THE BRIDESMAID, Cate Quinn's The White Lotus storyline

THE BRIDESMAID
CATE QUINN
Sourcebooks Landmark (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$9.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: From the acclaimed author of The Clinic comes a pulse-pounding thriller about a society wedding turned deadly, for fans of The Unwedding.

The Kensingtons invite you to the society wedding of the decade. There's just one hitch. You might not make it out alive.

When a celebrity bridesmaid is murdered weeks before an exclusive society wedding, forensic attorney Holly Stone is drafted as an unlikely undercover replacement. As she works to unpick the lives of the notoriously private Kensington family, glamour-averse Holly discovers a new worst enemy in bridezilla Adrianna. Heir to a multimillion dollar fortune, Adrianna is set on throwing the event of the decade, and she won't let anything get in her way.

But beneath the veneer of poise and sophistication, Adrianna and her bridesmaids have secrets worth killing for.

As the wedding day gets closer, it's clear that one of the five hand-picked bridesmaids has committed murder—and a destination wedding is a perfect place to strike again. Soon, Holly finds herself on the playground of the rich and famous, but if she wants to find answers, she'll have to make it out alive.

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My Review: Like The White Lotus, do not go into this read expecting to deal with consensus reality. This is what Robin Leach meant decades ago when he'd sign off his show with "champagne wishes!" As long as that's what you're in the mood for, and lists of brand names and trendy, spendy doodads and gewgaws don't bore you (they do me) you'll do fine with this competently executed mystery plot.

Up to the Big Twist, I was fine with it because I was in the mood for some escapist reading. A bridesmaid being murdered (pretty gruesomely) and the people getting married just...going on with the wedding was not my breaking point. It truly was the Big Twist that made my eyes roll so far back I saw my brain.

No, I won't tell you what it was. The Spoiled Spoiler Stasi are not nice to those who do not play by their rules. I'll comment that, despite my response to it, I genuinely did not see it coming. I guessed who it would concern, but not what it was, hence my elevation of the read out of the Burgoines into the regular reviews...I was surprised, and that earns an author points from me.

Did I believe any of it could happen? No. But that's true of all murder mystery stories: There is no way in hell they could happen as described. It's why we call the art form "fiction." So dive in, ye souls weary of the muck and sludge of Reality, partake of shiny expensive trinkets and glossy, dust-free surfaces! We need escape and amusement as much as uplift and engagement.

ALL THE PERFECT DAYS, sweet summertime story to get immersed in

ALL THE PERFECT DAYS
MICHAEL THOMPSON
Sourcebooks Landmark (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$9.99 ebook, availble now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: Family GP Charlie Knight fears life is passing him by. He’s in his late thirties, and treading water as a family doctor in the same small town he grew up in.

Just as he’s planning his escape, something changes. He develops a gift, an extraordinary insight for any doctor: a sense of exactly how many days his patients have left to live.

But in a country town like Marwick, his patients are his friends. His own family. The people he grew up with, and the girl he still loves.

And Charlie discovers this gift may not be a gift at all.

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My Review: NOT A ROM-COM. Do not look at the cover illustration and think it's going to be a sweet little romp as the MC gets a second chance at Luuuv. (That is part of what happens, but honestly not as much as the visuals suggest.) Oh, and to be honest, calling a thirtyish woman "the girl he still loves" is not a great choice, copywriting department.

What kept me reading this story was Charlie's mildly perplexed attitude towards his newfound ability to "see" how long a person has left to live. What a Burnsian gift:

Oh, would some Power the gift give us
To see ourselves as others see us!
It would from many a blunder free us,
And foolish notion:
What airs in dress and gait would leave us,
And even devotion!...from To a Louse

...for a doctor to discover! It could at first glance seem like a gift...but quite soon it would naturally become a burden.

Bearing that burden is a man we don't really get to know, but more know about. We have no access to his...or anyone else's...thoughts, we're in a third-person close narrative style so we are more or less the camera in the movie of Charlie's life. I went back and forth on this choice, does it work does it help me "get" the story...it does and it doesn't. It's a choice that makes the story outside us, and them; it's a story that is about a place we do not feel we belong to while really caring about the guy showing us around.

No one else gets much attention, really. Ideas are introduced but not explored any more than the not-Charlie characters are. I'm not all the way in sympathy with that choice because of the nature of Charlie's "gift." A bit more about the people whose lives he senses pretty clearly the ends of might've increased my investment in them and the story.

I did get invested, however, as I resonate with Charlie's newfound ability to see what is not obvious. I quite liked his slightly befuddled response to it. I liked Charlie, and I was glad to sped time with him. As it is told, it felt to me like something from the midcentury of US or UK middlebrow fiction.

That is an honest compliment, as those kinds of stories are able to convey the essential goodness in most people. Everyone in this story, no matter how incomplete their characters felt to me, was an essentially well-meaning person (if sometimes slightly lost).

It's a welcome, and welcoming, place to be.

THE WITCHES AT THE END OF THE WORLD, supernatural novel set in wintry, beautiful Norway

THE WITCHES AT THE END OF THE WORLD
CHELSEA IVERSEN
Sourcebooks Landmark
$16.99 trade paper, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: Rage burns brighter than any spellfire...Deep in the birchwoods of Norway, magic courses through the veins of two sisters. For years they've been alone, but sweet-tempered Kaija is tired of living in shadows and longs for a life filled with community, even if it means stifling her magic. But Minna is a witch through and through, with wrath always simmering just below the surface.

Different as they may be, both will never forget the day they were driven from their village. The day their mother burned. When Kaija leaves to pursue a new life, Minna is left alone in the darkness of the forest.

Devastated and outraged at the betrayal, Minna casts a curse to punish those who took everything from her. What she doesn't realize is that this act will incite a deadly chain of events. Soon it will destroy everything, including the life Kaija has lovingly built. But once a witch's rage boils, regret means nothing—she can't take back what's already done.

Someone will have to burn.

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My Review: The nicest surprise of Deathtober's reading. I hadn't read anything by Author Iversen before this, and was expecting a more horror-tinged read...what I got was a revenge story, featuring sisters whose lives were upended by small-minded christian hatemongers. There is definitely a supernatural element to the story. It isn't, however, the kind of all-in horror that ends up with your psyche splattered in gore.

A big part of the reason for that is this is a story that unspools slowly, and in a very interior way. It is almost a récit à deux, a double recit, though such a beast doesn't exist (that I know of). Minna is angry, bitter, and filled with the inexhaustable fuel of contempt for those not as smart as she is. Kaija, on the other hand, is genuinely kind if extremely Other by virtue of who she is and whom she knows best. She is the sister whose path is always set by her desire to see, and be, the best it's possible to, in herself and others. Her decision to return to their home village where their mother was burned alive as a witch causes Minna to react violently She casts a curse on the whole village. Her rage can never be extinguished, but can be thrust outward to burn others.

The reason the book appealed to me is probably the reason some found it frustrating. I liked the slower pace that the author chose, as it left more time for me to get to feel the sisters' differences of character. The third-person narration, told in short chapters alternating between the sisters, was spangled with lovely sentences that use Norwegian terms, that unfold into images of the birch woods and the village, in three mental dimensions. Shadows and light are lovely almost characters.

The Norse "pagan" craft is wonderfully used, with figures from the Norse mythos making their presences known without coming across as intrusions into Reality by pagan gods...they feel like characters whose names we happen to know. The worldbuilding is thus made that much more enjoyable for a twenty-first century atheist. The way that Kaija, the elder sister, yearns for life in the village as a christian wife and a mother did not sit well with me...selling herself short and out to be average, when she could be a Power? Not the kind of message I'd choose to send. But Minna's rageful reponse to her sister's absconding, while understandable, skates perilously close to Evil. The author was very wise to be sure we know that Minna's curse is not the cause of Kaija's different life challenges. That made what could've been unpleasant horror into not-entirely-pleasant, deeply thought through, supernatural fiction.

Set at the crossroads where Norway had to choose between its old, established supernatural beliefs and the newfangled ways of the christian church in a lasting, final way, this story of sisters whose choices define the stakes, and the costs, of each course is one I think is ideal for anyone on your Yule list who loves immersive reads. Investing the time to be in this world with Kaija and Minna is easiest to make happen now that the nights are long and the winds are cold. It was a pleasure to meet Author Iversen. I would commend Minna, and Kaija (though less so), to your long nights of deep reading.

THE PRESIDENT'S WIFE, historical fiction about very interesting relationship that helped change the Constitution & world history

THE PRESIDENT'S WIFE
TRACEY ENERSON WOOD
Sourcebooks Landmark (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$27.99 hardcover, available now

Rating: 3.75* of five

The Publisher Says: The incredible story of the First Lady who clandestinely assumed the presidency

Socialite Edith Bolling has been in no hurry to find a new husband since she was widowed, preferring to fill her days with good friends and travel. But the enchanting courting of President Woodrow Wilson wins Edith over and she becomes the First Lady of the United States. The position is uncomfortable for the fiercely independent Edith, but she's determined to rise to the challenges of her new marriage—from the bloodthirsty press to the shadows of the first World War.

Warming to her new role, Edith is soon indispensable to her husband's presidency. She replaces the staff that Woodrow finds distracting, and discusses policy with him daily. Throughout the war, she encrypts top- secret messages and despite lacking formal education becomes an important adviser. When peace talks begin in Europe, she attends at Woodrow's side. But just as the critical fight to ratify the treaty to end the war and create a League of Nations in order to prevent another, Woodrow's always-delicate health takes a dramatic turn for the worse. In her determination to preserve both his progress and his reputation, Edith all but assumes the presidency herself.

Now, Edith must contend with the demands of a tumultuous country, the secrets of Woodrow's true condition, and the potentially devastating consequences of her failure. At once sweeping and intimate, The President's Wife is an astonishing portrait of a courageous First Lady and the sacrifices she made to protect her husband and her country at all costs.

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My Review: Charming historical fiction about two people of riper years whose love for each other is tested, re-tested, and ultimately short-lived due to death.

So many things about Woodrow Wilson are awful to me. A racist, an ivory-tower academic without the track record to be the strong-arming law-ramming president thr first World War demanded; but most of all the man who gave away the keys to the economy to the banksters of Jekyll Island's cabal in 1913, thus dooming us to cycles of boom and bust that would only get worse every time the banksters clawed more money from our pockets to feed their greed and gambling addiction.

*ahem*

That not being what this book's about, let me tell you about it, not him.

First of all, it's a novel about two older people whose lives are mostly behind them finding comfort and companionship at the end. That one of them is the president of the US is, in a strange way, tangential to their story. They had a true connection to each other as people, as a man and a woman left alone by the deaths of their spouses. Author Wood gives us the sense that, had they met without this central fact being present, they likely would've had an affair because they were so simpatico. The way their relationship played out, so very publicly, and at such high volume, meant that the end of the affair was inevitably going to be marriage...nothing less would assuage the "moral standards" of the day. Edith Bolling was, thank goodness, a practical person, aware of the world around her and its demands; also to be praised is her full belief in Wilson's political and social progressivism (as far as it went, anyway), so her voice was added to his, not in conflict with it in the battles he was waging.

The Great War, as World War One was called at the time, was only one item on Wilson's plate and isn't the major focus of the book. More weight is given to the all-important enfranchisement of women. This is the one unqualified success of Wilson's presidency. Edith Bolling Wilson was influential on the president's support for this amendment to the Constitution.

Again, more important than the history lesson of the book is the close relationship between these two people. The background of their lives together was always public, and the work they did together was consequential to this very day. But they themselves, as people, are Author Wood's focus. She does not present them as superhuman archetypes. Thy are believable characters, strong people with powerful convictions, who found each other in the last act of the play that is a human's life. Their needs and their interests matched so well that it feels, to this elderly reader, as though they each found the satisfaction of an entire lifetime's search for their best partner.

It's a fine story, about interesting people, and it's told well. Enjoy it soon.

QUEEN WALLIS, a klaxon to the complacent and/or inattentive to the aims of today's global culture wars

QUEEN WALLIS
C.J. CAREY
Sourcebooks Landmark (publisher's Amazon affiliate link)
$16.99 trade paper, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: The thrilling sequel to Widowland, a feminist dystopian novel set in an alternative history that terrifyingly imagines what a British alliance with Germany would look like if the Nazis had won WWII.

London, 1955. The Leader has been dead for two years. His assassination, on British soil, provoked violent retribution and intensified repression of British citizens, particularly women. Now, more than ever, the Protectorate is a place of surveillance and isolation―a land of spies.

Every evening Rose Ransom looks in the mirror and marvels that she's even alive. A mere woman, her role in the Leader's death has been miraculously overlooked. She still works at the Culture Ministry, where her work now focuses on poetry, which has been banned for its subversive meanings, emotions, and signals that cannot be controlled.

A government propaganda drive to promote positive images of women has just been announced ahead of a visit from Dwight D. Eisenhower, the first American president to set foot on English soil in two decades. Queen Wallis Simpson will be spearheading the campaign, and Rose has been tasked with visiting her to explain the plan. When Rose arrives at the palace, she finds Wallis in a state of paranoia, desperate to return to America and enjoy the liberty of her homeland following her husband's death. Wallis claims she has a secret document so explosive that it will blow the Protectorate apart. But will the last queen of England pull the trigger on the Alliance?

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My Review: Fahrenheit 451 meets The Handmaid's Tale and they then mind-meld with Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four in a world where Edward VIII with his Nazi sympathies never abdicated.
As a life-long devotee of alternative history, I've seen so damn many "Germans win WWII" ideas that I refelxively shy away from reading yet another one. This one, being the second in a series I didn't read the first one of, would usually get zero attention from me for both those reasons. The way this subverted my defenses was to offer me a golden moment: My abiding contempt for the Windsors leads me to be amused and more than a little pleased that things turn out badly for them in this story.

The idea that the American Queen Wallis, a rapacious, greedy person whose grudges were legendary, would want to give up her life atop the heap is so unlikely as to be risible; but this isn't rigorous allohistorical scenario design, it's tendentious warning-blaring. It's meant for the world with Erdoğan, Orban, Modi, and Putin trotting around unassassinated in it, to detail a few of the not-at-all unlikely societal effects thereof on decent human beings. Most especially women. Author Carey is excellent at the evocation of the personal costs of totalitarian rule based on religious "principles" and there's no doubt that the cult of eugenics, written into law, would function quite well as a "moral" force like religion.

It delights me that the job our PoV character, Rose, does is to bowdlerize literature and history books to conform with the prevailing power's ideological needs. The Power of Literature is immense and very, very scary to the Powers That Be. One thing I don't see discussed in pop culture is how extremely easy Rose's job would be now: Push a patch to all Kindles and Kobos, and the "subversive" text is in compliance with Their needs. Think that's far-fetched? Read some Cory Doctorow links.

The topics Author Carey deals with in this book are so very timely that I could feel them pulling me along as the pace slackened after about 35% of the way through (a converation between Rose and Queen Wallis). The last about 15% was fast-paced and exciting, but without my deep identification with the author's evident desire to bring home the existential threat women and Others face in today's increasingly fascistic world, I'd've taken longer to finish the read.

While I have cavils on the history front (why is Eisenhower president in a 1955 where WWII wasn't like ours? why is there no mention of presumably vanished millions of Jews?), I have none on the timeliness and urgency of the author's purpose in writing the book. I'll say that I felt slightly at sea occasionally. I put this down to not having read Widowland, so I recommend you do that first.

Rose is no superheroine. She's a very slightly moist, sometimes even drippy, everywoman whose moral compass isn't aligned with her culture's. She has the decency to follow it, and not the mob. She is, then, who we can reasonably aspire to be if the worst happens.

Well worth your time and treasure.

ON SPINE OF DEATH, laugh-out-loud cozy mystery & THE STORYTELLER'S DEATH, Ann Dávila Cardinal's mystery-tinged fantasy

THE STORYTELLER'S DEATH
ANN DÁVILA CARDINAL
Sourcebooks Landmark (NON-AFFILIATE Amazon link)
$16.99 trade paper, available now

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: From International Latino Book Award-winning author Ann Dávila Cardinal comes a gorgeously written family saga about a Puerto Rican woman who finds herself gifted (or cursed?) with a strange ability.

There was always an old woman dying in the back room of her family’s house when Isla was a child...

Isla Larsen Sanchez’s life begins to unravel when her father passes away. Instead of being comforted at home in New Jersey, her mother starts leaving her in Puerto Rico with her grandmother and great-aunt each summer like a piece of forgotten luggage.

When Isla turns eighteen, her grandmother, a great storyteller, dies. It is then that Isla discovers she has a gift passed down through her family’s cuentistas. The tales of dead family storytellers are brought back to life, replaying themselves over and over in front of her.

At first, Isla is enchanted by this connection to the Sanchez cuentistas. But when Isla has a vision of an old murder mystery, she realizes that if she can't solve it to make the loop end, these seemingly harmless stories could cost Isla her life.

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My Review: A young-adult fantasy-with-mystery that utterly charmed me. When Isla's unusual ability to recall, if that's the word, the stories of her family's past. If it involved one of her ancestors, she can see it! Like she was there! What a fascinating, and honestly useful, paranormal ability to have. She's got a window into her family's past that could be hugely important because, well, History is nothing but His Story and isn't it the greatest thing ever when Her Story can be told?! I was so excited!

"Reality" had to intervene, stupid boring reality!, just like it always does...not everything that happened in the past was pretty. We know this, but Isla can see it because her abuelita, on her death, passed the mantle of being a cuentista, Story-Woman, to her. Suddenly Isla's mother's sad descent into alcohol abuse and her consequent abandonments of Isla with her grandmother in Puerto Rico made more sense...it's never explicitly said, but Isla's mother seems like someone who really couldn't handle the very dark gift of becoming a cuentista. Isla's painful childhood of betrayal and loss and coping with mental illness's consequences uniquely prepares her to cope with the true burden of Remembering her family's history. And it gives her the strength to right old wrongs.

What a great idea, right?! And what a great market to target with this message, that everything that happens to you can be used to build something wonderful if you use it that way; something I truly wish more people were taught from little on up to spike the victim gun we tend to hold at our own heads. Isla's struggles with grief...her own, her mother's...at her father's early death were not dwelt on or minimized. Her mother's ongoing struggles with alcoholism are honestly, forthrightly presented as the major issue they can't help but be, yet aren't sensationalized or pounded into dust as the hobby-horse gets ridden. I was completely delighted with the storytelling voice, as well. In all, this sounds like a five-star rave, doesn't it...so why's there a "4" in front of the "5"?

Because, in service of speed I suppose, Isla faces next to no obstacles in her quest to understand the decidedly mixed blessing of becoming a cuentista. Anyone she needs to speak to, they're still alive and they're available now and they're eager to help. Hmm, that's a bit too easy...then there's the underexamined role of colonialism (internalized and not) inherent in stories about Puerto Rico's past and how that impacts her grandmother's growing up, her mother's choices, the whole kit and caboodle. The stories and their injustices were, it's true, redolent with the issues of racism and colorism, but these factors could have benefited from some further reflection in Isla's viewpoint's evolution. It's a small niggle. And it's way more than outweighed by the delight I felt in immersion into a family whose language world is Spanish-inflected English. This is something I very much enjoy and, while I'm bringing it up to you as a positive, there are readers who won't feel comfortable with it and thus might make their decision to read the story or not on that factor.

On the whole I wish they would take the plunge and get the book from the library. Try the waters! There's nothing to lose except a small investment of time in that case. The strong possibility, in my view, of broadening one's horizons a bit more is well worth the risk. It's a lovely story and Cuentista Dávila Cardinal has the chops to bring you along on one really excellent ride.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

ON SPINE OF DEATH
TAMARA BERRY (By the Book Mysteries #2)
Poisoned Pen Press (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$8.99 mass market, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: Don't miss the second installment of this gripping and funny bookish cozy mystery series by Tamara Berry! This case isn't just cold, it's practically frozen shut...

In the aftermath of solving their first murder, bestselling author Tess Harrow and her teenage daughter Gertrude have decided to stay in Winthrop permanently. Now that they've made some updates to their cabin in the woods, they're turning to the family hardware store that Tess inherited and converting it into the town's first independent bookstore. But when renovations unearth bones from a cold case and send them toppling—literally—onto Tess's head, the work comes to a grinding halt. With the whole town convinced that her grandfather was a serial killer, Tess has to call in a fellow horror author for reinforcements. Together, they'll come up with a perfect story to make all the clues fit...and solve a mystery more than thirty years in the making.

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My Review: Not many writers will 'fess up to their weirdest research methods. Tess Harrow doesn't have a lot of choice...she's tied to a chair in a basement struggling to get free (research!) when the floor above her collapses. That, my friends, is how you open a story!

When Tess, a bestselling thriller writer and mother of a teenaged girl, needs to make a big change in her life, the opportunity to take over her late grandfather's hardware store and cabin in small-town Washington State arises. Teenager in tow, off Tess hares. It's quite clear that she won't be running a hardware store so she does what so many writers say they'd love to do and decides a bookstore is what the town needs! (The town was not consulted, but never mind.)

In the course of renovating the store, a skeleton is uncovered in a...peculiar...place. Then there's another one! All in her dear old grandfather's store! Was her belovèd grandfather a murderer?! Or if not, was he an accessory to murder? Either way, Tess wants to know (let's face it, she's stumbled into one helluva tale) and the local Sheriff doesn't much want to speed his investigation up just for this high-handed Bigfoot author from out of town. There are Procedures. They're there to make a case solid and an answer to the Big Questions of who, what, when, and why (where being known in this case) trustworthy and that's what matters to his law-enforcement officer self.

Tess, coming at this from three angles and none of them inspiring her to patience (store owner, granddaughter, thriller writer), naturally clashes with Slowpoke McPutt-putt. The sparks must fly, mustn't they, to make the needed heat for the series to rise to new heights? Add in the teenager's discomfiting fascination with Sylvie the coroner's job (to the point that she's shadowing the poor thing really, really closely as a school project), and there's a lot of moving parts. That's what makes the read so much fun...the way Author Berry keeps all the balls in the air and manages to cast your attention into the blind alleys she needs for it to be distracted by...well, it's fun to be in the presence of a skilled practitioner at her peak.

The renovations, the bodies, the people who just *happen* to be not quite who they say they are, the motives for the locals to take sides on the uncomfortable rooting about for answers to the Big Questions...all are standard elements handled in deft ways. They aren't surprises. They aren't meant to be, and they're all the more welcome for not being. I think the series will have legs because it's already got a smile of its own. It's presenting your ma'at-sensing organs with truth and justice but they're not as simplistically presented as they can sometimes be in series mysteries. There's thoughtful commentary on the way of the world, there's a damn-near evergreen scented evocation of the way small towns in the piney woods operate, there's the always-fun fish out of water growing into a local institution trope...remember Northern Exposure?...and it's done with panache, if not philosophical depth.

Great for the season's snatch-a-chapter-in-line reading habits because it's already episodic!