American Marriage
I just finished reading An American Marriage, by Tayari Jones. I can’t remember how I came across it—I ordered it from Book Outlet, but whether I browsed it and decided on it or it was recommended by one of the readers on Facebook’s “What Should I Read Next?” group, I don’t remember. The plot, which speaks to contemporary situations, intrigued me, and there is much to like about this book.
The basic story is this: Roy and Celestial meet, then meet again, and eventually fall in love or decide they have found the right partner, or whatever people do who decide to marry. Roy is in business but has greater aspirations, and Celestial is a fabric artist, specializing in making eerily lifelike baby dolls. They are married for about 18 months and are celebrating the anniversary of their first date when a crime is committed nearby and the victim identifies Roy as her rapist. Although Celestial knows it’s impossible (he was with her at the time, and neither was asleep), she is the only witness and is apparently less convincing to his jury than is the victim; Roy is sentenced to 12 years in prison.
For the first three years of Roy’s incarceration, Celestial stays true to Roy, although her sense of him, herself, and their marriage suffers as time goes on with little reinforcement as to its reality. She continues to pursue a dream first articulated by Roy to open a shop to sell her “poupées” (dolls), and allows her work to consume her as she feels increasingly alienated from her marriage.
André has been Celestial’s neighbor and best friend since they were small children. Although she has always regarded him as a friend, he has loved her since he met her. He was also friends with Roy, and is actually the one who introduced them and watched while they made a match of it; he has been Celestial’s constant companion since, never crossing the line, until Celestial’s doubt in the viability of hers and Roy’s relationship after several years apart gives him hope for something different. They eventually drift together almost as if it’s inevitable, and have begun to form a solid relationship when Roy’s lawyer’s efforts to appeal his case surprisingly pay off and Roy is released at the end of a five-year stint.
Roy knows that he and Celestial have been estranged; but he expects she has been faithful and hopes to rekindle or restart life with her now that his time in jail is over. Celestial, meanwhile, looks at the time they have been separated versus the time they were actually together, and sees it as something of an uncrossable gulf.
The book has several things to recommend it: The format is intriguing, with the narration of the first few chapters before Ray’s arrest alternating between Roy and Celestial. After the arrest, the alternating narration continues but becomes epistolary, contained in letters from the prison to Atlanta and back again. Shortly before Roy’s release, André steps in with first-person narrative, and the rest of the book is mostly from his and Roy’s alternating points of view. I found all of it absorbing.
The language in which the story is written is engaging, with an extended vocabulary and unusual, evocative phrasing by the protagonists in both their conversations and their descriptions that constantly catches the ear.
The premise itself is what drew me to the book: The knowledge of how easily and how often mistakenly a man of color is arrested in this country is an issue in the forefront of many people’s minds right now, so the opportunity to read a book about that actual event was appealing.
There are, however, also some things that are lacking about this book. The first, for me, is the pivotal incident—the misunderstanding that led to accusations that led to conviction and incarceration. I understand that the author’s purpose was more about focusing on the outcomes of the wrongful conviction and that the conviction was in some ways a foregone conclusion, given our society’s blind spots; but I would have liked a little more attention paid to the mechanics of how Roy ended up in prison than the five scant pages it is given. It was, ultimately, a he-said-she-said situation, and although it was unlikely to conclude differently, I would have appreciated seeing that drama enacted on the page instead of being nearly incidental to the story.
The second is the treatment of the characters. Interestingly, the secondary characters (Roy’s daddy, Big Roy and his biological father, Walter; his mother, Olive, and Celestial’s father, Franklin) were beautifully drawn and seemed like real people from the neighborhood. But there was a disconnection for me from Celestial, which I found particularly strange considering that the author is a woman. There was a lot of noise made by Roy in the attempt to keep Celestial; but she was such a reticent, inarticulate figure that I never got a sense of exactly what it was that made her tick. Even though I understood, by the end, what was happening and had a sense of why, the words are never actually said by Celestial, and I was, along with Roy, so frustrated by that. It came to the point, during the pivotal decisions about their marriage, where he was speaking for both of them, almost holding a conversation with himself by claiming to know what she was thinking and how she felt, and although he may have been intuitive enough to guess those things, I actually found it rather offensive that the author wouldn’t just put the words that needed saying into Celestial’s mouth. She ended up such a passive, helpless, weepy creature when she started out as the strong and independent one, and it left me unsatisfied, particularly because we get to find out the conclusion to everything through one of those “six months later” epilogues that I hold in such disregard.
Still, despite all this I see the value of this book in explaining the crippling disconnection of a whole segment of society from their roots, their relationships, and their continuing lives by the mechanism of wrongful imprisonment, and the struggle it must be to reconnect with any of those once the separation is over. The total disruption of lives is unforgivable. There is much here that is profound and moving, and Roy is not a character I will soon forget.
Magic and realism
I hadn’t planned to read South of the Buttonwood Tree, by Heather Webber, right now, but I’d had the Kindle version on hold from LAPL and they sent me an email to say it was ready to be checked out, so I went for it. Library schedules wait for no one!
I had thought that it was a sequel to Midnight at the Blackbird Café (it even has a corvid pictured on the cover), but it wasn’t; instead, it was almost a duplicate of that book, with a few significant variables. Small Southern town, check. Ne’er-do-well family looked down upon by the more upwardly mobile family who has a secret connection to it, check. Two daughters, one from each family, who end up exposing all the secrets and discovering what that connection is, exactly, with some magical realism and some romance thrown in. Check! Although the author does a good job of fleshing out her characters and making them unique, the situations were so similar that sometimes it was hard to remember that it wasn’t a sequel (or that I had once again forgotten I’d read a book and re-read it only to find it strangely familiar!).
I’m back to my ponderings about what constitutes magical realism on this one because it, like Blackbird Café, is really just a cozy with some magic thrown in. In Blackbird, people ate pieces of pie from the café and then had significant dreams after, in which they might hear from dead loved ones. I conceded that this was marginally possible. But in Buttonwood, people went to the Buttonwood Tree and asked questions, and the tree gave them a button with their answer engraved on it. IN HANDWRITING. This pushed my “buttons,” pardon the pun, because I feel like this is far beyond the bounds of magical realism, straight into magic. I halfway expected that, by the end of the book, it would be revealed that there was someone behind the “fortunes,” acting as the town seer (or manipulator) by carving buttons and messages out of a branch of the tree and leaving them for people, but no: They actually just appear magically from a hole in the trunk of the tree, and nobody questions it. And they are specific in some cases: In the central plot, a baby is abandoned under the tree, and the button says “Give the baby to Blue.” Okaaaaay…
One of the two young women protagonists, Blue, has the ability to find things or people, and she finds them by letting the wind push her where she needs to go. This I found more plausible. The other protagonist, Sarah Grace (who is a house rehabber), talks to houses and they talk back to her—not necessarily in words, but in mood and occasional actions (like things falling or doors sticking at important moments). Again, that felt natural for magical realism. But the buttons bugged me.
The rest of the story, like Blackbird, is a “cozy” of small-town life, the resolving of secrets and regrets, and the providing of romances. It’s as satisfying as that kind of book can be; but again, the main magical realism element seemed a little jarring in the midst of it, instead of charming as it was meant to be. Maybe I’m just too much of a cynic. As Roald Dahl is quoted in the book, “Those who don’t believe in magic will never find it.”
Reading mavens
A reminder for those who not only enjoy reading but also like talking about it and seeing other people do it: Please visit The Book Adept’s shop, to purchase book- and reading-related images on various products, including prints, cards, and postcards, T-shirts, mugs, and more! While you are there, also check out all the non-reading-related art. The link is: https://www.redbubble.com/people/meligelliott/shop
Here are some of the images on offer:
Character
I haven’t made a post for a while now, for several reasons: I’m still finishing off Charlie Higson’s dystopian series for teens (I’m reading The End and hoping that all my many questions are answered); I started teaching my Readers’ Advisory class at UCLA this past Tuesday and have spent some of my time preparing for that (mostly cleaning up my combination office/art studio so it’s fit to be seen in the background of Zoom); and I’ve been rather caught up in the political events of the day (unhealthy obsession with Facebook posts). But I should be at the end of The End soon, and on to my next read.
In the meantime, the combination of contemplating “appeals” for readers’ advisory and doing a massive clear-out, clean-up, and re-shelving of my entire library of fiction in my four bedroom bookshelves caused me to think about the nature of “character” as a dominating force in fiction.
To explain a bit for those who are not up on librarian lingo, appeals are what we call the various reasons why people enjoy what they read. Some people are motivated by adrenalin and want something fast-paced and exciting; others love beautiful language and want to be wooed by unusual or lyrical phrasing; and one particularly powerful appeal is that of “character.” The ability to identify with or, alternatively, loathe a character or set of characters in a book is one aspect that draws people to read more. The success of the belabored Harry Potter franchise is largely due to the desire to find out what happens next to the maturing Harry and his friends, and all of us can probably think of a book or five whose characters were what kept us coming back to its pages. A few recent books in which character dominated include Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine, A Man Called Ove, and The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo. (A major clue as to whether the book is character-driven is if the main character’s name appears in the title. Witness Harry Potter and the….)
As I have mentioned here several times, belonging to the Facebook group “What Should I Read Next?” is sometimes an exercise in patience, because most of the readers there have become caught up in the bestseller craze and all end up reading the same 12 books. So in the effort to find them—and you—other compelling reads, I thought I would spend a blog post examining some of my past favorites that are wholly about the character.
A compelling writer of character-driven works is the author Mary Renault, and although her entire oeuvre contains much to appreciate, there is not another that rivals The Persian Boy, her tale of a bed slave named Bagoas who was abducted, gelded, and sold as a courtesan to King Darius of Persia. When Alexander and his Macedonian army conquer the Persians, Bagoas finds himself in a rather untenable position and decides he will achieve safety only by ingratiating himself with the conqueror himself. Although Alexander is quick to see the appeal of this highly motivated slave, he is slow to take advantage of his utter dependency, and the courtship between the two of them is both touching and fiery.
The Persian Boy is actually the second in a series of three books Renault wrote about Alexander. The early years, when he rises from a beleaguered son of warring parents to become the master of all lands he surveys, are covered in Fire from Heaven, in which he experiences love and trust for the first time with his best friend and fellow warrior, Hephaistion. But that book is far more event-driven, whereas The Persian Boy, being narrated from the point of view of someone with whom Alexander had a solely personal connection, is limited in scope in terms of world events but much more specific about the relationships. It is, in fact, a love story, and I would regard it as one of the great ones, containing as it does not just attraction or romance but also loss and pain, desire and jealousy, joy, courage, and cowardice. It is an exceedingly intimate view of Alexander the man beside that of Alexander the great warrior, and is filtered through the emotions and psychology of a patient bystander.
At the beginning of the third book, Funeral Games, Alexander the Great lies dying, surrounded by his former generals, satraps, and wives, all competing like wolves for the prizes of power and land. Only the two loves of his life, Hephaistion and Bagoas, realize and truly mourn what has been lost. Funeral Games documents the disintegration of the mighty empire built in 20 years and brings Alexander’s saga from age 12 to 33 to its close.
There is a variability of voice in these tales that lets them be read as a series but also allows the reader to experience them as stand-alone novels. The first is told in the first person by Alexander; the second is the purview of Bagoas; and the third is written from a third-person observer stance. I discovered and read The Persian Boy first, only picking up the others afterwards, and felt no sense that anything was missing in that first reading. When people ask for an LGBTQ love story that goes beyond the contemporary meet-cute or the simultaneous struggle with coming out that invades so many of these stories, my thoughts immediately return to the yearning and transcendent happiness contained with the pages of Renault’s classic work.
Another protagonist with whom I have been in love since the first time I read the book is Shevek, the humble man and brilliant physicist at the heart of Ursula K. LeGuin’s book The Dispossessed. The book is a recounting of an existential thought experiment: The author posits what would happen to individuals in a social system that rewards conformity, although that social system in this case is based on a sort of group anarchy. Urras is a world much like our own, driven by commerce. Within its teeming millions is a group of individuals who wish to live their lives quite differently and, because Anarres, the moon of their planet, is suitable (though not ideal) for human life, they are allowed to colonize it. The two societies make a pact that neither will invade the other and, for more than 100 years, not one individual from either society has crossed the line between them except for shipments of supplies that arrive and leave the small port on Anarres.
Shevek grows up in this ascetic society, a planned utopia where no one takes precedence over anyone else, where each is valued but all are expected to make their contribution to society in return for a place in it. He does his part, planting trees in the desert, drawing food service or waste management tasks for 10 days at a time, and through it all manages to find a great love, Takver, and have children; but while he goes through these tasks of daily life, his brain is operating on another plain—trying to understand temporal physics—that demands discussion, the exchange of ideas, and a close relationship with those on his mental level who are capable of understanding his brilliance. Ultimately, he makes the choice, despite the possibility of losing his home, his family, perhaps even his life, to go back to Urras to see what the scientists of that world have to offer him.
The fascinating part of the book is how the society on Anarres was originally founded as a profound act of nonconformity, and yet ends up suppressing originality and demanding obedience from a man chafing under its restrictions. LeGuin achieves her objective—the exploration of the concept of freedom—by letting the reader recognize the virtues of the system under which Shevek lives and
then realize how stifling it has become, without being either polemical or strident.
If it weren’t for the “stigma” of being categorized as science fiction, I believe this book would take its place amongst the most important of classic novels, and that Shevek would be a much more well-known protagonist in the reading world.
Some books you love for a protagonist, and some for an entire cast of characters. In the second category are the books by E. F. Benson that were latterly brought together in an Omnibus volume called Make Way for Lucia. There are six Mapp and Lucia novels in the series, and they must be read in order, for events take on importance in a specific sequence that must be appreciated.
At first glance, you might not think that a view into the social world of upper-middle class Edwardian village dwellers would be particularly compelling. But what you have to understand about the Mapp and Lucia books is the exaggerated degree of sheer triviality that guarantees a contrary fascination. Benson had a disdain for middle class people pretending to a rank to which they are not entitled, and his satires of these mushrooms trying to push their way into high society are brilliant and also funny as hell.
The books feature the feuding doyennes of Riseholme and Tilling, whose decidedly bourgeois residents get flustered in the presence of noble titles but king and queen it in the presence of everyone else. The main protagonists—or should we call them pugilists?—are Emmeline Lucas, designated “Lucia,” and Elizabeth Mapp. Though the stories begin with each of them ruling their respective roosts with total social supremacy in their separate villages, fate brings them together to hilarious effect. But the reader is not solely reliant on Lucia and Miss Mapp in these stories; Benson has created a whole cast of characters, including the dashing Georgie Pillson, aging bachelor, with his elbow-length cape and carefully trained piece of hair draped over his scalp; the drunken and slightly naughty Major Benjy; artist and naked sunbather Irene Coles; Mrs. Boucher with her daughters, Piggy and Goosie, in tow; and so many more. The tempests in the teapots that are the meat of these ’20s and ’30s comedies of manners are hilarious, witty, and slightly nasty. In other words, inspired. Auberon Waugh, eldest son of Evelyn, said,
“I might have gone to my grave
without ever knowing about
Lucia and Miss Mapp. It is not a risk
anyone should take lightly.”
It’s about time for me to read them for the third time.
I hope you have enjoyed this meander through some character-driven books, and that it will inspire you to look them up for yourself or to reflect on the characters that have come to life for you during your lifetime of reading. If any compelling ones occur to you, please share!
Guest blog: NF
As you may have noticed by now, nonfiction is not really my friend. I seldom choose to read it, and when I do make the attempt I seem to have a recurrence of the selective narcolepsy that has plagued me on and off for years, never making it past the first few chapters.
How lucky am I, therefore, to have friends who read, and friends who are also willing to write something about what they have read and allow me to share it here?
The review to follow is by Mary K. Chelton, a well known advocate for young adults and libraries. A retired professor of library and information studies at Queens College (New York), Dr. Chelton is co-founder of Voice of Youth Advocates (VOYA) journal. and has published more than 60 articles in library literature. She has 20+ years experience as a public librarian, serving as a voice for all underserved library populations. One of her particular specialties is readers’ advisory, over which we recently bonded online. I am honored to share her thoughts about her reading.
Begin Again: James Baldwin’s America and Its Urgent Lessons for Our Own, by Eddie S. Glaude, Jr. (Crown Publishing 6/30/2020, 272 pp.)
The chair of Princeton’s Department of African American Studies, who teaches a seminar on James Baldwin as part of that program, has done an exhaustive, critical examination of Baldwin’s writings, letters, interviews, and travels, to see what his thoughts and experiences might say to those of us trying, once again, through Black Lives Matter, to restart the Civil Rights movement.
Baldwin comes across as a tortured individual, in part because of his emotional and intellectual involvement in the movement, but also because of his sexuality and estrangement from both black and white politics in the United States. For example, he did not support the Black Power people, and he grappled intellectually with whether Black activists had to “become white” to achieve anything. He also became an unwilling celebrity as his writing was published and reviewed. Twice he tried to commit suicide, the first time after Martin Luther King was murdered.
Glaude follows his life and offers a rich interpretation of it with insights for those of us suffering through the Trump era, followed by a personal journey himself to the Legacy Museum and the National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Alabama to experience “the Lie” as he calls America’s underbelly of racist origins and structures. Begin Again is a wonderful work of scholarship, with something thought-provoking on every page.
# # #
There are people who have words for a particular situation, and James Baldwin is one of those. Although the things he said were certainly applicable during his lifetime, they also seem peculiarly addressed to us in our current situation. I sat through the so-called presidential debate Tuesday night watching the man in charge of our collective welfare bully his opponent and lie through his teeth with a confident smirk, and my response was this statement from Baldwin: “I can’t believe what you say, because I see what you do.”
It also, of course, addresses the other revolution taking place in our country right now, which is the effort to see what we do to the black lives among us and choose to do better. Dual purpose Baldwin, if you will. —ME
Dystopia 4 Kids, cont.
I mentioned about five or six posts ago that I had begun Charlie Higson’s young adult dystopian series The Enemy (review here) but would probably stretch out the reading of the entire thing by interspersing it with other books, which I have done. But this week I jumped back into it and quickly made my way through books #2, #3, and now I’m midway through #4. Finally, in this book, there has come a hint (no more so far) of how this whole thing started, which is certainly incentive to keep going.
And I do need a certain amount of incentive. On the one hand, I am still in awe of Higson’s abilities to write compelling characters about whose fate you come to care within a very short time of “meeting” them; but on the other hand, I’m wondering when I’m going to hit my personal limit for unmitigated gore. Because this is such a good story, my tolerance seems broader and more sustained than I would have expected, but after 3+ books of it I am getting as glazed in the eye as the kids who are encountering it and either going catatonic or becoming inured to its effects!
Lest anyone be either unduly impressed or put off by the size of the books, which are listed as 400+ pages apiece, keep in mind that this is a young adult series, and page count is not nearly as significant in terms of density. These are smaller-than-usual books, the typeface is several points larger than in an adult novel, and both the page margins and the leading (the space between lines) is generous. I’m finding it possible to zip through one of these in about two days, and that’s with reading only a couple of hours per day. So if you are intrigued by the reviews, by all means pick up the first one and see what you think. But one suggestion I would make is that if you don’t have a strong stomach, then don’t read these during meals!
Retail outlet!
In addition to being an avid reader and an instructor of readers’ advisory, the Book Adept (that’s me) is also a watercolorist and mixed media artist.
I have just opened an online shop through Redbubble, and included among the collections of artwork I am making available there is a wide array of reading-oriented things—art prints, cards and postcards, and also an occasional fun thing like a T-shirt, a clock, a spiral-bound journal, a coffee mug, even masks to keep you safe from Covid-19! So please, if you like stuff about reading as much as you like to read, go check out my new products!
The shop is here: https://tinyurl.com/yyaoyprg
Of course, you should also feel free to peruse the other collections you find there! Gardening, cooking, tea time, birds, politics…art for everyone!
Missing Francis
I am a huge fan of Dick Francis mysteries. When he passed away and his son took up his mantle, I decided to reserve judgment until I had read a few. (I had been burned once before by this dynamic when the brilliant and innovative Frank Herbert died and his son Brian started writing decidedly inferior sequels to his Dune series.) It was noted that Felix had helped Dick with the massive research required to deliver his books, and since I was cognizant of what that involved (Dick’s books were chock full of interesting details about all sorts of things), and since it was also noted that Felix had co-written the last few, I believed that Felix might just have the master’s touch.
I have read several of Felix’s books since he began writing on his own, and while they weren’t quite Dick Francis, they weren’t bad. I enjoyed both Bloodline and Damage, and when I saw that Triple Crown was another book featuring Jeff Hinkley (the protagonist of Damage), I was somewhat enthusiastic about picking it up.
I think it will be my last authored by Felix.
I am not an apologist for such American quirks as overly armed police officers, or the animal cruelty that is present in the branding of cattle and horses, or the convoluted groups of associated government departments that nonetheless refuse to work together. Quite the contrary, in fact: Based on my experience working as a librarian who was constantly called upon to be a social worker for certain of our patrons, I applaud the recent movement towards scaling back police influence to do the things they are actually trained to do. I am a vegetarian and deplore all forms of deliberate injury to animals; and I think the level of jockeying for power in Washington is ludicrous. But that doesn’t mean I want to read about all those things and, if I did, it certainly wouldn’t be in the pages of what is supposed to be an entertaining mystery novel.
The plot seems like a reasonably good one: Jeff Hinkley, who works as a covert investigator for the British Horseracing Authority (BHA), is requested to come to America to help their Federal Anti-Corruption in Sports Agency (FACSA) find out who in their organization is passing on confidential information that will help horse trainers and owners evade arrest when they get up to such things as drugging rival horses. After consulting with the agency’s Deputy Director, by whom he was invited to come, Hinkley sets up a sting operation in which he goes undercover as a groom for a trainer believed to cut corners to win races, hoping that, as an insider, he will be able to find information on the mole. As he discovers some horrifying steps this trainer is taking to win the Triple Crown, his added motive becomes to root out this corruption before more horses die.
The execution of the story turns into a vehicle for Francis, disguised as Hinkley, to exhibit a condescending supercilious attitude toward American horse-racing when compared with the British, and this attitude constitutes almost the only defining trait of the protagonist—he is otherwise so unmemorable that near the end of the novel, when he decides to dye his hair and beard dark as a disguise, I was utterly surprised that he had been a blond previous to the dye job, because his physicality was left so vague throughout the book. Hinkley is completely lacking in the charm, intelligence, or wit of a Dick Francis hero. He is a fatal combination of bland and pompous that endears him to no one, including his fellow characters or the reader.
In addition to the rather overbearing anti-American themes is the pedantic tone of his explanatory passages, which constantly trip you up and shove you out of the story. The dialogue is likewise stilted and formal, and the character development is rudimentary at best, and laden with offensive clichés. Hinkley’s attitude toward his co-worker, Maria, the Puerto Rican hot walker for the stable, basically consists of his observation that she’s a hot mama; his Mexican roommate is a drunkard and a simpleton; he seems surprised that a female federal agent could be such a crack shot; and another female agent becomes a stereotype of a whiny mistress to her colleague’s married man. Dick Francis’s gentle misogyny was both understandable (due to his age and upbringing) and predictable; but what is Felix’s problem with women in particular? It seems that, along with not respecting them, he doesn’t particularly admire them either. At least his father had a healthy appreciation and understanding of relationships and knew how to write them.
My constant feeling during the reading of this novel was that I was trudging through a quicksand of expository prequel while hoping the actual story would pick up at some point and become involving, but it never did. By the time the book reached the intended climactic scenes, I simply didn’t care—and the lackluster way in which they were written confirmed those feelings.
Next time I’m feeling nostalgic for an exciting mystery with a horse racing theme, I’ll go back and re-read the real thing. And perhaps, at this point, this Francis should quit putting “A Dick Francis Novel” on his covers.
“Beach read”
There is a certain expectation when you see those words. Beach read. Like romcom. Or cozy. Or whatever genre you’re expecting.
I wasn’t exactly expecting what I got from Beach Read, by Emily Henry. I picked it up because all the women on my “What should I read next?” Facebook group keep pushing it, and it sounded more appealing right now than American Dirt or A Man Called Ove or Small Great Things. And I think on balance it probably was, but…
First of all, there is almost no beach in Beach Read, and the beach that there is resides on Lake Michigan, so…is that a beach? They say you can’t see the other side and it feels like an ocean, but as a California almost-native, I have my doubts. Anyway, I think the characters end up at the beach maybe three times? twice together and once the protagonist goes on her own, and the atmosphere and set-up just aren’t there.
Second, my idea of what a genuine beach read is supposed to be is a book that is casually engaging. You can take it or leave it, which means that you take it with you in the morning when you trail down to the beach with your chair and towel and umbrella, and maybe you read it for a little while, and then you put it aside in favor of sleeping or swimming or making a sand castle or simply staring out at the water until you go sun-blind. And that evening, or the next day, you desultorily pick it up again and keep going, but there’s no pressure, there’s no urgency. As my cousin Toni from Texas always says, “This is so pleasant.” That’s the epitome of a beach read. Which this was not.
THIS book was smart and funny, a little convoluted, with more angst than one would expect in a beach read. It had, in my opinion, a few too many coincidences upon which it depended—the meet-cute was a little more a saccharine surprise, and that also goes for many of the side characters, who give off a whiff of too-good-to-be-trueness as they enter and exit the scenes. But what this book really has going for it is two good protagonists who indulge in banter that is truly witty. And in between, their chemistry smolders for about two-thirds of the book until you’re ready to implode on their behalf, so you get the best of both worlds—smart-ass reality, and romantic fantasy. Also, because the characters are both novelists, you hear a lot about the creative process in a not-pretentious way, which was a bonus for me. All the background and family stuff, while giving context to why both characters were so difficult, was sort of generic and could have been swapped out with different BS, but you can’t deny the characters who were created from that morass—they were awesome. Naming your two protagonists January and Augustus might be considered a little over the top, but hey, they’re novelists and their parents must have known not to name them Tiffany and Jason, right?
So, while it wasn’t the quintessential beach read I was expecting, since I mostly read it on my Kindle under the covers on nights when I couldn’t sleep, I forgave it for that and enjoyed it thoroughly.
Undeniably not done
In between other more serious fare, I checked out the Kindle copies of the next three books in the Lucy Valentine psychic matchmaking series. I had enjoyed the first two, and thought I’d like to find out what happened to all the engaging characters (pardon the pun), most of all Lucy and her beau, Sean.
First was Absolutely, Positively, in which Lucy’s psychic ability to find things is finally unmasked to the public and she has to deal with the fallout, while discovering a new method to find “lost loves” with it that expands her father’s matchmaking business to a new department that includes Lucy plus private eyes Sean and his brother.
Then came Perfectly Matched, in which she hooks up with a bunch of other psychics to try to bring out more abilities and hone the one she has. Meanwhile, someone is targeting her boyfriend and his brother by setting fires at all the places where they grew up, and Lucy becomes increasingly desperate to discover why and, more important, who, before something bad happens. Lastly was Undeniably Yours, in which her policeman friend, Aiden, seeks her help finding a lost reporter, who also happens to be the mother of his (previously unknown) child.
I still liked the series after going through the next three books; the author is great at reminding you what has happened, adding to it by expanding knowledge and relationships in the next volume, and still drawing out the suspense in various pairings as well as various themes so you want to go on to the next.
What made me crazy was finding out that this isn’t the end of the series! If you picked up a book called Undeniably Yours with the couple in question in a clinch on the cover, wouldn’t you assume that this is the book in which the drawn-out relationship that started in book #1 would finally reach its HEA (happily ever after)? Well, I did, and I was mistaken! There are still things for the main couple (and other secondaries) to do, places to go, states to achieve (as in matrimony or whatever), and we leave them in the midst of a massive home remodeling project! So there will be more Lucy Valentine tales in my future after all. I don’t know whether I’m mad or glad.
I’m struggling a little with where to put these books in terms of genre. Is it magical realism if people have psychic abilities, or is it just paranormal fiction? Is it a romance if half the characters belong to a family of matchmakers and keep putting people together, or does it just have romantic elements? And is it relationship fiction, or is it a mystery cozy? There IS a mystery of some kind in each one…
Whatever. I enjoyed these books, and felt like each one improved upon the last, so that’s something.
The Book Adept 