Clown in a Cornfield (Cesare)

Clown in a Cornfield
Adam Cesare (2009)

Image withheld under the book is read.

(Not a review, just some notes to help me remember the things I've read. But written this way because it's the Internet, and some people will stumble across this page.)

This was a book club pick, and not one that I would've chosen. The cover itself was a turnoff despite not judging books by one. I'm not into horror, and I had a feeling that this young adult horor would "Friday the 13th" everyone. Yeah, pretty much.

Quinn and her dad Glenn move halfway across the country from Philadelphia to an old house in a small town. Glenn is a doctor who has seen too much death, including that of his wife, who'd become addicted to painkillers. They move into the house of the town's former doctor, who left rather abruptly. From Quinn's bedroom (the attic), which runs the length of the house, she can see a factory in the distance with an eery looking clown. She'll learn that it's Frendo, the town mascot. The original factory owner doodled a clown with a hat and put it on the label of whatever it was that he sold. Yeah, I forgot already because it wasn't actually important to the story.

The prologue of the story, which was a year earlier, was a bunch of kids live streaming stunts and practical jokes. They're at the town reservoir. Unfortunately, the younger sister of another main character (Cole) who is too young for these parties decides to climb on the "stacks" and dive in. She hits her head on the way down and dies. Cole jumps in to rescue her, but it's too late.

When we next meet this crew, Janet is still making videos but Cole quit because of an incident that happened off screen a week before in which he accidentally set fire to his Dad's factory. His father had closed the factory the year before and now the town was suffering a bit. Quinn learns all this when she's suspended on her first day of class along with the gang that can't shoot videos straight. Quinn winds up going with Cole to a big school party.

At the Founders Day Parade, a prank that Tucker (Cole's "bodyguard") participates in causes some damages to the floats and a few minor injuries, plus an M-80 goes off scaring people. The sherrif grabs Cole and wants to know what he did and lets him know that the town is down with their hijinks.

There's an emergency town meeting called, after which the murders start, all at the hands of someone dressed in a Frendo costume. They start with knives slitting throats and stabbing guts, but then switch to crossbows. Every kid at the barn seems to be a target, Janet in particular. Quinn and Cole seemed to be spared but not by any plot armor, but by the plot itself.

I'll go ahead and spoil this because it was stupid. Basically, half of the town is down with "culling" the latest crop of high school students, but in this case, they plan to pin it all on the new girl and Cole, for whom a suicide note was written, along with Rust who is supposed to make the third part of a love triangle. Janet's stepfather has absolutely no qualms about the girl dying at all. And then Cole's father shows up. He blames Cole for everything including the death of his daughter, which makes his okay with murdering his own son. Wut?

Rust turns out not to be dead, shows up, saves Cole, who's dangling by his neck at this point. Quinn manages to shoot the sherrif who'd been planning this for a long time, even longer than the previous week's fire, saying how you can persuade people over time that killing their children is the correct thing to do.

I'm not exactly sure how many students go to that high school or how many of them were at that party or how many might've escaped. However, for the plan to have actually played out, those survivors would all have to be hunted down so that the actual story couldn't get out.

I kept waiting for some screwball revelation, like the dead daughter actually being the sherrif's love child or something, giving him a stake in all this. Or Quinn with a rifle confronting her father who was there and dressed in a clown outfit (he dressed like that to escape the prison he was in, where he found the rat-infested body of the former doctor). Instead, the only curve was after Rust saves Cole, the two embrace and start making out. This was not telegraphed anywhere in the story, so it was almost comedic when it happened. They used to be friends (one rich, one poor) until one started playing football and the other wasn't athletic enough. That's their entire story. There was more to suggest that Tucker was "gay" for Cole, who wasn't interested, except that Tucker had mentioned how he enjoyed his hooking up with Janet. So not so much a surprising twist as a head-scratcher.

Finally, the father, who had been double-crossed by the sherrif, who tries to kill him at the end, doesn't have any revelations or changes of heart. He still wants Cole and the rest of the kids dead. And rather than crawling off and dying in a field somewhere, we learn that he was escaped and will return at some point. (There's a sequel.) Meanwhile, Cole is rich with access to all his father's money, even though no body has been found and no one can be certain that he's actually dead.

So much to complain about with this book. But I'm done complaining. On to some other Halloween books -- there are a few cozy mysteries set around Halloween.

U is for Undertow (Grafton)

U is for Undertow
Sue Grafton (2009)

Audio only

Image withheld under the book is read.

(Not a review, just some notes to help me remember the things I've read. But written this way because it's the Internet, and some people will stumble across this page.)

I needed another book to listen to while I was walking, and I selected the next Sue Grafton book. I haven't had a chance to actually read it yet. Last time, I listened and read together. I will update this entry after I read it.

I'm not sure what "undertow" refers to in this title. It's metaphorical, having nothing to do with the ocean or the beach.

Like recent books, there was a prologue taking place years ago. And like Trespass, this one has chapters that center on other characters, but in this case there are more characters to take center stage. On top of that, there are more flashbacks mixed in. It got a little confusing keeping track of all of these before they all got tied together. It's like Grafton went out of the way to leave out information so that it could be revealed at the correct time.

The story follows a man having a suppressed memory when he was a kid, he saw two "pirates" digging a hole in the vicinity of where a young girl disappeared. He thought that they might've been burying that girl. The police send him to Kinsey to look into it. She does, and miraculously finds the burial site. There's a dog buried there.

But there's more going on, and the "pirates" have grown and still live in the area. Also in the area is the young woman who was kidnapped weeks before the dead girl was kidnapped. She remembers Santa Claus and having a fun time before she was returned. Kinsey looks into her hippie parents as having something to do with it, but they did not.

It was a little convoluted and all over the place. Not one of my favorites, but not down there with "L is for Lawless", which I believe was the one where Kinsey was just along for the ride. (I might be misremembering.) On the other hand, we learn more about her family and her grandmother's attempt to actually be a part of Kinsey's life, even if it would've been a controlling part. I hope that this part of Kinsey's story gets resolved by "Y" because there is no "Z".

I do plan on reading the book at some point, at which point, I'll update this entry.

Trial By Fire (Gannon)

Trial by Fire
Charles E. Gannon (2014)

(Not a review, just some notes to help me remember the things I've read. But written this way because it's the Internet, and some people will stumble across this page.)

This is the second book in the "Caine-verse", the series about Caine Riordian that started with Fire With Fire. This was also a trade paperback edition, not an ebook.

At the end of the first book, it was obvious to those in the know that war was coming to Earth, and it comes quickly by way of Bernard's Star. (Along the way, there is yet another attempt of Caine Riordan's life, to the point that he now has "feelings" when alien tech is being used to kill him.) Earth forces are easily routed at Bernard's Star and then the alien fleet heads to Earth. Caine barely survives this but does with the help of an Arat Kur official. Caine is still listed as an ambassador for Earth.

When he gets back to Earth, he's still a prisoner and a target, but he seeks protection from the Arat Kur, which are oversized roaches who usually dwell in caves underground and avoid the Sun. The Arat Kur have the reach to move across the stars, but they are a slow, deliberative race, unlike the hot-headed slugs the Hrh-Krk (I have to look up the spelling). They are warlike and have an uneasy alliance with the Arat Kur, who are basically their ride.

The second half of the book is all about Earth's response and bringing the war to the Arat Kur without them realizing that pieces had been put into motion even before the invasion took place. (By the way, the Arat Kur believe that they were actually invitied there by the same super-corporation that Caine ooposed in the first book. They claim to speak for the entire planet.)

Love triangles play out, ships get boarded, Timber Ponies are unleashed. Alliances shift and aren't always what they seem to be. And, of course, the guy with the olives shows up again. (Spoiler: the olives don't mean anything. He just likes olives.) This is Earth's trial by fire, and the outcome will determine if Earth will take its place in the cosmos.

In the end, we find out more about the other races which appeared at the Connocation, particularly the ones that wouldn't reveal themselves. And we find out more about the human ruins on Delta Pavonis.

This was an actual trade paperback, and the third book is on reserve at the library.

Elder Race (Tchaikovsky)

Elder Race
Adrian Tchaikovsky (2021)

(Not a review, just some notes to help me remember the things I've read. But written this way because it's the Internet, and some people will stumble across this page.)

This was a Pandemic Book Club pick for the month of September. A "novella" was chosen because many of us are teachers and September is busy.

This is a Tor.com book, but not one I'd heard of before. I might've seen a promo for it when it was first released as I'm on Tor's mailing list. I'm also part of their book club and have gotten many free books from their site.

The book tries to blend fantasy and science-fiction by telling parallel narratives. Lyn and Nyr are the two POV characters. Lyn is the Fourth Daughter of the current regent of her city/realm/whatever, and she goes to seek help from the wizard/sorceror on top of the mountain. She'd seen his castle once before as a child so she knows where to go. The wizard had helped her ancestor defeat another threat to the world once before.

Nyr is actually an anthropologist, formerly of Earth, who sleeps in a chamber waiting for the ship that dropped him to return and pick him up. He's supposed to be watching the people and taking notes, but it seems like he's been asleep since the last time he interfered with the culture, which has forgotten almost everything about where they came from. It's all just myth and fable now.

They have a hard time communicating because the language has changed and there aren't words to describe some of the ideas he wishes to convey. There is one chapter which has a side by side of what he's saying and what she's hearing/understanding. It is frustrating for him. He's trying to explain that there is no magic.

The story is good, but the ending was disappointing because it wasn't a case of magic vs science. The threat of the "demons" is real in a science way as well. Nyr doesn't understand what the portal is or why creatures are acting as they are. There are attempts to communicate, but he can't. Maybe this was done to show that it's more advanced than his science, so it's magic, but I don't think so. For one thing, it isn't shown to be more advanced, just different, like two computers that can't talk to each other. So far all the talk about there being no demons and no magic, this was essentially both, and the primitives were "correct" all along.

I did enjoy it, but I did tire of Nyr's "woe is me! no one will ever return for me! I shouldn't have interfered. I'm a terrible anthropologist!". I finished it two days ago, and I don't even remember if he went back to sleep or tried to live happily ever after with Lyn. The problem with the latter is that she had been expecting the wizard to name his price for his services, which she assumed meant that she would have to become his bride or his consort. So such an ending would confirm her fears.

Lyn didn't quite get her moment to shine. When Nyr is attacked, she prepares to go through the arch to do battle with the demon. However, Nyr tells her that there is no "through". She would be "unmade" as soon as she passed the arch. So she doesn't get a battle, but she does get to strike something else.

Update: The overwhelming response of the book club was positive, and they didn't mind that Nyr didn't have all the answers and that there was something that was so beyond him that it might as well have been magic. Except, to me, it was something that was contacting him, so there could've been more of an answer.

Harald's Adventure Wares (Redd)

Harald's Adventure Wares
A story of one man's greed, and a goblin
by D. G. Redd (2022)

(Not a review, just some notes to help me remember the things I've read. But written this way because it's the Internet, and some people will stumble across this page.)

This was a book from Free Ebooks on Reddit. It's a short novella, which Goodreads says is part of some other world. The plot is pretty much summed up in the subtitle, which is why I included it even though it doesn't appear to be on the image of the book cover.

So Harald runs a shop selling stuff to adventurers, generally the dumber kind who are easier to swindle. Occasionally, a real hero will come to town, and he'll still try to get the best deal he can. It's amazing his lived as long as he has.

There's a problme in that there's a goblin outside of town that's making it difficult to gather up the mushrooms needed for making potions and magic items, but a single goblin is beneath the notice of a real hero and yet proves to challenging for wannabes.

Harald finally teams up with the potion maker and the innkeeper to find the goblin themselves. He worries the entire time that the other two are damaging the weapons and armor he loaned them. They capture a goblin and are about to kill it when it pleads for its life and promises gold. No tricks, it produces a lot of gold. Rather than take it, Harald wants to go into business with the goblins.

They reinforce the goblins' lair so it will be a challenge to adventurers, who will attack the goblins, and then the goblins will take all their money. (Oh, and they might die, but adventurers die, right.)

So here we know that Harald is not just a bad person but a little bit evil as well. You can imagine how things will turn out when you're in business with goblins. It doesn't turn out well for two of the three, but Harald, like Thenardier of Les Miz, lives to see another day. And it's business as usual.

I Almost gave up on this early because it wasn't exactly well-written, but there was a sense of a story to come, so I stuck with it. It did read more for people who play fantasy games than read fantasy books. Not the worst free book I read, but I'm glad it was only a novella.

Steampunk Leap Year / Steampunk New Year (Lucci)

Steampunk Leap Year
by Jessica Lucci (2019)

Steampunk New Year
by Jessica Lucci (2020)

(Not a review, just some notes to help me remember the things I've read. But written this way because it's the Internet, and some people will stumble across this page.)

These two steampunk collections were included in a recent eSpec Books Kickstarter campaign. I'm still fairly new to Steampunk, as a reader as well as a writer, so I can appreciate short stories that hit different aspects of the genre.

I read the two of them back to back, each one having 12 stories or poems, and all quite short. (My experience with the second book might've suffered for this.) In the first book, the stories should've corresponded in some way (some more obvious than others) to the month of the year. In the second book, I couldn't tell if this was still an overall theme or not.

The stories in the first book were:

• Steampunk Leap Year: on old man kidnaps a young baby. It's the old year and the baby new year. The old man has a mechanical heart which is supposed to be removed and implanted in the baby.
• Stupid Cupid: Cupid has a mechanized harness and if you're shot with his arrows you may find love or you may bleed out. At this point, we are 1/3 of the way through the book. The rest of the tales will be shorter.
• Mr. Caibleir: Until I just typed that, it didn't dawn on my that it was 'cobbler', or for that matter, close to 'Keebler'. It's a retelling of the cobbler and the elves, but with Leprechauns and a downer of an ending. The steampunk element feels almost tacked on at the end, almost replaceable with a different ending.
• Steamy Stpring: The steampunk elements are there along with flying mutated pigs, Persephone and Hades. Weird.
• Each Other and Your Mother: A lot of candles and blood. I have no idea what was going on in this one.
• Summer Vacation: The idyllic town of Gustover has robots taking care of everything so the townpeople can enjoy their leisure. They have two problems though: children getting underfoot during summer vacation (and the school marm won't reopen the school), and the rats from developing the town. An absurdist pied piper retelling that takes care of some of the town's problems.
• Parade: A photographer at a parade trying to get a picture of the young girl who is dressed as the Statue of Liberty. I read this on the moring subway so maybe I missed something here.
• Last Lobster Rolls: A submarine and lobsters. What could go wrong?
• Silver and Orange: A girl with a magical wand (or a steampunk-y wand) and an inversion of Peter, Peter, Pumpkin Eater.
• Cheaper By the Dozen: A man buys a rose every day. The florist tells him that they are cheaper by the dozen. That refrain will come back later.
• Over the River and Through the Woods: A poem, which could be sung to the title tune, which I know thanks to the Charlie Brown Thanksgiving special. This version has "hover the smokestack and blast the past..."
• Steampunk Little Christmas: Amy is in 5th grade and she's embarrased by her little clockwork sister.

Overall, I enjoyed more than I didn't, and there were only a couple that I just didn't get. (I can't say I couldn't get through any of them since they're so short, but they might've left me scratching my head. Not enough to dwell on them though.)

I didn't fare as well on the second book and, in retrospect, I probably shouldn't have read them back to back. It's lighter on the steampunk elements and doesn't keep to the monthly format of the first book.

The lead story has 3 girls, A, B, and C, along with dragon fire and steam trains, and is a retelling of Cinderella, which the exception that the Queen is looking for a bride for the princess. The next has a submarine which becomes and airship which gets caught by a black hole and leads the crew on a trip to eternity that ends a little abruptly. The next is about humans and dragons coexisting in the Scottish Highlands until Baron Von Rectom ruins it. A poem (or song) Thundersnow follows. And then more. I won't go through them all because I've forgotten a lot about them. There's a Chupacabra Choo-Choo with a character named Chupie. A coronavirus poem. A trio of guys who could be the 3 Stooges (and who fare as well as you might expect.) It ends with a "Festivus" story as a real holiday, not just people celebrating it from TV. It took me a couple mentions to realize that Santina was actually Santa (no last name). Jack Frost and the Grinch have supporting roles in this Festivus Eve tale.

The one thing I noticed is that men don't fare well in the books with the exception of Father Time (the old new year) in the first book, and the Grinch in the last tale. The rest seemed to have sad or bad endings or just weren't nice people in the first place. Que sera. There's probably a reason for it.

Quick reads. On to the next books from one Kickstarter or another before I get back to the Book Club pick.

Hobbies for Androids (Fenn)

Hobbies for Androids
by Aurea Fenn (2023)

(Not a review, just some notes to help me remember the things I've read. But written this way because it's the Internet, and some people will stumble across this page.)

This book was from Free Ebooks on reddit. The image of the cat with the laser eye was confusing. Android cats didn't appear until halfway through and I don't care any having a laser eye. And if you think about it, it would've been popular with the kittens. Likewise, there aren't a lot of hobbies for these androids. They mostly have duties, even the one that paints. There was one that mused about having his own interests instead of performing anothers, but that turned into an android takeover story and not a particularly good one.

This is a collection of short stories, ranging from a few pages to over 30. The lead-off story was about a music promoter in debt so when he discoveres his star dead in bed, he has an associate ready an android to sing at the concert. They then conspire to hide the body for a while. It was a little disappointing for a lead story, but the second story continues the story line. This had me thinking that maybe it was going to be one story, which would've had me ligthen up a little on the first story. While the payoff for the second story was better, the two should've been combined into one. It wouldn't even have been the longest story had that been done.

My biggest complaint is that most of these stories are just scenes, or they have a primary scene that takes up the majority of the narrative. Once in that scene, it defaults to a lot of dialogue. Just a lot of talking, occasionally punctuated by an adverb or adjective to tell us what they're feeling instead of showing. I'm sure everything was clear in the author's head, but it doesn't always translate onto the page.

As for the self-publishing, minor errors that seep in that I hope I don't duplicate if I try to self-publish, but I probably will. That said, an editor might've found the grammatical mistakes (according to reddit, there was an editor), but they didn't suggest improvements to the stories. And they didn't catch all the mistakes. I nearly shut the book when a fellow was trying to get medical advice from a fortune teller machine (insert commentary about being unable to afford it). A worker tells the guy "you can't use that in a palace of medical care". I read that four times before it dawned on me that it should have said "you can't use that in place of medical care". A bit of a difference.

I stuck with it at 10%, 20% and 50%, points where I'd usually bail. After that,I found myself trying to power through it. It got frustrating when one story is about a gambler in a casino betting on horses using a combination of inside information and programming probabilities, and it's clear that the guy knows next to nothing about actual horse racing. This would be okay, but the waitress who serves him and works in the place seems to know just as little and can't figure out that he doesn't know what he's talking about despite the fact that he's winning and winning big, betting all his winnings on each subsequent race. Following the narrative, it becomes obvious that this is because the author knows very little about horseracing and imparts very little knowledge about it to the reader. What is shared suggests that the author assumes that the reader knows nothing as well.

One thing I do know: a bet for the horse to come in 1st, 2nd or 3rd is a bet to SHOW, not a bet to PLACE. A place bet is for 1st or 2nd only. And for all the races and all the bets, I think only one horse was every named, the rest are numbers, but numbers where? If someone was betting on a horse, they might mention the number 4 horse in the third race at Belmont, not just number 4. Nor would they mention about 30 horses running, because a) the betting form tells you the exact number of horses, and b) no race would have 30 horses in it. The Derby has 20 and that's a lot but it's the Kentucky freakin' Derby.

I didn't think I'd get this worked up over one story, but it was toward the end and the fact that it was so poorly written is so distracting. A good editor would've suggested some tweaks. (Sidenote: my editor asked me the name of a spaceship in one of my stories, and pointed out that I said it was the flagship of the line, so something that important should have a name. I spent as much time (or more) thinking about that as I did writing the first draft of the story.) Also, the ending is out of left field and not in a good way. Even after the part when the guy is forgetting about the woman calling and texting me and trying to run off with the waitress.

Anyway, some good ideas, but not very well executed.

A Terrible Fall of Angels (Hamilton)

A Terrible Fall of Angels
by Laurell K. Hamilton (2009)

(Not a review, just some notes to help me remember the things I've read. But written this way because it's the Internet, and some people will stumble across this page.)

This was a book club pick. It received mixed reviews. I listened to it while walking, and then read the ebook when I was done with the previous one. This made the reading go a little faster. Reading it did clear up one point, a little.

I've previously read a single book in Hamiltion's Anita Blake series, which may or may not be in this blog. (There was a several year gap when I didn't maintain this page.) But I was game to start a new series.

The book started strong and introduced a lot of elements. Then it dropped the ball on most of them. I slogged through the middle to get to the end. If this book had been a ten-episode Netflix series, the beginning would've been two episodes, the ending would've been two episodes and the six episodes in between would've been a lot of world-building and filler.

Don't get me wrong: I liked the world-building, but it seem like much of it was presented for future use. Likewise, many of the characters we're introduced to in the beginning just fade into the background. Others we just wished had do soon. (In particular, no one in the book club liked his estranged wife. While we all appreciated the break in the action to have couples' counseling, the wife didn't come off as a likeable character after that.) Another problem with the worldbuilding (as pointed out but a book club member) is that she retconned the rules in the same book. She didn't wait until, say, book three or four to change the rules.

Personally, I thought it got a bit repetitive, sometimes repeating information within the same chapter. A couple of those chapters, with side characters out of nowhere, just dragged on too long.

One thing, I won't forget that the main character's name is Havelock, because I was reading the Expanse book where a different Det. Havelock made an appearance. (He's in books 1 and 4 of the Expanse, and that's as far as I've gotten there.) I wouldn't say the other characters aren't important enough to list, but I've fallen behind in posting these mini-reviews (it's September, but I'm backdating it to the month I read it in for my own personal records), and if I really needed to know, I'm sure I can find it on that wiki -- you know the one.

Would I read another one? Maybe, but I would hope it's a little tighter than this one was.

Eggs Benedict Arnold (Childs)

Eggs Benedict Arnold
A Cackleberry Club Mystery
by Laura Childs (2009)

(Not a review, just some notes to help me remember the things I've read. But written this way because it's the Internet, and some people will stumble across this page.)

I decided to try another one of these. I could only get it as a paperback from the Brooklyn Public Library, so I made it my pool book. It was a fun, quick read.

The Cackleberry Club is back, and only a few months have passed since the events of the first book. more to come.

Cibola Burn (Corey)

Cibola Burn
by James S. A. Corey (2014)

(Not a review, just some notes to help me remember the things I've read. But written this way because it's the Internet, and some people will stumble across this page.)

I read this nearly a month ago, or at least it seems that way. Once again, I watched the show first which might've made this book go by a little faster. That said, there were enough differences between them.

For starters, most of the book takes place on and above the planet Ilus or New Terra, depending upon who's talking. Any of the shows subplots that take place in the Sol system are absent here. There is also some rewriting of settlers.

Belters and Outer Planets people (such as refugees from Ganymede) managed to get through the Ring and settled on an inhospitable planet that has a lot of lithium, which they are mining to sell to hire lawyers to stake their claim to "Ilus". They've already been there for a while when a UN/Mars backed team of scientists, backed by corporate interests, come in to claim the planet. Some of the Belters already there decide to blow up a landing pad (which they built for the UN group) to prevent them from landing. Unfortuantely, it's too late and the shuttle is already descending. The shuttle takes damage so it can't lift back up into space. It crashes, killing many people, including the new Governor. This basically leaves Murtry, the head of corporate security, which is basically running the ship, in charge on the planet.

Conflict ensues. James Holden and his crew are sent to mediate. Unfortunately, he brought Miller along (along with a piece of the protomolecule on his ship), and the planet starts to wake up. There's an explosion on the far side of the planet which causes high winds and a tsunami. Everyone makes it into one of the ancient structures, and everyone, for the moment, helps each other.

This all falls apart as everyone but Holden starts going blind, and they discover slugs that are deadly to touch. Miller appears to tell Holden that they need to shut the entire planet off. Murtry wants to protect his company's interests, even if it kills him. The original pioneers didn't last long, but they opened the frontiers for everyone else. Basically, he's nuts.

Miller realizes that there's stuff on the planet that he can't see, so it must belong to whatever killed the beings that made the protomolecule, so he can use that to shut down the planet.

When the book's over we discover that there's a problem with Mars. Now that there are new words to be explored, there's no reason to live underground on Mars while it takes a century to terraform.

I'll give it a few months and then I'll request the next book. I've already started the series, and I imagine that some of the stuff from this season of The Expanse will happen in the next book.

Cupcakes, Trinkets, and Other Deadly Magic (Doidge)

Cupcakes, Trinkets, and Other Deadly Magic
(The Dowser #1)
by Meghan Ciana Doidge (2013)

(Not a review, just some notes to help me remember the things I've read. But written this way because it's the Internet, and some people will stumble across this page.)

I'm pretty sure that this was a freebie in a Book Bub mailing list, but it might've been a random search result when looking for free paranormal cozy mysteries. I don't remember.

It was mostly a quick read, and I rushed to finish it because a library book became availalbe and I wasn't go to be able to renew that.

As it was, I practically forgot that I'd read it, until I noticed the title again on my phone. (My iPad is loaded with a lot of recent stuff which gets downloaded automatically.)

This is the first book in the "Dowser" series. The main character, Jade, is half-witch, half-human, and she knows nothing about her father. Her mother never chose to tell her anything, and she's not around for most of the book. Neither is her Grandma, but her presence is felt, and at times, we're waiting for Grandma to arrive and save the day, since she's so powerful a witch. It turns out, that her father wasn't human, but what he was (or is?) is not revealed in this book. What is a "Dowser"? It's a person who uses a diving rod to find underground water, but in context with this book, it's a person who detects magic.

Jade runs a bakery in Vancouver, which seems to have a fair amount of magic activity despite comments that it doesn't. While working there one day, she notices a vampire lurking about outside (in daylight) looking through the window. The vampire later confronts Jade trying to get her to confess to a crime and informs her that as soon as the council clears it, he will bite her and compel her to tell the truth. Apparently, there are rules that have to be followed. A vampire has been killed and one of Jade's trinkets had been found. Jade have an assortment of odd rings that she joins together. Her adopted sister likes to use them. The rings link the crime back to Jade who has no idea what's going on.

Jade was enjoying a night out at a club when a pack out humans, who are werewolves start dancing with her. The alpha wolf tries to get her attention, but she declines. She later flees into the night to avoid all these creatures. She goes to the gym the next day, and the pack arrives and places their mats around her. Now she notices that Mr. Alpha Wolf is a bit of a hottie. They start talking and have a date. But he never shows up for it. And then he's dead, too.

Jade gets caught up in this with the pack and the vampire, until they figure out what's going on.

It was a pleasant read. There's a series. The next book has a very similar title, but I doubt it will be available from the library and it's not something that I *really* need to read and thus pay for. The series has plenty to work with, even if the author did knock off quite a few characters in this one.

Cult Classic (Crosley)

Cult Classic
by Sloane Crosley (2022)

(Not a review, just some notes to help me remember the things I've read. But written this way because it's the Internet, and some people will stumble across this page.)

This was a Pandemic Book Club selection

We haven't had the zoom call yet, but advance word in the messenger chat is that it's a thumbs down, all around.

I don't know what to expect from many club books because I tend to read them electronically, so I don't have the back cover like I used to have. I did read a synopsis on Good Reads when I voted (and I think I voted for this book -- I honestly don't remember), but I'd forgotten whatever it said.

Basically, think of me as a scifi/fantasy guy who watches a lot of only movies, a lot of "classics", some of which have a "cult" following. So I didn't know what this was really going to be about. About nothing I would've expected.

The prologue goes on about ghosts waiting their turn, winning a lottery, to return to Earth for three minutes, and wait could they do with those three minutes. This has absolutely nothing to do with the rest of the book, unless it's supposed to be an allegory for some of the old boyfriends she runs into.

Next up is a brutal Chapter 1 that runs for about 45 pages when every other chapter is a more reasonable 10-15. Within each chapter, the narrator, Lola, goes off on many tangents, digresses about whatever, recalls weird events and comes back to the present. It's lmost like there's a string of short stories with the most tenuous of connections holding them together that gets woven into the story. The story itself is one that will leave you wondering for about 80% of the book what they actual story is.

The book isn't terrible. It's just not good.

Lola used to write for Psychology Today, working for Clive, who was a typical cheap rich person. In the beginning of the book, in that long into or in the prologue, we discover that Clive is dead. The story that is told is about when he was alive, so I'd forgotten that he was dead by the end of the book. One of those things. Actually, it's probably better that she was upfront about it, otherwise, the ending might've seem too convenient.

Lola's friend is named Vadis, but I found from the audiobook, it's pronounced "Voddy", rhymes with "Toddy". And the author reads the book, so she should know. (Of course, she should be more interested in what she's reading, too. Sometimes, she sounds like it's dull.) Vadis and Clive bring Lola to an old synagouge where they have a cult of some kind working. Vadis knows that Lola is having second thoughts about her engagement to "Boots", who I kept forgeting was her finance and kept thinking was her cat.

Lola had run into two of her ex-boyfriends in the past couple of nights. Clive says that that's because he is making Lola a test case for his new program. Each night she'll walk around Chinatown and she'll attract one of her former boyfriends and see if she still has any feelings for them. She can work through her anxieties to see if she really wants to marry Boots.

Lola doesn't buy into this nonsense, and she's the one calling it a cult. Clive is definitely the spiritual leader, and everyone is working for him for free.

After another boyfriend appears, Lola starts to believe that there might be something to it, so she keeps returning to the synagouge (Clive has a weird name for it based on a weird old painting), and answering questions.

The story doesn't actually present itself until it's nearly over. Basically, there's a twist, but it's not like there was much to twist in the first place.

Is this the worst book the book club has covered? Far from it. Was it good? Not really.

UPDATE: General consensus from the Zoom call was the book was not well-liked and the protagonist was not well-liked. (Note that the participants were majority female, 5-3.)