Sweet Thing by Renée Carlino

Sweet Thing is a complicated romance between a man who knows what he wants and a woman who doesn't, at least not at first. After her musician father dies, Mia moves to New York to take over her father's cafe and apartment. She meets Will, a promising singer/songwriter/guitarist, on the plane. The two of them hit it off instantly and quickly become friends and then roommates. There's a deep connection between Will and Mia from the get go, the kind of connection that leads to a life long friendship or maybe something more.

Will falls for Mia pretty quickly, desperately hoping their friendship evolves into a romance. Mia is less sure. Of course she is attracted to the handsome, charming, sensitive soul that is Will, but she isn't quite ready for a Will in her life and it shows, sometimes painfully. The first three-fourths of the novel can be summed up as follows: Mia and Will are friends. Mia and Will get a little closer. Mia freaks out and is cruel to Will, insulting him and pushing him away. All of their friends more or less side with Will, while trying to help Mia deal with her issues. Mia realizes the error of her ways and apologizes. She and Will resume their friendship, and the whole cycle starts again, rinse and repeat.

Truthfully, Will isn't the only thing Mia is unsure about. She is a 25-year-old classically trained pianist with a business degree from Brown. She hasn't really done much with her life since college. To be fair, Mia has a lot going on when she meets Will. She has just moved from Michigan to New York. She is mourning the loss of her recently deceased father while taking on the responsibility of running the business her father started. She is caring for her 13-year-old dog that is slowly dying. As if that were not enough, Mia discovers some long held secrets about her family and the circumstances surrounding her birth. Who can blame her not being willing or able to jump into a serious relationship with Will, even if he is a great guy?

If there was anything I would change about this story it would be for there to be more compassion for Mia. Will was great and Mia was often not so great. But in her defense, she was also 25 and dealing with the loss of a parent. Will was nearing 30 and at a point in his life when he was starting to think about settling down. Sometimes timing really is everything. Their friends could have been a tiny bit more compassionate about Mia's uncertainty under the circumstances. 

There was also one strange thing about this book - the prologue and epilogue. Both are from the point of review of a random woman Mia meets at the airport. The middle aged mother of two sees Mia and thinks about what she was like at Mia's age and the difficulties Mia will inevitably face as she grows older. Then this random woman appears again towards the end of the book and I wasn't sure why. It didn't really add anything to the story. I suppose the prologue and epilogue could be interpreted as a glimpse of Mia's life fifteen years in the future, but that wasn't at all needed. It was a little too on the nose. It would have been better to have left that out and left the audience guessing at Will and Mia's relationship would evolve.

Notwithstanding the unnecessary prologue and epilogue, I enjoyed Sweet Thing. The characters, Mia in particular, changed and grew emotionally throughout the course of the novel. The payoff was well worth it.

The Man Who Smiled by Henning Mankell

  It's been awhile since I read one of Henning Mankell's Wallander's novels. I can't think of why it's been so long. I think I wanted to save them and not read them all at once, lest I run out too quickly. Whatever the reason was, I'm back on the Wallander train - this series is absolutely fantastic.

This one begins with a deeply depressed Kurt Wallander. He killed a man in the line of duty and even though the shooting was justified, he feels horrible that he is directly responsible for someone's death. Let me just pause here and say how refreshing it is to have a police officer who genuinely feels guilty and sad about ending another person's life. This kind of remorse is often overlooked in novels. In real life it is even worse. For Wallander, an officer who rarely uses his gun, killing a human being, criminal or not, is devastating. And so as the novel begins, Wallander is on leave and dealing with his grief very badly. There's too much drinking, inappropriate behavior, and many solitary walks along cold foggy beaches.

He is all set to quit the police force. Then an old friend finds Wallander trudging along the beach on yet another cold and foggy day and asks for Wallender's help. The friend's father recently died in a car accident, only the son doesn't think it was an accident and ask Wallander to look into it. Wallander declines and assures his friend that the officer in charge of his father's case is quite good at his job. Not long after their encounter on the beach Wallander's friend is found dead, and this time it is clear it was murder. Racked with guilt at having refused his friend, Wallander abruptly changes his mind about quitting and sets out to find out who murdered his friend and his friend's father. So begins another international Wallander mystery.

The Man Who Smiled was a pleasure to read. One thing about Mankell, he doesn't waste time. So many books (that I enjoy) start off so slowly and I have to remind myself that the story will pick up soon. That is not necessary with Mankell. The Man Who Smiled grabbed my interest right way and held onto it. The murders Wallander is tasked with solving are never run of the mill cases with simple motives. There is often an international aspect and some degree of commentary about the state of the world at large. This book was no exception. I don't want to spoil the book for anyone so I'll leave out those aspects here and simply say this is a great read, especially for anyone looking for an international mystery.

Skeleton Women by Mingmei Yip

  Camilla, the Heavenly Songbird with the angelic voice, is a skeleton women - a beautiful woman trained to seduce men, uncover their secrets, and if necessary, reduce them to corpses. She was plucked from an orphanage as a child and groomed to be the perfect spy. Her mission: to discover the secrets of the number one gangster in town, Master Lung, for her boss Big Brother Wang, the number two gangster in town. At the tender age of nineteen, Camilla has become a celebrated singer in Shanghai and Master Lung's mistress. Although she has been Master Lung's mistress for nearly a year, she has yet to complete her mission and Big Brother Wang is becoming impatient. Complicating matters are the amorous advances of two other men and the arrival of two women Camilla suspects to also be skeleton women, the mysterious magician Shadow and the androgynous journalist Rainbow Chang. But Camilla is not to be deterred. Using Sun Tzu's The Art of War to guide her, Camilla is determined to navigate her way through the choppy waters she finds herself in.

Skeleton Women was not quite what I expected. I was all set for a femme fatale thriller set in 1930s (or so) Shanghai, China. I'm not exactly sure what this is, but it wasn't that. There were lots of good ideas in this book, but they didn't go anywhere. Rainbow Chang and Shadow are good examples of this. Shadow is set up to be a skeleton woman to rival Camilla but she never is really much of a challenge to Camilla. All she appears to want is to become rich and famous. As for Rainbow Chang, much is made of her androgynous style of dressing but why this is an important detail is never explained or used to any effect. Then there are the multiple men who profess their undying love for Camilla. None of it ever felt real. They seemed more to exist to validate Camilla's status as a skeleton woman capable of seducing men.

The biggest problem with Skeleton Women was the tone.  If she fails to fulfill her mission, Big Brother Wang might decide Camilla no longer serves any purpose and have her killed. If Master Lung discovers her mission he will definitely kill her, so for Camilla the stakes are high. Nevertheless, between the constant quoting from the Art of War, that Camilla approached everyone and every situation like it was a game of chess, and every other man falling in love with Camilla,  it wasn't always clear if this was intended to be a comedy, a satire, or a realistic story. I think this story would have benefited from having a character that challenged Camilla's point of view. Without such a character to contradict her (or to contrast and compare her to), Camilla often seemed less like an adult women caught in a battle between two dangerous men, and more like a child playing a dress up game where she is the most popular and beautiful girl in town. I just couldn't tell if I should be taking Camilla seriously, or laughing at her blunders, or what.

I'm glad I read this if only for the sake that I wanted to try something new. One of my goals this year was to read more writers who were not from the United States or the UK (because historically most of the writers I read have come from those two countries). In particular, I have read very little from Asian (or even Asian-American) writers. This doesn't quite work for me but there are several others waiting to be read in my TBR pile. Better luck next time.

Living With the Dead by Kelley Armstrong

Living With the Dead is a little different from the other books in Kelley Armstrong's Women of the Otherworld series. Usually one supernatural woman takes center stage. Here, the story is told from the points of view of multiple people. The three main characters are Hope, Robyn, and Adele. Robyn, a human, suddenly finds herself the suspect in a murder investigation when one of her PR clients is murdered. Luckily for Robyn her childhood friend Hope Adams, a half-demon journalist who specializes in weird tales, and her werewolf boyfriend Karl recently arrived in town. The third woman in this tale is Adele, a psychotic young woman with the power of clairvoyance.

This wasn't bad, but it definitely was not my favorite entry in the Otherworld series. Robyn plays a large role in the story which is problematic since she's a human who isn't aware of the existence of supernaturals. There ends up being a lot of running around in circles when a two-minute conversation could solve about ninety percent of the issues everyone has.

The best parts of Living With the Dead were those that involved Hope and Karl trying to figure out their relationship as they tried to save Robyn from herself and the supernaturals after her. I wish there had been more Hope and Karl and less Robyn. Oh well, in any series there is bound to be a few missteps. At least the ending hints at something big coming later in the series, something that could shake up the supernatural world. I'm excited to find out what that something might be.

Junk by Josephine Myles

  Junk by Josephine Myles is a sweet M/M romance between a hoarder and the decluttering expert that comes to help. Jasper is a librarian who simply can't bear to let any piece of paper with words on it go into the trash bin without thinking about the potential information that may be lost to civilization. Any book or newspaper the library or a student (Jasper works at an academic library) wants to throw away is rescued from the trash bin by Jasper and taken home. His house becomes so overwhelmed with books and papers that there are whole rooms he no longer is able to enter. Luckily Jasper isn't so far gone that he can't see that he needs help. Knowing that he can't do it on his own, Jasper seeks professional help. That helps takes the shape of twin brother and sister, Lewis and Carroll (their mother is a serious Alice in Wonderland fan). Carroll may be bright and bubbly but it is Lewis that Jasper is immediately drawn to.

As a librarian and book collector myself (no books are cutting off access to any part of my home, thank you very much), Jasper's tendency to want to protect and preserve the written word was understandable. Obviously he had taken this a little too far. I've never been particularly interested in watching any of the reality shows about hoarding but it was interesting to see how Lewis and Carroll worked with Jasper and their other clients in helping them confront the various emotional issues that led to hoarding in the first place.

As for the romance, it was sweet if somewhat anti-climatic. That Jasper and Lewis would get together was never a question. In a romance, it is the journey that counts. Here the journey was both too quick and too drawn out. The two men have an immediate sexual attraction but Lewis has ethical concerns about getting involved with a client. So they do, but they don't, and then of course they do. Of the two lead characters, Jasper was the most intriguing, what with his hoarding and mother issues. Lewis didn't develop quite as much as I would have liked. He has issues with moving (and moving in) too fast in relationships and doesn't seem to have changed all that much by the end of the novel. Notwithstanding these quibbles, overall I enjoyed Junk. The hoarding angle was a new to me and it seemed to be handled well. This is the first book I've read by Myles and I look forward to finding what else she has written.

Batgirl by Gail Simone

  After finishing Hanya Yanagihara's A Little Life, I needed something light, fun, and short. As I have said elsewhere on this blog, I only started really reading comics a few years ago when DC started their New 52 series. With regard to superhero comics, there are so many alternative stories it is hard to know where to start. The New 52 gave me a place to start. Unfortunately, I fell behind primarily because I don't like buying single issue comics and then I would forget when collections were published.

Anyway, the new Batgirl series set in Brooklyn was mentioned on one of the podcasts I listened to and it sounded the life the perfect palate cleanser after the (literally and figuratively) heavy A Little Life. The only confusing thing was that I remembered reading a few Batgirl comics set in Gotham when the New 52 started. It turns out that the series got a new author and the series was...is rebooted the right word? I am baffled as to how comics are published. I tried to look for a definitive list of Batgirl comics and found among other things that there are multiple volume ones. The newest series was written by Brendan Fletcher but since I like to read things in order as much as possible, I decided to start with Gail Simone's Batgirl.

Like I said earlier, I was looking for something light, fun, and short. Batgirl was relatively short, but I'm not sure "fun" is an apt description. "Light" definitely is not. I read all five of the collected comics written by Gail Simone as part of the New 52 (well as far as I can tell, again slightly baffled by how comics are published and republished). Most of these stories are pretty dark. One character gets his leg caught in a bear trap set up in parking lot to catch car thieves. Starving people are murdered with poisoned food. A missing family member turns out to be homicidal. Not exactly light reading. Then again, the last book I read felt so real and this was over the top bloody, so while it wasn't the palate cleanser I expected it still managed to serve its purpose. And there were some light moments.

I love cartoons. Maybe because most of the cartoons I watch are aimed at kids and I tend to associate superhero stories with kids, I expected Batgirl to be light in tone. Yes, I've seen Christopher Nolan's Batman, but well, I guess I hadn't realized how much that darker version of Batman had carried over to other series.

 This isn't to say I didn't like Batgirl, I did. Simone's Barbara Gordon/Batgirl is strong, complicated, flawed, and heroic. I thoroughly enjoyed reading these comics. One of may favorite story lines is when Batgirl finds herself in a sort of utopia. Instead of being a vigilante that protects Gotham in the night when it is at its most vulnerable; she's a guardian angel that crisscrosses the city in daylight. I also loved Barbara Gordon/Batgirl as Bête Noire aka The Black Beast and the Batgirls. I would love to read a series that continues that story line!

The only time I thought it missed the mark was when vampires came into play, yes vampires. No surprise here, there is a lot I don't know about the DC universe so maybe supernatural characters are the norm in the Bat universe, but I tended to see Gotham and the Bat family of characters as dealing with human villains. They may be crazy, strange-gadget wielding villains, but human villains none the less.

All said it done, this was a great series. Looking forward to reading more of DC Comics New 52, as well as other comics and graphic novels.

A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara

  For starters, let me say that it is difficult to talk about this book without revealing anything. So if you don't want to know anything about this book, stop here.

Heart-wrenching, frustrating, beautiful, disturbing - Hanya Yanagihara's A Little Life is all those things and more. It is a novel about friendship, abuse, survival, adulthood, and love in its various forms - romantic, friendly, familial, self-love. Four young men meet in college and become friends for life. JP, an aspiring artist, is the most ambitious and arguably the most self-involved. Malcolm, an aspiring architect, is perhaps the most confused and uptight. Willem, an aspiring actor, is the most kindhearted. Jude is sad and mysterious. He doesn't talk about his past, not even how he he came to have a limp. His friends suspect something terrible happened in Jude's childhood. They have no idea what. It ends up being worse than they could have imagined, than I imagined. There were a couple times when I had to put this book down and walk away.

Notwithstanding the very disturbing parts of this story, I'm so glad I read this. The writing is beautiful. Each character is thoroughly and richly drawn, even the secondary characters. Without being judgmental or overly simplistic, Yanagihara slyly comments on race, money, success, and relationships. A Little Life is partly a series of in-depth character studies and partly a social commentary, all wrapped up in a compelling piece of fiction. I can't recommend this highly enough (but with caution for those with trigger concerns).