A Lullaby for Witches by Hester Fox

 

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Hester Fox returns with a novel that combines history, museum work, magic, and tragedy. It's an interesting combination that all comes together and left me trying to decide if I sympathized with charming and mysterious Margaret Harlowe. 

There are two stories, with chapters either labeled Margaret or Augusta, so it is not difficult to switch between the two characters or time periods. Margaret is the only daughter of the wealthy Harlowe family in Tynemouth, Massachusetts in 1876. She's beautiful and restless. She also possesses magical abilities and on the side helps women in town who seek her assistance late at night in the woods. She's got her eye on the handsome Jack Pryce, a shopkeeper's son who can't take his eyes off Margaret. Is it love or lust between the two? 

Present day in Tynemouth, Augusta gets her dream job as curator for the Harlowe House Museum. She's got an eating disorder, is in a failed relationship, and feels strangely at home in Harlowe House. Augusta keeps hearing footsteps; books are left open on her desk showing important clues in her research, and she's quickly become obsessed with finding out more about Margaret. There's very little information about Margaret; it's as though she was swept under the family rug and quickly forgotten. 

Well. Margaret is still around, and she's got a plan. She wants to live, and Augusta is her key. 

This was a pretty good story; it kept my interest and I was fascinated by the story of Margaret and her tragic ending. She's at once a sympathetic character and one that is pretty selfish. She certainly has reason to be bitter. Augusta is a bit of a mess--she struggles to break free from a relationship that doesn't work but is comfortable; she is smart but troubled and just what Margaret needs to make her plan come to fruition. 

There are other characters who add to both storylines and are instrumental in determining the fate of both women. I loved the setting, the inside peek into museum curation (especially a small museum), and the magic and mystery of the woods, water, and beaches of Massachusetts. A theme running throughout this novel are the choices women make, both good and bad, and the lack of power they have within society and their own homes. 

Rating: 4/6 for an entertaining read that combines two of my favorite subjects: history and magic. It would make an interesting discussion for a book group. One of my favorite Hester Fox novels. 

Available in paperback, ebook, and audio. 

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A Lullaby for Witches by Hester Fox

The Guilt Trip by Sandie Jones

 

This book wasn't on my TBR list at all, but as I was cataloging at my library it came across my desk and I thought it looked like a good domestic thriller and a quick read. Boom! Perfect summer read.

This novel takes place in Portugal and involves five friends: Jack and Rachel, Noah and Paige, and Will. Jack and Will are brothers, and they are all gathered to celebrate the wedding of Will and Ali--who really irritates the hell out of everyone but Will. She's bubbly, wears clothing that really accentuates her curves, and is an attention seeker. Will's gaga over her, but no one else really cares for her. Especially Jack. He appears to loathe her--but you're just not sure why. 

The story is told from Rachel's point of view. She's happily married to Jack, and they have a 19 year old son. Rachel and Noah were college friends--and secretly slept together just once, confessing their love for each other. It ended with Noah begging Rachel to leave her then new relationship with Jack and come away with him. She refused. Now, twenty years later, they are both married to different people, but that love is still there. That's just one of the things that will bubble over in Portugal. 

As the wedding day draws near, Rachel becomes convinced Ali and Jack are having an affair. What should she do? Confront both of them? How can she let Ali marry Will? Then Ali overhears some pretty explosive stuff between Noah and Rachel, and oh crap what if she tells Jack and Paige? Paige, Rachel's best friend. 

Rachel's thoughts are swirling around and around, and oh boy there is a lot at stake. Wedding day dawns and it will all come crashing down--and not in the way you expect. Not at all. 

This was a quick read, but it wasn't an edge of your seat kind of read. A lot of the novel is spent in Rachel's thoughts and guesses about what is going on. The end kind of fell flat for me. 

Rating: 3/6 for a novel that had some great potential, but just didn't quite make it. Fans of domestic thrillers will want to read this--it's an interesting read about friendship, marriage, past secrets, and making assumptions that prove to be deadly and just plain wrong. 

Available in hardcover ebook, and audio.

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The Guilt Trip by Sandie Jones

Enola Holmes: The Case of the Missing Marquess by Nancy Springer

 

This is one of those series of books that I've seen around so many times over the years, and never picked it up. The new show on Netflix (September 23) had me deciding it was finally time to read the first in the series and see just what it was about. I had another one of those "why did I wait so long?!" moments when I finished it this morning. 

Enola Holmes is the younger sister of Mycroft and Sherlock Holmes. Years after her brothers were born, their mother produced Enola, embarrassingly at an older age when respectable women didn't have babies. Enola is now fourteen, and it's her birthday. 

She lives with her mother at the family estate, and she's had a pretty free life since her father died years ago, and her brothers have not visited in all that time. She's smart, quick, and loves to ride her bike. She's corset free, and happy about it. Until the morning of her birthday, when her mother steps out the door and never returns. 

Enola doesn't understand why her mother would leave her, and her confusion and sense of loss are a bit heartbreaking. However, she telegrams her brothers, and they arrive. Shocked by Enola's appearance (she looks a bit like a wild child) they quickly realize all the money Mycroft has been sending for years for clothes, dance lessons, horses and gardeners has been squirreled away by their mother. Enola is in need of a boarding school and proper clothes for a proper young lady STAT. 

Enola isn't having any of that, of course. On the day she is sent away to boarding school, she runs away, having planned to reach London to look for her mother. She's   no slouch in planning and observing, and using codes to figure things out. But, she is only fourteen, and some things go awry in her plan. Can she save herself, or will she be forced to contact Sherlock for help?

I know the movie on Netflix will have a bigger story than the first novel, but I watched the movie clip and it certainly looks like Millie Bobby Brown embodies all the best of Enola Holmes. I can't wait to watch it. And who can say no to Henry Cavill as Sherlock Holmes?! I certainly can't, nor do I want to. 

I wasn't sure what to expect from this first novel, and I am happy to say it was a delightful read. Not at all what I expected plot wise, so I am eager to read the rest in the series and see where Enola's adventures take her.  This series says middle school, and I would say any child who loves mysteries and is a good reader would enjoy these. Very well written; full of adventure, observation, and putting clues together.

Rating: 4/6 for a great start to a mystery series for kids that was first published in 2011. The series is still in print, and will find new readers as the Netflix movie comes out in the U.S. September 23rd. On my way to buy the rest of the series! 

Available in paperback and audio. 

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Enola Holmes: The Case of the Missing Marquess by Nancy Springer

The Night the Lights Went Out by Karen White

I'm a HUGE fan of Karen White, so there wasn't much arm twisting to read her latest.  I am absolutely in love with the cover art.  

I bought this book, because I couldn't wait to read it...

And then proceeded to not get to it for almost FIVE MONTHS. When I finally did pick it up this week, I power read it in a few days, in between work and an out of town family visit. It was just the palate cleanser I needed.

The two main characters, Merilee Dunlap and Sugar Prescott meet when Merilee rents the cottage that sits behind Sugar's farmhouse outside the small town of Sweet Apple, Georgia.  Sugar is 93 years old, and still full of piss and vinegar.  She's a force to be reckoned with, and commands the respect of everyone in town.  Her family once owned most of the land around Sweet Apple, and she's resisting developers who want to buy the rest of her land to build more housing developments.

Merilee is freshly divorced; her two children are attending a new school, and she's dealing with the fall out of her husband's lover (a local elementary school math teacher) being pregnant.  Small town gossip is running at an all time high. Merilee is struggling to adjust to life as a single parent, and balance the demands of society expectations--school committees, sports, and making appearances at all the right places.  Sugar recognizes a kindred spirit, but her past sorrows and heartbreak have left Sugar reluctant to open her heart to anyone.  

Here's what I enjoyed about this novel:  as a reader, you see both Sugar and Merilee through each other's eyes, and through their own thoughts and memories.  Sugar begins to tell Merilee about her past in small stories; I found Sugar's life in the 30's and 40's to be one of the best parts of the novel.  Makes what we consider difficult today seem like child's play.  These stories are a bridge between Sugar and Marilee as they slowly (very slowly) become friends.  

Merilee, I have to say, was much more complicated than I expected. I was, however, highly annoyed at her absent-mindedness and inability to create a safe password for her phone.  It sounds like a silly thing to point out, but it was a major plot point, and you could see what was going to happen coming long before it did.  Merilee's friendship with Heather Blackford, the wealthy, beautiful, and powerful wife of a popular doctor is bad from the get go.  That plot, I thought, was pretty weak.  Anyone with some life experience knows that people don't befriend you and go out of their way to be overly generous with time, money, and resources unless they want something from you.  Or want to hurt you.  It's not hard to see what's going to happen in this case, but I did get wrapped up in the action steaming along to the big turning point.  

One part of the story I found unnecessary was the "blog" that was put out by an anonymous source in Sweet Apple.  Full of local gossip, it spotlighted the nasty rumors and the people spreading them.  It was basically a way to shame people into behaving instead of spreading malicious gossip and half-truths.  Wasn't hard to figure out who the author of the blog was, but it is finally revealed at the end.  

The big point of this novel is that we all put on public faces, but they are rarely our real faces.  We keep a lot of our lives hidden from everyone else. Past heartbreaks, tragedies, and bad behavior can keep us up at night; but come morning, we stride into our daily lives with none of it showing.  Sometimes the ugliest people hide behind pretty faces, and sometimes a bad person is just a bad person with no redeeming qualities.  

Even though there were parts of the novel I didn't care for, overall I did very much enjoy this book.  I found myself talking out loud when I figured something out before Merilee did; I found myself reading this in big gulps because it kept pulling me along (and I didn't resist that pull).  I spent a whole morning before work lying on my couch reading, and anxiously waiting until I could come home again to finish the last few pages.  

Rating:  4/6 for a novel that explores the choices women make in their youth that can haunt them; the good and bad of living in a small town, and strong friendships between women that become the backbone to overcoming the hard parts of life.  There's a bit of potential romance in here, too--but not so much that it gets in the way.  

Available in hardcover, e-book, large print paperback, and audio.

 

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The Night the Lights Went Out by Karen White

The Oregon Trail: A New American Journey by Rinker Buck

Do you ever wish you had the guts (I'm using the word "guts" instead of my preferred word "b*lls" 'cause I'm a lady ;) ) to drop your normal, routine life for a few months and do something completely crazy?  Follow your radical, makes-no-sense-but-I- want-to-do-it-dream?  Rinker Buck and his brother Nick do just that, and chronicle their "crazyass passion" in The Oregon Trail: A New American Journey.  

Rinker and Nick outfit a covered wagon, gather a team of mules, and over the course of four months follow the Oregon Trail from St. Joseph, Missouri to Baker City, Oregon.  They travel a trail that hasn't been visited by a covered wagon in over 100 years. In this journey, Rinker and Nick find adventure, teamwork, sheer dogged determination, and an America most of us never have the privilege of seeing, and probably never will.  We're so busy driving our cars everywhere, rushing around, that we don't take the time to slow down, walk, and look at what's around us.  We don't listen to the birds chirping, the sound of the wind rustling leaves, or any of the quiet sounds of nature that are a peaceful tonic, just waiting for us to slow down and enjoy them.  

I loved this book.  I'm a history fan to be sure, but Rinker is a mega-history fan, and he writes about the Oregon Trail in such a way that you completely realize the social and economic impact the great migration to the West had on our country.  It made our country in so many ways that it boggles my mind. The parallels between pioneers and people today are staggering. The waste of goods, recycling, and money-making enterprises were very much in place during the 1830's-1860's, and it's pretty interesting to see that people haven't changed much at all in this country.  That drive that homesteaders had to succeed and thrive is still with us today, but in a different way.  I think that kernel of determination and grit needs a renewal and reawakening.  Reading Rinker's journey just may do it for you.    

 I can't say I'd survive a 2,000 mile journey in a covered wagon.  I'm convinced my boyfriend would have not only made the trip, but thrived on the challenges, setbacks, and sheer physical strength it took to survive.  I told him I'm convinced he was a pioneer in a previous life.  His response was to let out a gentle snore as he fell asleep listening to me drone on about the settling of the West.  

I've read some reviews about this book, and people compare Rinker to Bill Bryson.  I can see that, but while Bill Bryson writes about all the ways he comes near to disasters as he travels around, Rinker grabs onto those challenges and beats them into submission.  He quickly realizes he's no different than the pioneers, and that the trail will be chock full of surprises and potential disasters.  You can plan, but that doesn't mean everything will go according to plan.  Rinker writes with humor, and I found myself laughing out loud at his conversations with Nick.  Anyone with a sibling knows they're the only people you can swear at and call stupid idiots, but they'll love you anyway, and stick with you through thick and thin.  One of the highlights of this journey is the team of Rinker and Nick, along with Nick's dog, Olive Oyl.  Olive Oyl works just as hard as the men and the mules to make the trail ride a success.

And there are the mules: Jake, Beck, and Bute.  They are characters that literally drive this journey forward.  I have to say I got a bit teary-eyed at the end of the trail, saying goodbye to the mules.  This book is a journey that will keep you enchanted, laughing, swearing with Rinker and Nick at the mishaps along the trail, and reluctantly turning the last page.  It truly is the journey that is the important, most memorable part, and not the final destination.  Fans of American history, pioneers, the West, memoirs, and humorous travel writing will enjoy this book.  What an accomplishment to make in your lifetime:  to ride the 2,000 mile Oregon Trail with a wagon and mules.  Makes successfully weeding my garden in one day seem kinda trivial!  

This book is available the week of June 30th in hardcover and ebook.  

Rating:  9/10 for a purely enjoyable read, a great history lesson that won't bore you, and a reminder that we all  have moments of crazyass passion that drive us to reach for those grand-but not impossible, dreams.  

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The Oregon Trail: A New American Journey by Rinker Buck