Having her say
Karen Brooks gives Chaucer's Wife of Bath a chance to tell her side of the story in this vivid and absorbing tale of how a woman could gain agency in her own life in a time when she legally had none.
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Posts by Jane J
Reading dilemmas 101
Anyone who's known me for a while as a reader knows I can dig my feet in when a book becomes too popular. If I read a book before it became hugely popular, great. But if it's become hugely popular? I'm far more likely to not read it then. If I'm being honest here (and why else would I start talking about this?), I'll admit I like to be the discoverer of the books. I like to find the gems before everyone else. My petty confession of the day.
London calling
"London’s soul has gone missing. Lost? Kidnapped? Murdered? Nobody knows – but when Sharon Li unexpectedly discovers she’s a shaman, she is immediately called upon to use her newfound powers of oneness with the City to rescue it from a slow but inevitable demise.
Politics of love
I recently finished the second book in a fantasy romance series and wanted to buzz about it here - connecting to my review of book one of course - only to realize that I hadn't reviewed book one! Amazing. And a serious lapse on my part. One that likely happened for the same reason I'm now not going to talk about book two - it wasn't in LINKcat yet. So backing up, here is the first. A Strange and Stubborn Endurance is a marriage of convenience romance contained within the political plotting in a a fully-realized and lush fantasy world.
Behind the gates
In 1952 San Francisco, police detective Evander "Andy" Mills has been able to keep his sexual orientation, as a gay man, under wraps, until now. A raid on a gay nightclub has caught him in its web and he's lost his job and every "friend" he thought he had on the force. At a loss as to what comes next, he's contemplating a very bad decision while half-tanked in a bar, when he's approached by a glamorous woman named Pearl. She offers a deal he can't pass up. Pearl tells him that her wife, soap magnate, Irene Lamontaine has died and Pearl thinks her death was murder.
Love and broccoli
"Rose McIntyre Nash died peacefully in her sleep at the age of ninety-eight, and now I carry part of her with me wherever I go. I do not mean that figuratively. She's inside a small wooden box tucked away in my backpack as we speak. Not all of her, of course. Geoffrey Nash wasn't about to hand over his entire grandmother to the weird girl who lived in her spare bedroom. But Geoffrey was kind enough to give me three tablespoons of her ashes (again, not figurative; he portioned her out with a measuring spoon from the kitchen)."
Magic has its cost
In Gillig's fantasy debut a young woman has to hide the magic she wields, and the monster that gives it to her, or else find her life forfeit.
Royal romance (of the fictional variety)
Portia Hobbs was introduced in Alyssa Cole's A Princess in Theory (the first in her Reluctant Royals series) as a friend of that heroine. Portia was a bit of a mess; partying too much, drinking too much, and definitely too many men. As Duke opens she's just arriving in Scotland to take on an apprenticeship with a struggling swordmaker. If that sounds odd, Portia would agree.
A night they'll never forget
I flew for the first time since the pandemic last week and I'd forgotten how much reading I can get done when I'm trapped in my seat on a crowded plane. Almost one book on the way out and another on the way home. In the first of them, a blurb describes The Housekeepers as a cross between Downton Abbey and Ocean's 8 - a description that appealed to me on all fronts.
Adventures have consequences
“You are an adventure I’ve always wanted to take—and I’m so glad I have. But adventures have consequences…. You know, I’m not sure they would be adventures if they didn’t.”