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 Mia has a fairly typical teenage life, full of big dreams and her potential as a cellist at Juilliard when she moves to New York City for college. But she’s also torn between leaving her boyfriend Adam and friends behind to achieve her dreams, knowing that things are going to change soon. On one snowy winter day, Mia learns that despite all well-laid plans life is always unpredictable, leaving her with a single choice, probably the most difficult she will ever have to make.
I purposely waited a good while before beginning If I Stay because it was incredibly hyped on its release and I didn’t want that to tarnish my own experiences with it. I always hesitate with a book everyone loves, because sometimes I don’t love it as much as they did, but with Where I Went out and clogging the blogosphere with reviews, I thought I’d better get a move on before the story was completely spoiled. With this book, I fell just as hard as everyone else. I had actually managed to avoid spoilers of any kind, so I wasn’t quite sure where the book would take me. I simply knew that a girl had to choose whether to live or to die over the course of the book.
It all starts out quite straightforward. Mia and her younger brother have been granted an unexpected snow day from school, so both of her parents stay home too. When the snow starts to clear up, they head out for an amazing free day, but the roads are still slippery, and a large truck hits Mia’s family’s car. Mia winds up in a coma with an extended out-of-body experience as she does her best to decide whether life is worth living. This approach means that we can see just how deeply everything affects her; we learn the status of her family members as she does, we witness all of her visitors, and we can see how painful her choice truly is.
I loved how, despite Mia’s circumstances, we still get a complete picture of her life before the accident, told through flashbacks that make perfect sense. This doesn’t work for some novels, but it struck me hard; Mia isn’t the drama queen or mean girl that features in many teenage novels, but neither is she a wallflower. It’s easy to get the gist of her personality from the flashbacks and begin to understand just what she’s lost and what the world would lose without her. We get to know all of her family members and the depth of their relationships to her and to one another. Although I thought her family seemed at times too perfect, they needed to be for the book to really work. As for her romance with Adam, I liked that it was already somewhat on the rocks before the accident even happened due to their potential separation. It felt more real than a simple diehard teenage love story.
If I Stay is an excellent YA novel that uses a tragedy to explore very common teenage feelings of uncertainty against the world and the fragility of life. I’d recommend it!
I am an Amazon Associate. I purchased this book.
 This anthology is composed of four stories by very prominent urban fantasy / paranormal romance authors, each of roughly equal page length and often filling the gaps in their larger series. I’ll be honest, I bought this one because it had Ilona Andrews on the cover (as I would buy anything the husband and wife team write) but I read all of the stories and will give them all a bit of time in this review. All of the stories in the anthology have something to do with big, vicious dogs, as you might imagine from the title!
First up was ‘The Britlingens Go to Hell’ by Charlaine Harris. This story begins with two Britlingens, elite bodyguards, sent into a place called Hell due to a personal vendetta. This story is loosely connected with the Sookie Stackhouse series in that the Britlingens were introduced in one of the books, but otherwise is completely separate – these bodyguards live on their own world and simply travel around the universe to protect others.
This story was probably my least favorite. I didn’t really get a feel for either of the main characters, though I did like that they encountered Amelia Earhart and Narcissus. It was fun, but also a bit strange, with giant slugs featuring alongside some odd sexual mechanics. I think it would be okay for some, but I thought it a bit out of place in an urban fantasy anthology where all of the other stories resemble our world in one way or another, and it wasn’t at all what I’d expected.
The second story was the one I was looking out for, ‘Magic Mourns’ by Ilona Andrews. Kate is out of the office due to injuries from a previous book, leaving her friend Andrea, a secret werekin, in charge when a three-headed dog starts rampaging. Andrea has to defeat not only the dog but contend with her feelings for a bouda and her secret shame at her own genetic background.
Any reader of this blog will know that I adore this series and personally felt the anthology was worth the purchase for this alone. The change of perspective was actually really nice; I adore Kate, but I had read a lot about Andrea too and was quite happy to get in that additional backstory (and of course it helped that Kate appeared at the very end!). It was just fabulous to get a little bit more of this world and there is actually a surprising amount squeezed into this story even though it never feels rushed. Andrea has to deal with a lot of her own personal issues and the romance comes out exceptionally well.
‘Angels’ Judgement’ by Nalini Singh is similarly an extension of her Guild Hunters series, of which I’ve so far read the first two. In this one we learn how Sara and Deacon got together and in the process are taken along on a hunt for a rogue vampire. I enjoyed this one and I liked having a different perspective on the world along with a romance that wasn’t headed by an irritating angel, as the normal series books have been. This is set prior to the actual books so contains no spoilers for the series itself.
Last was ‘Blind Spot’ by Meljean Brook. I’ve only read Brook’s steampunk book, The Iron Duke, and none of the Guardian series in which this novella plays a part. I’ve read that it contains minor spoilers for one of the books in the series, but it wasn’t a particular concern of mine as by the time I hit book 5, I’ll have to reread this novella! Anyway, this novella is about former CIA operative Maggie who is sent with a hellhound to find a missing woman and protect her brother Geoffrey Blake. At first, neither we nor Maggie understand how a blind man can help find his sister, but Blake’s unique talents soon reveal themselves and the hunt is on.
I was fairly surprised to find myself enjoying this one and think I’d have to pick it out as my second favorite of the anthology. I enjoyed the romance and the storyline of this and really thought it gave us a lot while fitting neatly within the confines of its length. I do actually have the first full novel of the Guardians series on my TBR and am looking forward to reading it a lot more now.
Overall, this anthology was worth the money for me and provided four stories that I enjoyed, albeit to varying degrees. I’d go so far as to call it a must-read for fans of any of the latter three authors, but I wouldn’t pick up the book for the Charlaine Harris story alone.
I am an Amazon Associate. I purchased this book.
 Nina Revskaya, now an old woman, was once a prima ballerina in Moscow at the height of the Soviet Union. Her life revolved around ballet even after she fled the country, when she first danced and then taught others. Nina is now wheelchair bound and finds it incredibly difficult to face her past; still, she decides to auction off all her jewelry, including an amber set that she says belonged to her late husband’s family. Grigory, a professor of Russian literature, has devoted his life to the study of her husband’s work, and has somehow donated the missing piece of the amber set, a gorgeous necklace, to the auction. Will Nina ever be able to face her past and explore the connection that she and Grigory share?
I went into Russian Winter with a mind full of positive reviews; I have heard many amazing things about this book, so it had a lot to live up to. Moreover, I have been in love with Russia for over 10 years now, which means I’m automatically excited whenever a book comes my way set there. Perhaps unsurprisingly, then, this book did live up to all of my expectations, because I just loved it and I was completely absorbed in it. I found myself thinking about it when I wasn’t reading and completely caught up in Kalotay’s words when I was. This is a book that is certainly worth your time.
One of my favorite aspects of the book was the way that Kalotay delved deep into Soviet society to examine just how harmful it was, even to its biggest stars. Nina and many of her friends are prima ballerinas, but their families are far from immune. Her husband, worse, is a writer, and they are constantly walking on eggshells. The threat is always there. At one point Nina and her two friends accidentally venture into west Berlin and are shocked at what they see and the freedoms others experience, which is heartbreaking, but they return because of the threats.
I also really loved the way everything was carefully woven together. We are transported between roughly four stories, three of which are in the present and just one in the past, but each is distinctive and adds substantially to the narrative. I loved modern-day Drew and Grigory’s storylines and their own very twenty-first century battles, illustrating perfectly that even though the world around us has changed, people really haven’t. Grief and longing are still very real emotions and I cared for each and every one of the characters in the book.
Finally, to wrap everything up, there is even a little mystery involved, because it takes a substantial proportion of the book to figure out what actually happened to Nina’s life. We know her husband was killed and she fled the Soviet Union from the start of the book, but the details about the jewelry and her connection to Grigory – why he has the necklace – are only slowly revealed. Tied in with the incredibly evocative writing set in two different winters, this storyline kept me glued to the page and genuinely curious about the lives herein.
Russian Winter is an incredible book, beautifully written with a gripping yet poignant storyline. Highly recommended.
I am an Amazon Associate. I received this book for free for review from the publisher.
 Journalist Asne Seierstad went to live with an Afghani family in order to really live the life they did and to write about the experiences from the inside. Seierstad focuses on the family of a bookseller, who has two wives, and a large number of children, both daughters and sons. The Khan family are not exactly typical in that they are still fairly well-to-do and Sultan Khan, the bookseller, does his best to continue spreading knowledge. Despite this, he treats his wives and daughters like second-class citizens, putting his own interests before everyone else’s. Seierstad uses the Khan family to explore the larger story of lives in Afghanistan and to try and understand what it is to be a woman in particular in the country today.
While I didn’t always enjoy reading this book, it was definitely a worthwhile read. Seierstad’s writing is mechanical but illustrative of the wider problems in Afghanistan. She focuses on a number of aspects of the family lives of the Khans and their relatives. Sultan Khan lives with his mother, siblings, wives, and children all in one house, which leads to an understandably stifling atmosphere. No one has any privacy – and the Khans are lucky in that they have enough money and are not suffering as much as many others are. Sultan makes trips outside Afghanistan which are long and dangerous ordeals but which provide him with new books for his store and a greater background knowledge of the world around him.
For me, the most interesting stories centered around the women of the family. Sultan’s youngest sister, Leila, is little more than a slave to their mother. Despite the fact that she’s attractive and has received offers of marriage, Leila is expected to stay at home and tend her mother, even when she tries to act on her dreams after the departure of the Taliban. More than anyone Leila shows how difficult it is for women, as she genuinely tries to get forward and is constantly rebuffed and pushed aside. Meanwhile, Sultan’s first wife has been relegated to the sidelines, robbed of the only role which matters in her country, due to a younger woman with whom she must now be friends. It isn’t easy for Afghani women.
The additions of Afghani culture were also greatly appreciated. I’ve also recently finished The Dressmaker of Khair Khana, wherein the women do actually manage to help themselves, and the extra background this book provided placed both in a better context for me. Though both were at times difficult to read, I’m glad I did, and I would recommend the pair of them to anyone interested in the daily lives of Afghani women in particular.
I am an Amazon Associate. I purchased this book.
 Heretics: The Creation of Christianity from the Gnostics to the Modern Church is precisely what it says on the cover; Wright describes how heresy has helped to shape the Western Christian church and delves into the history of individual heretics and how their treatment has varied across history. In many ways, heretics forced Christian thinking in certain directions, causing them to explain a bit more clearly what were appropriate beliefs and how Christians should worship their God. Wright examines the stories of all of the well-known heretics, including those that inspired the break to Protestantism, and how heresy became a crime, up to today, when heretics may not be burned at the stake but exist nevertheless.
I loved this book so much that there is no way I will ever be able to do justice to it in a review. Wright is precisely the sort of historian that I completely adore. He doesn’t dumb down his subject, but explains it in ways that everyone can understand, complete with asides that made me laugh and had the people around me doubting I was actually reading non-fiction about religion.Theological issues are almost always very complex, and often boring for many (he isn’t afraid to say so outright), but I always felt like Wright explained them well and I could actually understand the development of the religion as the book went on. It never felt disrespectful, just completely open, and often the little humorous bits felt aimed at people who just love history, like me. I adore books that feel like they were written just for me and this is certainly one of those.
Wright starts us off with the actual original definition of heresy – it’s derived from a Greek word meaning ‘to choose’. In essence, heretics chose to believe something other than the mainstream, and still do. They haven’t always been persecuted for their beliefs, especially in early Christianity, as they more nudged the consensus in a general direction and forced people to actually clarify what they believed in. Sometimes people who had been greatly respected in Christianity became heretics for various reasons, but there is never much of a logic to it; in the Middle Ages one man was condemned as a heretic and the other as a saint for doing the same thing. It was all very circumstantial. In many cases, heresy became a tool for rulers to use in order to cow their subjects and demonstrate what a great job they were doing, for example. Wright also takes care to emphasize and demonstrate that usually, the Church wanted to reform heretics, not condemn and kill them. They did die in horrendous and gruesome ways, but that was not the idea, it’s just the part that sticks in modern heads the most (and the part that made an example to their contemporaries).
One of my very favorite aspects of this book was how Wright clearly delineates that historical societies were fundamentally different from ours. Many people did not have a concept of rights or freedoms that we take for granted; that doesn’t mean that no one ever thought of them, or even wrote about them, but quite simply things were different. We have a level of tolerance that we never had before (though he does probe at this as well – imagine a US President that isn’t a Christian). We can feel sorry for heretics and we can acknowledge that what was done to them was very often wrong, but we can never fully step into the shoes of a Puritan in Massachusetts persecuting a witch. He also takes particular care to note that this is his viewpoint, in the context of the twenty-first century, and that someone fifty or a hundred years from now will probably view these earlier times (and our own) in a completely different light.
Regardless, I found his text convincingly and logically argued; it does seem clear that heretics had a large role in shaping the present church and it’s certainly true that they’ve existed throughout history. I’m afraid I won’t be providing the violent disagreement he declares he craves! Instead I want to push Heretics in the hands of everyone I know now. It was such a fascinating read, such a wide scope of history, on such a difficult subject without any hint of judgement, and on an issue that still remains with us today. I adored this book and it will unquestionably be one of my favorite reads of 2011.
I am an Amazon Associate. I received this book for free for review from Netgalley.
Yes, it is now the 26th of April, and I still have two Read-a-thon books to post about. Eek! I decided to combine them in this post with shorter reviews.
 Touching the Void, Joe Simpson
Joe Simpson is a mountaineer who likes to tempt fate. He’s happiest when climbing huge mountains in ways that no one has ever managed before, putting his life literally at risk for the thrill of the climb. While in the Peruvian Andes, he learns just how risky this is and goes to the very limit in his attempt to survive the worst.
While I admired how Simpson really defied death in his attempts to find his way back to the camp after a horrific accident, I suppose my problem with mountaineering stories is that I just can’t wrap my head around the fact that anyone would choose to do this. I’m not into mountaineering and I don’t understand the challenge at all. It’s still quite inspiring, as the story of human endurance is universal, but I just couldn’t help thinking, “Why?”
 Lady Isabella’s Scandalous Marriage, Jennifer Ashley
Isabella and ‘Mac’ Mackenzie have been separated for years, due to numerous difficulties in both their marriage and the way they first came together. Mac realizes that he’s missing out on so much good in his life and makes a real effort to win Isabella back, including sobering up and taming his wilder self, but Isabella isn’t sure she can bear with the hurt again.
The Madness of Lord Ian Mackenzie was such a fantastic book that I knew I’d buy Ashley’s next book in the series right away. After all, anyone who has the guts to write a romance novel about a guy with Asperger’s syndome, who has been through the horror of a Victorian mental hospital, has my vote when it comes to romance. I didn’t expect this one to smack me in the face with an equal level of greatness, but I still found it to be a very enjoyable read.
At its core it is something like a romance novel set after the normal romance novel. Mac and Isabella already fell in love, he already swept her off her feet, and they’ve already been married. But their marriage was fraught with difficulties and they separated. This book documents the struggle they have with returning to love after a separation. Very good in its own right.
I am an Amazon Associate. I purchased one of these books and borrowed the other.
 Today I’d like to welcome one of my friends, Josh, who blogs at Fortress of Solitude, with a review of The Trinity Six by Charles Cumming.
In The Trinity Six, Charles Cummings picks up on the tradition of authors such as John le Carre in the genre of Cold War British spy novel. The prime innovation is that rather than using a spy as the main character, Cummings uses a professor of Russian history named Sam Gaddis. Gaddis is an academic trope of sorts in that he is an excellent historian, but down on his luck and in his attempt to extricate himself stumbles upon a quarter century old story that could collapse a government.
But I am getting ahead of myself. One of the most famous spy rings in history was the Magnificent Five. Maclean, Burgess, Blunt, Philby and Cairncross were students at Cambridge in the 1930’s when they were recruited by a professor as spies for Russia. At the time of recruitment they were soldiers in the war against fascism in Europe. Each excelled and took posts in the British government, working against fascism, but also passing information to their Russian masters. In the 1950’s when the Americans began to break encryption patterns from World War II, they caught on to Maclean and Burgess and the ring began to collapse. The last of the Magnificent Five, Blunt was not exposed until 1979. But perhaps these five were not alone; perhaps there was a sixth, and that is the discovery from which all of Gaddis’ adventures stem. One revelation leads to another and Gaddis finds himself unravelling one Cold War mystery after another.
Despite the traditional qualifier that all characters are used fictitiously and the story is a product of the author’s imagination, the situation presented of an immensely popular Russian President who was a mid-ranking officer in the last years of the Cold War, but through brutal suppression of opponents of his reign had transformed into a dictator in all but name, smacks of reality. Perhaps incidental, but Cummings reveals a commentary on the Russian state. All the while The Trinity Six is compelling and an easy read. My only critique is that at one or two points the supposedly coincidental events seem to be a stretch. As such they make the story seem somewhat railroaded, rather than a narrative that actually could happen. But it is not the characters or anything that they do, or even the scenario that is unconvincing. Simply put, there was just one too many coincidences.
Anyone who likes thrillers or spy novels ought to give The Trinity Six a read. Cummings is not yet to the level of le Carre, however the best is yet to come and this is a good place to start.
I am an Amazon Associate.
 Trevor Stratton finds a peculiar box in his office one day; naturally, he can hardly resist opening it, though he has no idea where it has come from. Inside he finds the memorabilia of the life of Louise Brunet, a Frenchwoman who lived much of her life stifled by a boring marriage and the staid affairs of a housewife. But Louise is innately passionate, having loved her young cousin, a soldier killed in World War I, and later developing illicit feelings for her neighbor. As Trevor unravels Louise’s story, he finds that one of his own is just beginning.
This was quite an odd book to start out with. Much of the beginning is actually written in second person and I can’t recall the last time I read a book that had such a strong component written like that. I must confess it threw me and I wasn’t sure I would like it, simply because it was so confusing. I wanted to have concrete facts, not have this peculiar vagueness. Lucky for me, and for the book, it all settles after the first quarter of the book or so. I figured out who all of the characters were and understood what the book was trying to do. After that, I enjoyed it a lot more. The book is composed of several different types of writing, between normal prose, letters, and the second person explorations of what’s inside the box.
One of my very favourite aspects of this book was the way that Trevor crafts Louise’s story from her memorabilia. I don’t know about you, but I do sometimes think about what I keep and what it says about me; this story is that writ large, an attempt to derive a woman’s life simply from the objects and letters she kept over the course of her life. There are pictures of all of the objects and I had a lot of fun puzzling over the photographs and examining each object in detail. It’s certainly fun for those of us who hoard to think that someday, someone might make something of all of those little treasures.
Another very appealing part of the book is Louise’s story itself. It’s impossible not to feel for her, even in contemplating adultery, because she is a vibrant person. I felt as though she’d been cheated by life, robbed of her love, and then had much of her spirit taken out of her. But she still leaps off the page with her strong character. I had the feeling that if life had treated her a little differently, she could have been a wonderful woman.
13, Rue Therese is an imaginative look back at the life of a Frenchwoman who survived much of nineteenth century history. Though confusing at first, it swiftly resolves and becomes a pleasant story of discovery and passion. Recommended.
I am an Amazon Associate. I received this book for free for review from Amazon Vine.
 Sophie is the eldest of three girls; though her own mother has died and her father has married, she gets on very well with her stepmother and two stepsisters. But when her father dies, things begin to change; Sophie’s sisters are sent to learn different trades and Sophie herself must take over in the hat shop. Unhappy with her lot, Sophie longs for change, and runs afoul of the witch of the wasteland, who turns her into an old woman. To get her life back, Sophie heads to Howl’s Moving Castle, where she hopes the enigmatic wizard Howl can help her.
I bought this book before Diana Wynne Jones’s recent passing; I felt the best way to react to that news was to start reading her work ASAP, as I should have done when she was alive. And I really should have because, as everyone told me I would, I loved this book and I was completely captivated by the story here. I read it during the Read-a-thon all in one go and that was truly perfect for it, because I could simply lose myself in this lovely book.
For me this book felt like a fairy tale I might have read when I was much younger, though it is obviously also very appealing for adults. It certainly seems a book to suit all ages, personally. I was entranced by the idea of the moving castle and Howl himself – I could see the end coming from a while previously, but that didn’t make it any less sweet.
My favorite part really is Sophie’s entire switch of thought process. As a young woman, she’s trapped in the hat shop. She becomes very timid and set in her ways. By turning her into the old lady she’s become, the witch actually does her a favor, because she realizes what she is missing. She also brings her into contact with Howl, and unquestionably the best scenes in the book occur when Sophie has actually gotten to Howl’s castle.
The fantasy characters themselves can be a riot with each of their very distinct personalities. In particular, I thought Calcifer in the fire was a fun character, and I was intrigued by the relationships Howl had with people outside the castle – I wondered how much the rest of the series picked up on what was established here, and trust me, I intend to find out.
Howl’s Moving Castle is exactly as wonderful as you suspect it is. Read it! You won’t be sorry.
I am an Amazon Associate. I purchased this book.
 Billed as Jane Austen with magic, Shades of Milk and Honey starts out with our protagonist, Jane Ellsworth, anguishing over the fact that she and her sister have feelings for the same man. Jane’s sister Melody is beautiful and socially accomplished, turning the head of every man she sees, while Jane is plain but has a much greater skill in the art of glamour. Jane is 28, though, and thus firmly on the shelf. She’s resigned herself to spinsterhood and determines to allow her sister the greater happiness, even as her heart cries otherwise and she longs for not only skill in glamour but a little love of her own.
This was an absolutely perfect book for the Read-a-thon and many thanks to Memory for telling me so! It is beautifully written and evokes Jane Austen’s world incredibly well. Kowal’s prose is neat and refined, giving a real sense of Jane’s emotions while never straying into pity-me sessions. It’s the type of writing I adore – restrained but with true passion lying underneath. I have only read this book and already I can tell you I would happily read anything else Kowal writes.
The world itself too is wonderfully done. Of course, Regency England is an appealing time period in its own right, but the addition of magic to the world just rounds it all off beautifully. It reminded me of The Magicians and Mrs Quent in that it’s an homage to Jane Austen but has its own twists too. Glamour fits right into the Regency world; it’s a feminine accomplishment, like drawing or singing, but as usual men are the instructors and generally the exhibitors as well.
As for the story, not much of it comes as a surprise; I’ve read all of Austen’s novels and I think most of us know how they’re meant to end. Some of it, particularly toward the end, was a bit melodramatic, but nothing really exceptional in a world that gave birth to the fretting Mrs Bennet or Mr Woodhouse. It was sweet and romantic and I felt the book was perfect for how I read it – straight through, no breaks, simply caught up in the beauty of the writing and the pace of the story.
Shades of Milk and Honey is a lovely read, an excellent choice for someone who enjoys light fantasy or has read all of Austen’s work and is looking for more. Recommended.
I am an Amazon Associate. I _ this book.
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