Review: Wade's Workout

Wade's Workout by Daryl Banner
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Not much in the way of sexy times, but character development!

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Review: Murder in the Crooked House

Murder in the Crooked House by Sōji Shimada
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Thanks to Netgalley and Pushkin for providing me with an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.

I'm not entirely sure how to rate this book. I enjoyed certain aspects of it - the remote and uniquely interesting setting, the challenge of the locked rooms, the snow piling up and trapping the guests, the Agatha Christie feel of it all - but I also disliked a lot of things. I didn't like that the main/brilliant detective didn't show up until well past the halfway mark. I didn't like the shift in perspective from third person to first person (into the brilliant detective's friend's POV). I didn't like the wildly improbable (yet still intriguing) explanation of the murder. I also didn't like the feeling that something vital was being lost in translation, nor the fact that the formatting of the ARC meant I didn't get copies of the illustrative figures that were used within the story to show how things were laid out. I feel like that made me miss some necessary pieces of the puzzle.

I will say that, while I didn't guess the method of the murders or solve how the murders took place in locked rooms, I did guess the culprit correctly. Just an inkling I had at one specific point that really nailed it down for me, but I spent the rest of the book wondering HOW, and after that ending, there was absolutely no way I could have guessed.

So overall, I loved the nostalgic Christie feel and the twisty mystery and the fantastic setting, but didn't like the late arrival of the real protagonist, the shifts in perspective, or the completely unguessable method of murder.

I guess I'll rate it right down the middle then!
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A few positives, a few negatives, and an overwhelming sense that much was lost in translation. Still entertaining overall. Review to come upon release.

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Review: The Evil Queen

The Evil Queen by Gena Showalter
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for providing me with an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.

This sounded like a great book. The concept is fantastic - I'm a huge Disney villain fan, and retellings of fairy tales can be really fun, especially when told from the villain's perspective. Alas and alack, this one felt like reading a rushed first draft of a book. It was full of childish dialogue, whirlwind speed scene changes with very little substance, and little to no real character development.

I understand that it's a YA, so it's going to be written to appeal to younger readers, and the prose will be at a different level than a book written for adults, but honestly, it felt like a middle schooler wrote it.

I feel like it was a great concept with poor execution -- lots of potential, but never quite lives up to it.

All in all, I felt like it was appropriate to give this one two stars, the extra star because of the interesting concept and relatively neat magic system.

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Review to come, but boy, this was a mess of a book. Felt like a rough draft of a middle grades book, rushed into production because of the big name. :(

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Review: Caysen's Catch

Caysen's Catch by Daryl Banner
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Entertaining, some hot moments... damn those "to be continued" endings though LOL

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Review: Middlegame

Middlegame by Seanan McGuire
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

All the stars. Every single one.

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Review: Recursion

Recursion by Blake Crouch
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for providing me with an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.

Blake Crouch is a wonder. Seriously, the man has good ideas - great concepts... AND, he knows how to execute them. I loved Wayward Pines and Dark Matter, and Recursion follows in a similar vein.

Can you imagine a world in which the construct of time - that keeps us sane, and our lives and minds in order - has been circumvented? Well, Blake did, and he wrote about it and knocked it out of the park. This thrill ride of a novel starts a little slow and then rockets to the ending. It's kind of like Aerosmith's Rock 'N' Roller Coaster at Walt Disney World. The first bit, you're loading into the ride vehicle, pulling around to the waiting area, and sitting there for a few minutes waiting for the ride to start. A countdown happens, and BAM, you shoot off at 60 miles an hour, race through the darkened coaster ride, until the ride comes to a skidding halt. You get off, stumble around for a minute as you catch your breath and your balance, and then proceed to jump back in line to ride it again. That's this book. So much fun!

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Review: The October Man

The October Man by Ben Aaronovitch
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for providing me with an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review!

So this little gem of a novella takes place in the same world as the Rivers of London, but in Germany instead, and features a new main character in a similar role as Peter Grant there in Germany. The mystery/police procedural with magic worked well for this novel, and we got to meet a few new characters that I'd love to see make appearances in the main series novels.

After the end of the last main series novel, I was unsure as to where the series would be going. I'm even more excited now that I've seen a glimpse of a bigger magical world.

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Review: Naturally Tan

Naturally Tan by Tan France
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Thanks to Netgalley and St. Martin's Press for providing me with an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.

I loved this book! Non-fiction is rarely my genre of choice, and I don't read a lot of memoirs. I can count on one hand how many non-fiction books I've read in the past five years. But I saw the Fab 5 member Tan France had written something and I just had to read it. As a gay man, this new Queer Eye has been a revelation. I adore them all - the cast members, the "heroes" as they call them (meaning the people they're going to help), everything and everybody.

It was so interesting to get insight into who Tan is as a person - both before his time on the show, and after. And I love that he's pretty much exactly the same person as before, just more recognizable on the streets.

I won't say the writing is perfect. It wasn't. There's a lot of train-of-thought writing and incomplete sentences and sometimes even the paragraph splits don't seem just right... but it didn't matter, because it very honestly felt like I was sitting down and having a conversation with Tan, and just listening to him speak.

Highly recommended.
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Lots of train of thought writing, which can be jarring, especially for someone like me who usually avoids non-fiction, but I just love the Fab 5 and it was a pleasure to read about his life.

Better review upon release.

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