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.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

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.

PONY CONFIDENTIAL, urban-fantasy talking animal story meets cozy mystery

PONY CONFIDENTIAL
CHRISTINA LYNCH
Berkley Books
$28.00 hardcover, available now

Rating: 3.75* of five

The Publisher Says: In this one-of-a-kind mystery with heart and humor, a hilariously grumpy pony must save the only human he’s ever loved after discovering she stands accused of a murder he knows she didn’t commit.

Pony has been passed from owner to owner for longer than he can remember. Fed up, he busts out and goes on a cross-country mission to reunite with the only little girl he ever loved, Penny, who he was separated from and hasn’t seen in years.

Penny, now an adult, is living an ordinary life when she gets a knock on her door and finds herself in handcuffs, accused of murder and whisked back to the place she grew up. Her only comfort when the past comes back to haunt her are the memories of her precious, rebellious pony.

Hearing of Penny’s fate, Pony knows that Penny is no murderer. So, as smart and devious as he is cute, the pony must use his hard-won knowledge of human weakness and cruelty to try to clear Penny’s name and find the real killer.

This acutely observant feel-good mystery reveals the humanity of animals and beastliness of humans in a rollicking escapade of epic proportions.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: You know that Swede who writes about cutesy old people? Of course you do, y'all luuuv him as much as Richard Osman! (Only Osman's old people are cool, unlike that Swede's faux-feisty feebs.) Now imagine that Swede decided to take over Spencer Quinn's Chet and Bernie series.

Yeah. That, and Remarkably Bright Creatures chucked in for good measure. So what's it doing as a regular review, not a Burgoine? "When you like a book, but don't love it, it's a Burgoine," someone is even now saying to their screen.

Penny and fluent English-hearer Pony the pony, separately and together, do some very good mental health work, that's why it's a regular review, and thanks for noticing. Penny's never quite gotten a grip on Life; as a result she is always on the back foot with the people and situations in her life. Being a kindergatren teacher does not make this easier. Being a single mom to a cute kid with a really bad relationship to the father, well...gettin' the drift here? She has a life-altering nightmare hit her square in the chops, and here we come to the first-ever in my reviews spoiler. (Stop laughing! And pointing is rude.)

This para has the spoiler: When Penny was twelve, a terrible, fatal accident occurred and her family has to run away. Pony got left behind, and is still bitter about it. Penny's now being accused of murder, twenty years later, and is hauled off to jail. A mother with a child is hauled off to jail for suspicion of involvement in a twenty-year-old crime.

This is really, really unbelievable to me.

Howsomever, the plot needs driving so drive we shall. Grouchy, misanthropic Pony hears and understands this, decides he's off to save Penny (the one human he's ever loved) and has so many cool adventures...all of 'em opportunitites to shine a light onto how truly unfair and sadistically convoluted late-stage capitalism is. I agree with this and find the looneyness of the animal characters' various voices great fun. They banter together, discuss how rotten humans are. They still say home truths about each other that will get past the guard of all but the most cynical. I'll go with it.

I want to note that suicide and depression are more than minor plot points without being foregrounded.

As a puzzle, the villains are very two-dimensional thus easy to spot. I read a lot of mysteries, though, so ma'at leads my eyes (as the Egyptians said) and I figured it out; honestly, that's not the point here. Read this for feel-good cuteness. Read this for affirmation the world *can* be good. Read this, in short, for fun.

I did. It was. Everybody's happy. (Even Pony.)

RED HEIR, a Houses and Humans quest tale through Aguillon (also, fun m/m romp in homophobia-less secondary world)

RED HEIR
LISA HENRY AND SARAH HONEY
non-affiliate Amazon link
$3.99 Kindle edition, available now

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: Imprisoned pickpocket Loth isn't sure why a bunch of idiots just broke into his cell claiming they’re here to rescue the lost prince of Aguillon, and he doesn’t really care. They’re looking for a redheaded prince, and he’s more than happy to play along if it means freedom. Then his cranky cellmate Grub complicates things by claiming to be the prince as well.

Now they’re fleeing across the country and Loth’s stuck sharing a horse and a bedroll with Grub while imitating royalty, eating eel porridge, and dodging swamp monsters and bandits.

Along the way, Loth discovers that there’s more to Grub than meets the eye. Under the dirt and bad attitude, Grub’s not completely awful. He might even be attractive. In fact, Loth has a terrible suspicion that he’s developing feelings, and he’s not sure what to do about that. He’d probably have more luck figuring it out if people would just stop trying to kill them.

Still, at least they’ve got a dragon, right?

I RECEIVED THIS KINDLEBOOK AS A GIFT.

My Review: Once there was, in a Kingdom called Aguillon, a petty thief with a penchant for picking pockets and, um, seducing one could euphemize every male human with a purse that looked fatter than flatter. He's a mouthy git, prone to making it up as he goes along, and as we all know, loose ropes on deck mean nasty falls. Lies and thievery land a lad (not quite as young as once he was, prone to crow's feet) in chokey:

“I suppose you’re wondering how I got into this mess,” he announced loudly in the gloom. The pile of straw on the other side of the cell rustled, and a grubby face appeared.
“I wasn’t. I don’t care.”
“I wasn’t talking to you,” Loth said to his cellmate.
“Then who were you talking to?” his cellmate demanded, jutting his jaw out.
“I was soliloquising,” Loth said. “Well, I was hoping to, but somebody won’t shut their mouth.”

And there it is, from the very first lines: What to expect, who's doing what to whom. Gadfly meets bloodmeal. Oh what fun it will be. Banter, bizarreness, and boys...yeup, I'm in a Lisa Henry novel.

So we've met Loth. (I suspect his placeholder name was "Loudmouth" and it got elided.) We've met the cellmate, who has bestowed upon him the utterly unlovely name "Grub" by Loth. Lovely, no? He'll have several other names as the book goes by. He soon gains a, well, unsavory reputation that will come back to haunt Loth, who bestowed that as well.

And then!!!

Where there had once been a wall, there was now a mountain of rubble, with an orc standing on top of it. He was big and ugly by human standards—possibly he was very attractive to other orcs—with two teeth in his bottom jaw protruding from between his lips like tusks.
–and–
The braids woven throughout the beard made Loth think the dwarf was possibly a woman, though it wasn’t always easy to tell with dwarves, and it was considered rude to ask—a lesson he’d learned the hard way.

Dave, the orc, and Ada, the dwarf, have arrived. Dave is dim, but deeply good. Oh, of course he's strong, he's seven feet of greenish-skinned muscle (good luck casting that, Hollywood) and prone to hurling people who don't meet his standards of not-murdering-his-friends like they were shot-puts. Ada, being a dwarf, is one tough customer, and she very quickly makes it clear to all and sundry that she is here to collect a fee for the service of rescuing the red-headed prince in the cell.

But both the rag-bags in the cell are red-headed. One natural, and Loth. But there's a rescue party, a wall that's a functional imitation of a door, and a guard party...tell me you didn't think Loth wouldn't try to be a long-unseen prince held hostage by a murderous, wicked uncle called Lord Doom if it meant getting out of jail.

Together with the anarchist-collectivist elf, Calarian, and the "hero" of the piece (in his own mind) Scott the cowardly dimwit, the six of them skedaddle from the (curiously uninvestigated) scene of the rescue. It's just like the quest that Ser (Bene) Factor promised Scott when he talked him into this lunacy! And as for the Houses and Humans-playing elf, well, his mother slung him out of the house with instructions to move his damned game on the road, so he was ripe for Ser (Bene) Factor's coins as well.

The Swamp of Death (a volcanic overturn with Calarian's studly cousin Benji, more anti-social than most elves, playing monster to keep people away), the ruined royal hunting lodge with a secret passage, the former jailer Ser Greylord who shows up at the lodge...it's a quest.

And is it queer! Good lawsy me, the number of subverted power structures here is epic. Heh. Nothing, not one single thing, is made of anyone's sexual nature. Their behavior gets ribbed a lot...Loth and Grub, later Cue, still later Quinn discover a mutual attraction and go at it hammer and tongs, Benji the faux monster and Calarian the Housemaster (remember the game!), all come in for their share of ribbing but none of it homophobic. In fact, the entire universe the story operates in is laissez-faire regarding sexual behavior, and in a throwaway line we even learn it's no big deal for men to marry each other. (There is an almost complete absence of females, and a complete absence of heterosexual sex, throughout the story. Blissful for me.)

The quest proceeds to the royal capital, Scott gets abused quite a lot, we meet Loth's parents (I loved them and hope they can have a book of their own, Mum would be a great narrator hint hint), we encounter Lord Doom and Scott ends up putting the pieces together for all the merrie band (and gets a broken nose), and all ends up Right With This World. (It's a quest, that's not a spoiler.) And would it surprise you to learn that Dave the orc strikes the final blow for liberty? Only he isn't in the room...there's you a mystery to ponder.

The one question I cannot bear not to have answered is: WHO WAS THE ORIGINAL SCOTT?!? WHAT DID HE DO TO YOU, AUTHOR HENRY?!?