why do people use antibiotics for illnesses they cannot possibly alleviate? When it comes to health, many people insist that science is wrong, that the evidence is incomplete, and that unidentified hazards lurk everywhere.
In Denying to the Grave, Gorman and Gorman, a father-daughter team, explore the psychology of health science denial. Using several examples of such denial as test cases, they propose six key principles that may lead individuals to reject "accepted" health-related wisdom: the charismatic leader; fear of complexity; confirmation bias and the internet; fear of corporate and government conspiracies; causality and filling the ignorance gap; and the nature of risk prediction. The authors argue that the health sciences are especially vulnerable to our innate resistance to integrate new concepts with pre-existing beliefs. This psychological difficulty of incorporating new information is on the cutting edge of neuroscience research, as scientists continue to identify brain responses to new information that reveal deep-seated, innate discomfort with changing our minds.
Denying to the Grave explores risk theory and how people make decisions about what is best for them and their loved ones, in an effort to better understand how people think when faced with significant health decisions. This book points the way to a new and important understanding of how science should be conveyed to the public in order to save lives with existing knowledge and technology.
I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.
My Review: Over the years (almost ten since I got the DRC) I've tried and tried to finish this read. I'm already inside the church on the subject...the psychology of science denial...but I stall out on "Confirmation Bias" chapter, where the repetitious nature of the prose just overwhelms me.
We need this information on why people simply reject objective truth...they deny it *is* either of those things...but I can't say I think this compendiously-footnoted tome is the way to get that done.
Oxford University Press (non-affiliate Amazon link) asks for $21.99 for an ebook.
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The Fight That Started the Movies: The World Heavyweight Championship, the Birth of Cinema and the First Feature Film by Samuel Hawley (19%)
Rating: 3* of five
The Publisher Says: On March 17, 1897, in an open-air arena in Carson City, Jim Corbett and Bob Fitzsimmons fought for the heavyweight championship of the world. The contest was recorded by film pioneer Enoch Rector from inside an immense, human-powered camera called the “Veriscope,” the forgotten Neanderthal at the dawn of cinema history. Rector’s movie of the contest premiered two months later. Known today as "The Corbett-Fitzsimmons Fight," it was the world’s first feature-length film.
The Fight That Started the Movies is the untold story of Corbett’s and Fitzsimmons’ journey to that ring in Nevada and how the landmark film of their battle came to be made. It reveals how boxing played a key role in the birth of the movies, spurring the development of motion picture technology and pushing the concept of “film” from a twenty-second peephole show to a full-length attraction, “a complete evening’s entertainment,” projected on a screen.
The cast of characters in the tale is rich and varied. There are inventors Eadweard Muybridge, Thomas Edison, William Dickson and Eugene Lauste, figuring out how to photographically capture and reproduce motion. There are the playboy brothers Otway and Gray Latham, who first saw the commercial potential of fight films, and their friend and partner Enoch Rector, who pushed that potential to fruition. There are fighters Jim Corbett with his “scientific” methods of boxing; Bob Fitzsimmons with his thin legs and turnip-on-a-chain punch; hard-drinking John L. Sullivan and the original Jack Dempsey and the gifted but ultimately doomed Young Griffo. There are loud-mouthed fight managers and big-talking promoters, and Wild West legends like Bat Masterson and Judge Roy Bean when the story heads to the Rio Grande river. And finally, there is the audience, our collective ancestors, discovering that movies were more than just a curiosity to gape at, but a new and enduring form of entertainment to rival the theater.
I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.
My Review: I was interested in the movie stuff. I quit when I hit: "Freed from middleweight constraints, Bob trained up rather than down for the Maher fight and stepped through the ropes weighing one-sixty-five, the heaviest of his career."
I can't make myself care in any positive way about boxing. It was just not gonna happen. It's too darn bad I can't because this is a pivotal moment in popular culture.
Conquistador Press (non-affiliate Amazon link) offers this through Kindle Unlimited, if you are less boxing-averse than I am.
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