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 Courtney Stone is a certified Jane Austen addict. She owns all the books and sinks into them every time she needs comfort, entertainment, or love. When she wakes up in Regency England one morning, with the Austen-like name of Jane Mansfield, she is at first in shock, especially when she is threatened with a mental institution and bled to the point of weakness. Courtney/Jane recovers and begins to settle into Regency life with the addition of the extremely handsome and polite Mr. Edgeworth and his sister. She thinks she recognizes Mr. Edgeworth for what he is, a womanizer just like her ex-fiance who broke her heart by cheating on her. To get back home, Courtney realizes that she needs to unravel the secrets of Jane’s past, including her relationship with Edgeworth, and confront her own insecurities and problems with the men in her life.
I think I expected a little more out of this than I got. The beginning was a little disappointing. First of all, Courtney spends far too long in bed denying that she is actually Jane and fretting about how to get back into her old life, much less fit into this one. When she gets up she is perfectly capable of speaking English with a perfect English accent as well as sewing, dancing, and knowing which fork to use while eating. While this makes her transition easier, it made it harder for me to accept her complaining. Given that the premise of the book was her new life in the England of Jane Austen, Courtney spent far too much time being shocked. She can’t just settle in but I was impatient for the story to get going.
Luckily, I liked the book much better once Courtney got out of bed and assumed Jane’s life. Once that happened, I finally got pulled into the story. The mysteries surrounding the past of Jane and Edgeworth were interesting and I wanted to see why they’d fallen out. I liked Jane’s friend Miss Edgeworth and I enjoyed the development of her character over the course of the book. I also thought that the way Courtney’s memories were interspersed with her Regency life were well done; she reflected on her past at appropriate points and I was curious as to the resolution.
This was a fun, relaxing read. Courtney’s problems are never too threatening, and while we feel sorry for her, we’re pretty sure she’s getting her Happily Ever After. I enjoyed the romance between Courtney and Edgeworth and I wanted to know what had happened in the past so they could settle down for the future. Despite that, I thought the ending was, honestly, a bit of a cop-out, and let me down after what otherwise was a very entertaining story. I enjoyed the book enough, though, to be interested in checking out Ms. Rigler’s next book, Rude Awakenings of a Jane Austen Addict, which takes Jane Mansfield into Courtney Stone’s life. I have a feeling that with both stories resolved, my qualms about the first book will fade away, and I will have the ending that I really, really want.
Recommended for a light, fun read, especially for lovers of Jane Austen or historical fiction.
Available from IndieBound, Powell’s, Amazon, and Amazon UK.
 From the inside cover of The Wilderness:
It’s Jake’s birthday. He is sitting in a small plane, being flown over the landscape that has been the backdrop to his life – his childhood, his marriage, his work, his passions. Now he is in his early sixties, and he isn’t quite the man he used to be. He has lost his wife, his son is in prison, and he is about to lose his past. Jake has Alzheimer’s.
This unusual novel, narrated by a man who is steadily losing his grip on reality, is a remarkable journey through the human mind and memory. I’ve never known anyone with Alzheimer’s, as it thankfully doesn’t run in my family (or they die too young), but if I had to guess what it would be like, this novel is it. Jake’s reality comes and goes; he finds his mind a total blank at times but usually he is just confused. He can’t remember if his daughter is alive or dead, why he is visiting this man in jail (his son), or who the woman sleeping next to him is, except in brief moments of clarity. He remembers his younger life the best and often has flashbacks to himself as a newlywed, in love with his wife, a successful architect, a new father. He can’t decide what is real and what he has imagined, or why some memories have significance and others don’t. In short, he is confused.
I’m not sure how I feel about this book. I wanted to love it more than I did, but I think it was too scary for me. I felt sorry for Jake and I just felt that the inevitability of his fate outweighed the beauty of the life that he had lived. It is powerful and it is moving and I suspect it has changed the way I will think about elderly people forever, but it’s also scary and depressing. This is the undeniable truth about what will happen to many of us if we live to be Jake’s age. He has lived a successful, mostly happy life, which he can piece together and remember gladly, but now he is losing that ability before he has even died. He boils the coffeepot dry, he can’t remember if he is supposed to eat eggshells, he forgets that he’s completed some part of therapy five minutes after it’s happened, and he doesn’t even know if his daughter is alive because he’s just remembered her older, and laughing, but at the same time he remembers her dead.
I do think that this is one of those important books that can open our minds to the suffering of others, one of those books that we should all read and think about. It reveals the wilderness that our brains can become as they lose so much in old age. I’m not going to lie though because it is heartbreaking and it is tough to read. It’s a worthy, worthy book, but it will make you cry.
 Description via Amazon:
Logen Ninefingers, infamous barbarian, has finally run out of luck. Caught in one feud too many, he’s on the verge of becoming a dead barbarian – leaving nothing behind him but bad songs, dead friends, and a lot of happy enemies.
Nobleman, dashing officer, and paragon of selfishness, Captain Jezal dan Luthar has nothing more dangerous in mind than fleecing his friends at cards and dreaming of glory in the fencing circle. But war is brewing, and on the battlefields of the frozen North they fight by altogether bloodier rules.
Inquisitor Glokta, cripple turned torturer, would like nothing better than to see Jezal come home in a box. But then Glokta hates everyone: cutting treason out of the Union one confession at a time leaves little room for friendship. His latest trail of corpses may lead him right to the rotten heart of government, if he can stay alive long enough to follow it.
I’ve heard amazing things about the First Law trilogy. It’s dark and gritty and there is very little magic in the world; what’s left is fading. There is an ineffectual monarch on the throne and a very threatening ruler uniting the North against them. The book alternates between these three men’s viewpoints as we both get to know them and things start to heat up in their world. I think this book could turn out to be as amazing as people say, but I will be continuing the trilogy before I can really decide that.
The Blade Itself is definitely an exciting read. It opens with one of the main characters hanging off a cliff and after that, it’s hard to turn away. The three characters are so different and full of flaws, but I think that’s part of their appeal. There are no spotless good guys here. A few other characters are introduced and at the end of the book, they’ve all finally drawn together, which is why I’ve reserved judgment for the next volume.
What is interesting and different about this world is the lack of magic in it. There is still a little bit, but the characters who can use it to their advantage are few and far between. Overall, though, the world-building is a little sparser than I’d have liked, but I think the author has sacrificed that in favor of a very active plot. It is a grim world, but it isn’t particularly detailed and could be a variety of other fantasy settings. Perhaps a bit more differentiation will come in the next volume.
Basically, I’m going to wait to pass judgment until I’ve read more from Joe Abercrombie. This book has enticed me enough to return to the series, but I haven’t fallen in love with it yet.
 In besieged Sarajevo, a cellist, gazing out his window, sees more than 20 people die from a bomb while waiting for bread. In mourning for them, he decided to play at that exact spot for 22 days, to honor all of the dead, putting his life at risk. Meanwhile, Kenan ventures out most days, embracing danger to get water for his family and inexplicably the neighbor, an old woman whom he has never liked. Dragan feels a burden on his family, his wife and son sent away before the war, and finds some comfort in his job at the bakery. Arrow, a sniper, is determined to wreak revenge on the people in the hills who are killing so many of her townspeople. Together, these characters weave a picture of a city under siege, somehow seeking hope but not yet hopeless.
My favorite character, to whom I wished the narrative would keep returning, was Arrow. She is the most interesting of all of them, a killer, but somehow one that we can love and empathize with even as she chooses her targets and plans her strategy. She’s a murderer who has blocked off her heart somehow, drawing a direct line between the girl she was and the sniper that she is now. I can’t imagine not feeling for her. The other characters were less compelling, especially Dragan, who seemed obsessed with a variety of things and complained too much. The cellist didn’t have much of a personality. Kenan was also a compelling character and I enjoyed the discoveries he made and the thoughts he had over the course of the novel.
Perhaps the only problem I had with it is that I liked it while I was reading it, but now that it’s been a while since I finished, its core meanings have not stayed with me particularly well. War is wrong and savage, and it’s lovely that the cellist brought hope into its midst, but I have read other books about Sarajevo and I’m not sure this stands out as much as perhaps it should. I enjoyed its ruminations on survival while people are out to kill you, how the city holds together as one being, and Arrow’s protection of the cellist, but I’m not left with a desire to reread this one, perhaps because I just never developed a deep relationship with the characters.
I am glad I read it and I would recommend The Cellist of Sarajevo, particularly if you enjoy bleak stories about war with a light shining through the darkness.
 Mary Saunders has always longed for luxury. Born to working-class parents, she lives with her mother, step-father, and baby half-brother in a basement in lower-class eighteenth century England. Though she is somewhat educated, she really has only two options in life; sewing, like her mother, or service. Mary rebels and loses her virginity, health, and respectability for a single red ribbon, falling into a life of prostitution and alcoholism. Based on the story of a maid who killed her mistress for a beautiful dress, Mary’s story is heartbreaking but surprisingly compelling and evocative of her time.
I will admit that I struggled with this book in the beginning. Mary was extremely difficult to care about. She is so frivolous that she covets the lifestyle of a prostitute just so she can have pretty clothes. Her sojourn in a rehabilitation facility and later time with the Jones family both open her eyes a little to the respectability of honest work, but her craving for luxury undoes her good intentions every time. It is something that is a little mystifying, especially given when she sees how the Joneses have worked up the career ladder to a life which she craves.
On the other hand, however, she is a very well-rounded character. Frustrating as she is, it’s easy to see how her childhood, friendships, and longings translate into the way she lives her life. Surprisingly we can see how prostitution does suit her, creepy as that feels. She seems to enjoy her power over men while reveling in the fact that she can buy beautiful clothes and spend most of her time laughing and drinking with her prostitute friends. It’s only when she gets seriously ill that she has to pursue ways of healing and thinks about where she has gone wrong.
This is, unfortunately, an unrelentingly negative book. We learn that Mary is in prison in the first few pages and then are sent back to figure out how she got there. Even when happier things happen in her life, the reader is always aware that they aren’t going to last. I had a span of about 10 pages where I loved the book; I thought Mary’s life was going to take a turn for the better. I had been struggling with the book and then I fell in love. I fell out of love about as quickly and finished it more because I had to than because I wanted to. It was just so depressing and Mary’s obsession with money, escape, and luxury became all-consuming even though she was perhaps the happiest she’d ever been in her life.
This is a story about a girl who makes very poor choices, all of which catch up to her in the end. Knowing that from the beginning makes this a challenge, but it is still an excellent book for its portrayal of eighteenth century London, the countryside, and the insights into Mary’s mind. In startling contrast to most historical fiction which focuses on the wealthy and privileged, I do think this book is worth reading.
IndieBound | Powell’s | Amazon | Amazon UK
 One day, Bruno comes home to find a maid packing all of his things, even his personal things hidden at the back of his closet. He’s very unhappy and even more so when he discovers that his family is moving away from Berlin, his three best friends, and even his grandparents. At first glance, there are no children near Bruno’s new home, but there are a lot of people who wear striped pyjamas behind a fence. Because Bruno is curious, he wanders away from the house, and his adventure, and all those following, illuminate the mind of a little boy who has no knowledge of prejudice and the true horror to which that prejudice can lead.
I almost can’t talk about my reaction to this book. I sort of want to just say, read this, and leave it at that. That wouldn’t be a very good review, though, and I like to at least pretend that I can write decent reviews. Actually, I do think that if you haven’t read this, it might be a good idea to stop here, because this book is best knowing just what I’ve said and nothing more.
Easily, the best thing about this book is Bruno’s innocent response to everything. He is just a little boy and doesn’t yet understand that all little boys’ lives aren’t exactly like his. This is especially so because his three best friends have very similar lives to his. His parents have kept him ignorant of world events, so he doesn’t know that he is in the midst of World War II. He doesn’t know that he’s moved just outside of a concentration camp or that right now it’s a bad thing that his new friend through the fence is a Jew. In fact, he thinks it’s cool that everyone wears the same clothes, and doesn’t understand that when someone goes missing in the camp, they haven’t wandered off, it’s because they’ve been killed. He doesn’t realize that his father is a high-ranking Nazi and is causing these people to labor, starve, and die.
Bruno’s adorable personality made the book for me. The rest of the characters are shadowy and insubstantial, witnessed only through a little boy’s eyes. Shmuel’s suffering is obvious to us, for example, as people who are well-informed about history, but Bruno doesn’t understand, and as a result his character doesn’t develop very far. As the plot progresses, and Bruno witnesses atrocities and pure human cruelty, he develops hatred for those who perpetuate them, but he still doesn’t grasp the overall situation even as it begins to touch the reader’s heart.
Overall, the beauty and simplicity lies in the fact that Bruno is too young to understand why these things are happening to people who are just like him. His innocence makes the horror almost incomprehensible in comparison, and makes us wonder just how people can be so cruel, thoughtless, and prejudiced against others who are just like us but see the world in a slightly different way.
I loved The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, as much as I can love a book that is about the holocaust if that makes sense, and totally, completely recommend it.
 In October 1899, Elizabeth Holland, one of society’s most fashionable young women, is laid to rest with great ceremony, after tragically falling into a river. What was to have been her wedding day was in fact the date of her funeral. The story, however, is vastly more complicated than that, when the novel speedily backtracks so as to explain just how Elizabeth died. A beautiful, proper society girl, Elizabeth is opposed by her unconventional sister Diana, who refuses to follow the proper rules of behavior. Add in to the mix Penelope Hayes, Elizabeth’s best friend, who is determined to marry New York’s most eligible bachelor Philip Schoonmaker, as well as Elizabeth’s dissatisfied maid Lina Broud and all the pieces are in place for a scandalous tale of love, loss, and revenge.
Reading The Luxe felt a little bit like eating an entire pint of Ben and Jerry’s by myself. This is actually an event that has never happened, but I imagine it would be the same: delicious and addictive, but I feel a pervading sense of guilt about it. The book was a very fun, very quick read, and I loved it for the most part. Everything kicks off with a bit of a mystery as we wonder what’s happened to Elizabeth and why on earth her sister is smiling at her funeral. While the resolution of this particular plot becomes very obvious very early on, it was a great way to snap the reader up and by the time we figure out what’s going on, the rest of the story has us engaged enough for the rest of the book to speed by.
Perhaps the unhealthy part about this book is that it is so scandalous. It felt somewhat different from the YA I normally appreciate because the girls are all so catty, promiscuous, and vengeful. Three of them hop into bed with men without much thought for the consequences; one of them actively uses her sexuality to get her way while tearing down her friend over a man who is, quite honestly, not worth either of their time. I suppose these are reasons that I’ve never been into the Gossip Girl series or really any drama about teenage girls since I stopped being one, because the outright backstabbing as shown here is actually common enough in the real world and I don’t need more of it.
Having said all that, there is no way to avoid that despite its questionable morals, I totally loved my time with this book. I found myself speeding through it and thoroughly enjoying myself. I especially came to love Elizabeth and Diana and I really want to know what happens next in their lives. I also loved the setting of New York City in the late nineteenth century. One of my two favorite books, The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton, is also set around this time in New York, and I’ve developed an immeasurable fondness for it as a result. I could just picture these girls heading to the Lord & Taylor on 5th Avenue for fittings!
So, in conclusion, I guess what I’m trying to say is that this book is hugely enjoyable but full of questionable moral standards and teenagers who are not to be emulated. I definitely recommend it to adults, because it’s a whole lot of fun, but I don’t think I’d buy it for a sixteen year old.
 In this hilarious book about the science of sex, Mary Roach takes a broad look at all the sex researchers who have put their reputations on the line to study something derided by others. She mainly focuses on the last hundred years, discussing such sensitive topics as the female orgasm, male impotence, and animal sexuality with more than a touch of humor that makes this book a surprisingly quick and amusing read, with some information tucked in where no one would ever suspect it.
I have heard a lot about Mary Roach, mostly good. I’m not sure how comfortable I am with her other two books, so I decided to start with this one, especially given that my library had it. I definitely didn’t make a mistake there. This book was constantly laugh-out-loud funny. I was trying to get it read fairly quickly as someone else had placed a hold on it at the library by the time I tried to renew it, so I sat and read it straight through in one solid blast of information. I did not expect it to be so funny. Sex definitely can carry awkwardness, anyone who remembers sixth-grade health class knows that, but Roach turns it around and makes that awkwardness funny, especially when she comments on the roundabout ways the scientists used to describe it in their papers in order to justify their research.
I also found the book to be very informative. This is, after all, non-fiction, and packed with facts about sex. It may be funny and easy to read, but it delivers what is essentially a history and summation of sex research, broken up into categories which are chosen for maximum interest and amusement potential. Most of this information isn’t exactly useful, but it’s certainly not going to be found anywhere else.
Even the way Roach carries out her research is made to be amusing. She writes about the difficulties of figuring out what these scientists actually did, given that she can’t get their videos or equipment, of talking to current researchers, and even of using herself and her husband as subjects in a study. She’s so up front and frank about these things that it’s impossible to feel uncomfortable even when she’s describing being naked in an MRI machine. She travels around the world in aid of her research and must have garnered herself quite a reputation, but part of this book’s aim seems to show us that this is a perfectly valid and interesting research field. It’s awkward, but there is certainly work to be done, and the results are surprisingly worthy.
In my opinion, Bonk is definitely the way popular non-fiction should be done. Funny, light-hearted, but still factual and informative. I definitely recommend this book. Even if the subjects of Spook and Stiff make me somewhat uncomfortable, I’ll probably look into them anyway just because I enjoyed this one so much.
In an effort to bulk up my reading in June, I read three books which I feel don’t really need a full review. I read a fourth one in July. I wasn’t crazy about any of them, but I’d like to record my thoughts for posterity, so here goes.
 Simply Magic, Mary Balogh
Recently, I welcomed Mary Balogh to my favorites list. She doesn’t do badly in this book either, although I’m beginning to see her formula to an extent. Susanna, a teacher at Miss Martin’s School for Girls, is a charity case who became such a wonderful student that she earned a place among the faculty both as a teacher and friend. When visiting her friend Frances, Susanna meets Peter Edgeworth, Viscount Whitleaf, and they proceed to become friends and eventually fall in love. As I said, Balogh definitely has a formula. The characters become good friends and then realize there is more to their relationship. There is also always the “just one night” mentality, meaning that the couples do it just before they separate for good. This has gotten to me a little bit; maybe once, but every single one of her female characters is relatively unconcerned about pregnancies? I can understand the mentality but I don’t know how much I’d share it if an accidental pregnancy was an irreparable tragedy. I still liked the book but I hope the next one I read by her deviates from this formula.
Guilty Pleasures, Laurell K. Hamilton
Everyone always talks about how the first few books of this series are pretty good but the series goes downhill after that. I figured I’d try it anyway. Luckily or unluckily, I really wasn’t fond of this first book and have no plans to read more. The book is virtually dripping with sexuality even before the series has denigrated; it already disturbed me and it could only get worse. I understand that most of vampires’ appeal is that sexual aspect, but there is a point where it is too much. Worse, I didn’t really like Anita, I didn’t like the style in which the book was written, and I actually missed the world-building explanations I’ve found in other urban fantasy series. This one just tossed me in, which might have worked if I’d liked the plot, but I wasn’t feeling it in any way.
 A Little Bit Wicked, Victoria Alexander
I thought this would be a good, unconventional romance. The heroine has had affairs and been married before (gasp!) so I figured she would be relatively aware of the world. It’s not really different, though. The hero is jealous of all her former lovers and of course has to be the best of all of them. Judith is an interesting heroine, but Gideon, the hero, feels like more of the same. I also really dislike when everyone knows the couple is in love before they do. Well-meaning, but I can’t say I’d want someone telling me how I felt, so it always annoys me when they try it in the books I’m reading. I prefer the couple to develop that through their relationship, not through someone else telling them they’re in love because they have a special twinkle in their eye or something. I think I need to stop reading romance novels for a while. I’m getting tired of them; too many of them are the same and not really believable love stories.
 To Catch an Heiress, Julia Quinn
This is another cute, funny romance from Julia Quinn. I think this is one of her first books, but it still comes across fairly well and doesn’t drown in stereotypes. Caroline and Blake are a sparkling couple, full of witty dialogue and snarky comebacks. Some of the events that happen here are laugh-out-loud funny and I just loved the little blurbs at the beginning of each chapter with a vocabulary word and Caroline’s explanation of why she was thinking of it at the time. I did find that the espionage plot felt a little tacked on. It was in evidence from almost the beginning, but it seemed more a convenient foil to bring the hero and heroine together than a major plot point, until the end when the suspense suddenly takes over. I didn’t find the threat all too convincing and felt that the couple could have realized the extent of their love in some other way. Still, this is easily my favorite of the four books I’ve mentioned here and Julia Quinn is definitely remaining as my favorite romance author.
 Robert Kemble and Victoria Lyndon fell in love at first sight. Unfortunately, Robert is the earl of Macclesfield, heir to a dukedom, while Victoria is a vicar’s daughter. They are both willing to toss convention aside and marry anyway, but their fathers will not have it. Each father prevents his child from eloping and both Robert and Victoria are convinced that they were not really loved. Seven years later, Robert is a confirmed rake and Victoria has had no choice but to become a governess to a series of rebellious children with indulgent mothers. They meet again and all their old wounds reopen; they have never gotten over each other. When Victoria seizes her independence, it’s up to Robert to show her the value of love and companionship; he can’t fail this time.
This was another “eh” read for me. I don’t believe in love at first sight. I just don’t see how you can love someone without knowing anything about them. Of course, as a teenager I had plenty of infatuations and I called them love, so to me, this is what happened with these two characters, only they never quite got over it. While I somewhat understood the fathers’ motivations in keeping apart the couple, if frustrating, it annoyed me that both of them immediately fell for the deception. If anything, that backed me up on the fact that they didn’t love one another yet, they simply had their heads in the clouds. The first 60 pages did not have me sold on this book.
After that, thankfully, it got better. Victoria and Robert are far more interesting once they’ve had a proper try at life. They have scars from both each other and from other experiences. It took them a frustratingly long time to realize what had happened to them, but what I really liked was that they didn’t immediately fall into each other’s arms because their fathers had lied to them and they were still oh-so-in-love. They still had to work through their problems and try to understand what they want to get out of their lives.
Probably the only reservation I had about the rest of the book was that it got sickeningly sweet at the end. Obviously, I like romance novels, but when the moon winks at one of the characters, it feels a little strange. They just felt a little ridiculous in their professions of love; I would have hoped that by the end, Victoria and Robert had learned enough about life to realize that one can’t promise everything and the moon. I guess that’s just me being picky and unromantic, though.
All in all, a lovely light read; some reservations, but I did enjoy it.
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