A Book to Kill For by Harper Lin

 

Reviewed by Kristin

Discovering Harper Lin audiobooks on READS has kept me amused while driving to and from work, and she certainly does have a wide variety of series from which to choose. Lin writes mysteries featuring bakeries, cats, cafes, holidays, senior sleuths, southern sleuths, and finally, books. This prolific author either has cloned herself or she just has ideas bubbling out of her head and very quick typing fingers. (This might be a good time to recommend going to www.fantasticfiction.com which does an excellent job of listing authors’ series and non-series books.) For those of you who do prefer a physical book over digital, right on our new shelf is Lin’s latest offering, A Book to Kill For.

Maggie Bell is a fairly stereotypical bookworm who loves working at the Whitfield Bookshop in the small town of Fair Haven, Connecticut. She enjoys her conversations with Mr. Alexander Whitfield, and the chance to read her way through the stock during the quiet hours when very few customers are browsing the stacks. When she finds her boss dead within the first chapter, Maggie’s world is turned upside down.

Mr. Whitfield’s son Joshua arrives in town with great plans for renovating his father’s bookshop into a book café which might actually make a profit. Joshua has much different ideas than his father about the types of books which will draw people into the store. Beach books? Vampires? Popular fiction? Shocked, Maggie just wants to curl into herself and hide among the classic stories. Good looking as Joshua might be, he doesn’t have much interest in reading. Oh, the horror!

The storyline progresses rather predictably, but if cozy mysteries are your cup of tea, then this one will not disappoint. I’m sure that many other townspeople will find themselves bludgeoned, poisoned, or otherwise endangered all for the sake of a plotline in coming titles. As an amateur sleuth with a sleek black cat named Poe by her side, Maggie surely will find the handily dropped clues and save the day.

If you’re interested in Lin’s senior sleuth Barbara Gold, check out her “Granny” series about a former CIA agent who is not slowing down (much) in her retirement, reviewed here.

Playing for Pizza by John Grisham

Reviewed by Ambrea

Rick Dockery isn’t the luckiest guy in the world.  After being transferred between teams numerous times and single-handedly costing the Browns the AFC Championship against the Denver Broncos, he’s currently the most hated player in pro-football and blacklisted from every American team.  But football is all Rick knows and he tells his agent, Arnie, he won’t settle for doing anything else.

Despite enormous odds against him, Arnie finds a team that will take Rick as a starting quarterback:  the mighty Panthers—of Parma, Italy, he adds.  With no other teams knocking at his door, Rick agrees to go to Italy to play for the Panthers, even if he doesn’t know a thing about Parma (or where it’s located) or speak a word of Italian.  Rick thinks the Panthers are just a pit stop, until he can get his career going again, but little does he know what Parma and the Panthers have in store for him.

Playing for Pizza was unexpectedly good.  Although I understood very little of the football plays—what is a third down, anyway?—or the jargon that goes along with the sport, I found I really enjoyed listening to Playing for Pizza.  It’s written well and it’s wonderfully narrated by Christopher Evan Welch; more to the point, it’s a rich, vibrant novel peppered with hints of humor.

Granted, it took me a few chapters to really settle into the story, but, once I did, I had so much fun listening to Rick Dockery’s story as he journeyed to Italy and officially became a Parma Panther.  I especially enjoyed Grisham’s descriptions of Italy—the art, the architecture, the culture and history, the romance (most of which comes courtesy of a secondary character from Georgia, who loved and adored all these things)—and, of course, the food.

I was almost always hungry while listening to Playing for Pizza.  Listening to the descriptions of fresh cheeses and wines from the countryside paired with delectable desserts and steaming bowls of pasta had me salivating from chapter to chapter.

Overall, Playing for Pizza was an excellent choice for my Read Harder Challenge and, honestly, it was just a lot of fun.  It’s entertaining, sweet and romantic, but it also doesn’t try to hide the bad things that sometimes happen in life and it doesn’t shy away from the tough choices people have to make; rather, it follows the ordeals of a rather ordinary person who finds himself in an extraordinary situation.  Moreover, while I did find aspects of it sweet and romantic, it didn’t border on too sweet or too romantic.

Playing for Pizza strikes a good balance.  It has an excellent story with an excellent narrator, and it has a little bit of everything for every reader.  I mean, if you don’t like romance, it has regular forays into Italian history and food and football; if you don’t like football, it still has Italy and food.  (Did I mention food?)  Personally, I’m not a huge fan of sports and I can’t understand football americano, but I will note that I enjoyed listening to the games as narrated by Christopher Evan Welch and, more importantly, I found it has much more to recommend it outside of the central football narrative.

The Beekeeper’s Apprentice: or, On the Segregation of the Queen by Laurie R. King

Reviewed by Kristin

When I think of Sherlock Holmes, I picture a pipe-smoking figure in a deerstalker hat with a magnifying glass, haughtily spouting his deductions about the ne’er-do-wells skulking about in the shadows.  This image has become part of pop culture, even spreading to younger generations as the modern BBC version of Sherlock has become a popular television show.  Beyond the original Arthur Conan Doyle books, (as most of the original stories and characters are no longer protected under copyright) many authors have taken a shot at creating their own Sherlock Holmes stories.

Laurie R. King started just such a venture in 1994 with The Beekeeper’s Apprentice, featuring Mary Russell, a fifteen year old American girl new to the Sussex countryside who almost literally stumbles over Sherlock Holmes as she rambles across the land with her nose in a Latin text.  They are an unlikely pair:  an orphaned young girl with a most unpleasant guardian aunt, and a semi-retired, aging private detective whose main pursuit is beekeeping.  However, Mary’s quick mind intrigues Holmes and they soon become—if not friends—companions who challenge each other.

While there is a plot, a villain, and a dénouement, it is the flavor of the book that carried me along.  Mary (always “Russell” to Holmes) is a serious young lady with tragedy in her past.  Having lost her immediate family in an automobile accident in California, Mary returns to her family lands in England.  With her youth she brings a breath of fresh air to Holmes, his housekeeper Mrs. Hudson, and even Dr. Watson, who quickly becomes “Uncle John.”

Holmes’ gentler human side is portrayed in this story, more than just the self-important detective who proclaims his logical conclusions arrived at through brilliant deductive reasoning.  Mary seems wise beyond her years, but maintains an innocence befitting a young girl in the years during and after the Great War.  Mary is not just another version of Watson to reflect the brilliance of Holmes, but has a sharp mind of her own.  With her quick understanding and ability to reason, Mary becomes more of a partner than an apprentice, even at such a young age.

Adding to the written word, I have enjoyed the British accents on the audiobook version borrowed through R.E.A.D.S.  The pronunciation alone is entertaining—think of such words as “constabulary” and “advertisement” or even “ate” (pronounced “et”).

The Beekeeper’s Apprentice is only the beginning, and I am already looking forward to the rest of the books in the series.  Fans of the original Arthur Conan Doyle books should appreciate this addition to the Sherlock canon.

Safe Haven by Nicholas Sparks

Reviewed by Ambrea

Katie arrives in Southport, North Carolina, only a handful of belongings and a determination to avoid forming personal ties in this close-knit southern town.   She’s on the run from something—or someone—but she’s not about to talk to Alex, a widowed store owner with two young children to raise, and Alex isn’t about to ask.  As Katie settles into Southport, she finds herself drawn to Alex’s charming Southern accent and his stability, and she actually makes a friend in her bluntly honest neighbor, Jo.  She discovers she’s unexpectedly making a life for herself, and she couldn’t be happier, until a dark secret rises out of her past and threatens to destroy her future.

Oddly enough, I fell in love with Safe Haven.  I’ve always been reluctant to read Nicholas Sparks’ work.  I was never interested in reading The Notebook and I wasn’t thrilled with The Choice, but I loved watching A Walk to Remember and I even liked watching Safe Haven when it came on TV.  Regardless of my affinity for his movies, I was still a little hesitant to begin listening to an audiobook copy of Safe Haven, because I really didn’t know what to expect—or if I would even like it.

Well, I did.  And I was pleasantly surprised by how thoroughly I enjoyed it.

I’ve read Nicholas Sparks in the past, but I could never fully enjoy his writing.  Something about The Choice just wasn’t appealing to me.  I’m not sure if it was his writing style, or the story, or the format—or if it just wasn’t right for me at the time—but, either way, I wasn’t very impressed.  I pretty much brushed Nicholas Sparks aside and discounted him as a writer.

However, I found myself enjoying Safe Haven more than I expected.  It’s a sweet little romance with endearing characters set in a small, Southern town on the coast, and it’s threaded with very subtle hints of magic.  I might have liked it because it reminded me of Sarah Addison Allen and Linda Francis Lee, but I think I might have also liked it best because it’s set in North Carolina.  I’ve been to tiny towns like Southport, I’ve been to beaches like Katie describes, so the story appealed to me on a deeply personal level.

Most importantly, I liked the narrator:  Rebecca Lowman.  Lowman, who also narrated The Girl Who Chased the Moon, does a fantastic job of bringing Sparks’ work to life.  She’s careful to distinguish characters with individual accents, using the soft drawl and twang of a Southern coastal town, while affecting different inflections in others.  I often felt myself drawn into the narrative as Lowman recounted Katie’s story and her desperate flight from her past.

Granted, I didn’t like Kevin for obvious reasons.  He wasn’t crafted very well, and he had a strange religious/superiority complex that made him unusual and slightly absurd, but I suppose that stems from being purposefully made crazy in a novel.  He’s not a great character and he’s just a horrible human being.  I really didn’t like him, and he kind of ruined the story for me, despite Lowman’s excellent narration.

Safe Haven was a great audiobook, overall.  It struck a perfect balance of romance, suspense, and drama without leaning in one direction or the other, and it had a little bit of magic thrown into the mix that made it stand out.  It’s sure to warm your heart, like it did mine.