Finlay Donovan Crosses the Line

 

I can't believe this is book 6 of the Finlay Donovan series! How did that happen?! It was really good, probably my favorite one so far (even without hot cop Nick being in most of it...)

Vero is under house arrest in Maryland, awaiting trial for stealing $200,000 from her sorority. Finlay is determined to clear her name and decides she can figure out who actually took the money. 

Nick offers to stay home and watch the kids while she and Javier (Vero's boyfriend/husband...not sure if the sketchy Atlantic City wedding was legit or not since they used fake names) go to Maryland. Finlay is reluctant to leave Nick in charge, mostly because she's afraid after spending a few days with her kids he's going to run for the hills and never look back, but she finally agrees. 

Vero is at her mother's house, where she's wearing an ankle monitor and can't leave the yard except for a few hours a week to run errands and attend church. Finlay, Javi, Vero's cousin Ramon, and teen hacker Cam all get in on the hunt for the real thief so they can clear Vero's name.

It was a lot of fun and I love how the mystery of the thief turned out. The book ended on a really great cliffhanger that made me gasp out loud. Can't wait for book 7!

Emily Wilde's Map of the Otherlands; Meet the Newmans

 

Book two was just as fun and charming as "Emily Wilde's Encyclopedia of Faeries". 

At the end of the first book, Wendell proposed to Emily. She hasn't made up her mind yet, but she does want to help him find a backdoor into his realm so he can reclaim his rightful place as King. His stepmother, the sitting Queen, is sending assassins after Wendell to ensure she keeps her power. 

Emily, Wendell, Emily's niece Ariadne (side note: how on earth do you pronounce that?! I kept reading it as "Adriane"), and their department chair (who invites himself along) Dr. Ferris Rose, journey to the Alps to look for a nexus, which is supposed to be a spot with doors leading to many different fairy realms. A scholar named Danielle de Grey disappeared in that part of the world decades earlier while searching for a nexus. Emily hopes to succeed where she failed. 

Wendell is poisoned and Emily needs to figure out how to cure him and fast, before any other assassins show up. He's too weak to fight them off. She realizes she has to find her way to Wendell's kingdom and bring him back his cat, Orga. All without running into his stepmother. Sounds totally doable. 

It was a lot of fun and I'm looking forward to the third book. 

I wanted to like this one. Truly, I really did. 

And it was okay. Kind of like Niven's Velva Jean books. I read two,  but they didn't interest me enough to go to the effort of reading the rest of them. I loved "All the Bright Places", her YA book, and "The Aqua Net Diaries", her autobiography about high school in Indiana. 

The Newmans have been on CBS for twelve successful seasons. But it's now 1964, and their brand of corny, feel good television is no longer resonating with an America in upheaval. Del, Dinah, and their two sons, Guy and Shep, play the perfect family on TV, but in real life, they're all hiding things. Del moved out of their bedroom and Dinah suspects he's having an affair. Guy can't let anyone know his roommate and best pal, Kelly, is actually his boyfriend. And sixteen year old Shep, a rising pop star who is only topped in the charts by the Beatles, got one of his girlfriends pregnant but he's in love with Eileen, who plays Guy's girlfriend on the show. 

Things are a mess. And Del is convinced that CBS is not going to renew their contract, so with only a few episodes left, he's determined to make the Newmans relevant. 

Then Del is in a car accident and ends up in a coma, so it's up to Dinah and the boys to make the last episode of the show a success. 

The premise was good and I completely understand that there was a lot of terrible things going on in the world at the time, but the book felt like it was smacking me over the head with all of it. Page after page after page of preaching and complaining. 

I get it. I do. You want to make a point. Great. Subtlety seems to be a lost art in entertainment these days. First and foremost, I read fiction to be entertained. A book with a cover like this says (to me): fun! Light escapism! Charming and cute and bubbly! It was none of these things. So I was disappointed. It wasn't bad, per se, it just wasn't what I was expecting. 

Emily Wilde's Encyclopedia of Faeries

 

I don't know why I don't read more fantasy novels. I always enjoy them. I'll have to make more of an effort to seek them out. On the plus side, this was the first book in a series, so I have more to look forward to. Huzzah!

Emily Wilde is a professor at Cambridge who studies the Fae. She's quite the expert, having traveled all over the world and met many Folk. 

Emily and her dog, Shadow, go to a cold, remote village in the North so she can catalog the legends of that area and hopefully meet some of their Folk. A few days after they arrive, Emily's colleague from Cambridge comes to town. Wendell Bambleby is very charming and handsome and easily wins the townspeople over. Emily has long suspected that he's fae (he is, we find out pretty early on, so it's not too much of a spoiler). She reluctantly lets Wendell help her with her goal after he dangles a prize in front of her: coauthorship of a paper to be delivered at a prestigious conference on Folk. Emily never gets invited to these conferences so she agrees. 

It was a fun story and Fawcett did an amazing job of spinning a world of faeries. It was very vivid and enchanting. I thoroughly enjoyed it. 

Maltese Falcon; The Impossible Fortune

 

After reading Max Allan Collins' sequel, I wanted to give the Hammett version another chance. I read it many years ago and didn't really care for it, but I've found sometimes if I go back and reread something that I read when I was young, now that I'm older it's better ("Pride and Prejudice" immediately leaps to mind--I love that book now. Thirty years ago? Not so much). 

At any rate, no, it didn't work. I still didn't like it. I guess I just don't care for Hammett's writing style. 

Spade's partner Miles is murdered while they're working the case to try to find the falcon statue, which is supposed to be worth a lot of money. There are about twenty other people looking for it, too (I'm exaggerating a bit. It wasn't really twenty, it just felt like it). More people die, Spade proves to be a real jerk, and in the end no one has the falcon. 

Enough said. Moving on. 

The next Thursday Murder Club mystery was much better. I love when a series keeps its original charm. It's hard to do after so many books (I'm thinking of Stephanie Plum, but to be fair, the last dozen or so have been better). 

Joyce's daughter, Joanna, is getting married! Joyce is, of course, beside herself with happiness. Her fiancé, Paul, is a nice guy. His best man, Nick, confides to Elizabeth that someone is trying to kill him--there was a bomb strapped to his car that morning. Elizabeth is intrigued, even more so when the Club interviews Nick's business partner, Holly, who is promptly blown up with a car bomb. 

Meanwhile, Ron's daughter's husband, Danny, has beaten her black and blue for the last time. Suzi pulls a gun on him and orders him to leave, which he does, but of course he's planning on killing her. And her brother Jason and Ron too. 

There was a lot going on, but it all tied together and was a lot of fun. I'm all caught up now, so I'll be over here, impatiently waiting for the next one 😄