Wrap-Up of the 2021 What's in a Name Challenge

I read 6 books for the challenge:

One by One by Ruth Ware

In a Dark, Dark Wood by Ruth Ware

White Ivy by Susie Yang

The Art Collector's Daughter by Derville Murphy

The Woman in a Green Dress by Tea Cooper

The Moonlight Child by Karen McQuestion

Favorite Book:  The Moonlight Child (my only 5 star rated book)

Second Favorite Book:  White Ivy (my only 4 star rated book)

Least Favorite Book:  The Woman in the Green Dress  (my lowest rated book with 2 stars)

I have been doing this challenge on and off for years and I love it. I wish that there were more categories but 6 has been the limit since the challenge began. Let's hope that it returns in 2022.  I haven't heard anything yet.

The Moonlight Child

The Moonlight Child is a riveting suspense novel. It is intense and will keep you up all night reading. The story begins with Sharon Lemke heading outside her home to see a lunar eclipse on a cold January night. While outside, she notices something odd at the house behind her backyard. Through her neighbor's window, she sees a little girl washing dishes late at night. However, the Fleming family does not have a child that age, and even if they did, why would she be doing dishes at such a late hour? Sharon could not let go of her concerns over the child. When eighteen-year-old Niki, a former foster child, comes to live with Sharon, she too notices suspicious activity at the Fleming house.  When they call child protective services, a short interview is conducted at the Fleming home.  Because nothing more was going to be done with the Flemings, Sharon and Niki decide to investigate on their own.

This book takes spying on the neighbors to the ultimate degree. The back and forth nastiness between neighbors Sharon Lemke and Suzette Fleming provides much of the suspense in the novel.  Every bad deed deserves another.  Right?  The book begins with Sharon googling her neighbors after she took that photo of the child washing dishes at 11 pm.  She finds out their names, the name of their son, what they paid for their home, what the husband does for a living and their prior addresses.  All of the characters have dramatic life stories and secrets that enhance the suspense and I would have to say that this book has one of the best suspense plots that I have ever read. 

The characters reside in a small town. Usually everyone in a small town knows everyone else's business.  When you grow up in a small town you know that someone is always watching you and talking about you.  While you may have only a nodding acquaintance with someone, if you have a car accident everyone will know in a matter of hours.  As a contrast, when the Flemings moved in six months ago, they were secretive and did not associate with their neighbors.  Suzette only became friends with those who could help her maintain a philanthropic reputation. She is a great villain!

The Moonlight Child is one of my favorite books of the year. I highly recommend it. 5 out of 5 stars.

The Tea Planter's Daughter

The Tea Planter's Daughter is the first book written by Janet MacLeod Trotter that I have read.  I love books set in India and Trotter has written a four book series called the India Tea Book Series.  I am planning on reading them all.  In The Tea Planter's Daughter, the first book of the series, 18 year old Clarissa Belhaven resides in the Assam region of India.  Her family's tea plantation is slowly going out of business and her father, the owner of the plantation, is grieving the sudden loss of his wife.  Clarissa's younger sister Olive needs a mother and Clarissa provides her with motherly care.  Being beautiful and headstrong, Clarissa attracts the attention of the young and brash Wesley Robson, a rival tea planter.  Before his intentions become fully clear, tragedy befalls the Belhaven family and the sisters must sell their plantation.  They move to Tyneside, an industrial town in England, which is vastly different from Assam.  In order to start over, Clarissa has to endure extreme poverty as she finds employment in a pub and is worked to the bone by her bosses. Olive must also begin working and helps out with household work in the pub owner's home.

I enjoyed this story but expected at least half of it to take place in India. Most of it takes place in England and the English setting has never appealed to me. It is cold, grey and rainy like the city I live in. Escape to a warm weather place is ideal.  That said, the plot premise is good and it was executed well.  I remained interested in the story while reading as the quick pace moved the action along nicely.  

The two sisters were appealing characters.  I could feel their pain when they lost their home in India and had to move to  a foreign land.  I couldn't help but root for them. The Robson family provided the villains for the novel. For Clarissa, she both despised and secretly loved one of them, the handsome Wesley.  They met in India where Wesley was running his family's tea estate but their lives also crossed many times in England, providing the book's drama. 

4 out of 5 stars.

The Woman in the Green Dress

This story takes place in Australia and the time period alternates between the 1850s and 1919. After a whirlwind romance, London teashop waitress Fleur Richards cannot wait for her new husband Hugh to return from the war. When word of his death arrives on Armistice Day, Fleur learns he has left her a huge fortune.  Fleur does not want to accept the inheritance because they were not married very long but travels to his beloved home in Australia to search for his relatives who she believes deserves the fortune more than her.   She soon finds that she is the sole owner of a remote farm and a rundown curio shop full of preserved animals.  With the help of Kip, a repatriated soldier dealing with war wounds, Fleur finds herself unable to resist looking into Hugh's family's past. What she finds is a shocking story about a large opal and a woman in a green dress.  

I enjoyed the 1919 story much more than the 1850 story.  The latter seemed to drag on and on.  I did not see any connection with the former and found myself skipping pages.  As far as the woman in the green dress is concerned, there wasn't much said about her at all.  Perhaps a different title would have been best because my expectation while reading was to read about this particular woman. However, she did not have much to do with the plot. 

The Australian setting descriptions were elaborate.  I could feel like I was there myself and experience what the characters were experiencing.  It was amusing to think about a small town being larger and more developed than the eventual capital, Sydney.  The Australian landscape was in stark contrast to England where Fleur was living during the war.  As she sees more and more of Australia, Fleur remembers how Hugh described various cities and towns where he grew up.  As she travels within the country, the long commutes from one place to another contribute to the setting.  Fleur needs to travel 2 days to get from Sydney to Mogo Creek in New South Wales where her husband grew up, taking a train, a boat and walking on foot for hours in order to get there. 

Learning about the Australian landscape 100+ years ago was fun. Unfortunately, that was all that I liked about this novel.  2 out of 5 stars.

The Art Collector's Daughter

As I was reading this novel I had a sneaking suspicion that I had read it before or saw a movie based on it. It seemed familiar. A search of my blogger posts did not find anything so I continued to read.  It has an interesting plot but because it was so familiar I didn't enjoy it as much as I would have if the storyline was new to me. I guess I have read too many Nazi art theft novels.

The publisher's summary:  

As the German's advance on Paris in 1940, a young Jewish girl, Sylvie Vasseur, is sent by her father to rural Ireland to live with the Courtney family.  He also sends his valuable art collection - including a portrait of Sylvie by the renowned Mateus, Girl on a Swing.  Sylvie is education by the narcissistic elder son Nicholas Courtney when she is eighteen, but he abandons her when he discovers she is pregnant.  To avoid the inevitable social stigma, Sylvie marries his brother Peter.  In Dublin, she becomes involved in the art scene, achieving critical acclaim as a painter.  But, trapped in a loveless marriage, she continues to be obsessed with Nicholas.  Until, unexpectantly, secrets from her father's past emerge, leading her to question everything she once believed.  Shortly after, she is found drowned on a Wexford beach.

Seventeen years later, Claire Howard, struggling art historian, is hired by the Courtney family to record Sylvie's lifeworks.  Fascinated by the artist and working with Sylvie's son Sam, Claire travels between Dublin and Paris, eventually unravelling a labyrinth of deceit and lies that threaten to endanger her life.

The books is advertised as an historical thriller.  It is not a thriller but rather an historical mystery.  I don't think that the writing style meets the thriller formula. That said, the plot is intricate and sophisticated.  A plot twist at the halfway point moves the direction of the expected outcome toward a different path.  I was not expecting this twist and it added to my enjoyment of the novel.

The Irish setting interested me because I have never read a book that was set in Ireland.  When the story alternates between Ireland and Paris, the Paris setting is familiar to me as I have read many books that were set in France.  I have always loved reading about Paris.  The writing about Ireland, on the other hand, could have been more descriptive.  I was expecting to read more about the weather and the topography of the island.  What we read read about is the societal norms of the country, which I believe most readers already know about for this war era.

The characters could have been more developed, particularly Peter.  We don't really know what makes him tick.  Why did he put up with so much shunning from Sylvie? What is his personality like?  We know more about Nicholas than Sylvie's husband.  Nicholas is the usual male cad and we women know exactly what to expect from him.  Sylvie was a compelling character.  She grew from being a shy, fearful girl into a confident woman but only after discovering her artistic talents.  As an artist myself I can feel exactly what she feels when she is painting.  There is an ecstasy to the process of creating something on a canvas.

This was a good book but as I stated earlier, the familiarity of the story to other books that I have read affected my enjoyment of it. 3 out of 5 stars.

White Ivy

White Ivy is both a coming-of-age and coming to America story.  When I bought this book I knew it was about a Chinese family from the back cover blurb. The title is typical for a Chinese family saga.  However, I did not expect it to be about race and didn't figure that out until some point after the middle of the story. I was surprised to say the least. 

The story opens with some background information on the Ivy Lin character.  She was born in China and her parents  emigrated to America when she was two, leaving Ivy behind. Ivy was raised by her grandmother Meifeng who taught her to be clever by stealing. Stealing becomes second nature to her.  At the age of 5 her parents, Nan and Shen Lin, send for her and she moves to Boston. Ivy does not know them. They are strangers to her as is her newborn brother Austin. She does not get along with her parents and wishes to be with her grandmother in China.  Meifeng had been affectionate but her parents were distant. Ivy quickly learns English and becomes friends with Roux, a Romanian immigrant, and Gideon, a boy from a patrician New England family whose father is a senator.  However, she continues to steal. 

As Ivy grows she begins to receive party invitations from classmates. One weekend Gideon invites her to an overnight at his home. Ivy knows her mother would not approve and tells her parents she will be staying overnight at a girlfriend's house. The next morning when they find out she is at a boy's house, they go and pick her up, heavily embarrassing Ivy. In a few days her parents pack her up and send her back to China for the summer in order to learn to be Chinese.  Ivy spends the first 2 weeks with a cousin she never met but she loves being with. Sunrin Zhao is Western and loves to shop for expensive designer clothes. Ivy feels like she can be herself with Sunrin.  Ivy then is dropped off with her grandmother in a poor village where Ivy cannot stand to be. Ivy no longer likes living with her grandmother and is excited to travel home at the end of the summer. However, when her plane lands in Boston, her parents tell her that they moved to New Jersey. Ivy has to start over in a new city, losing all of her friends in Boston. 

When I figured out this novel was about race I was disappointed. We hear so much about race relations in the news. It's depressing. I want my reading material to be relaxing, nothing serious. I am looking for escape. While the story was well written this realization affected how I feel about it.  It seems the author is saying that stealing is a Chinese thing to do and winning at all costs is white. Ivy definitely wants to win and be successful in that white, patrician world.  She is what white Americans call a "model minority." I am sure there's much, much more the author intended but this is the main idea I got. 

4 out of 5 stars.

In a Dark, Dark Wood

Mystery novelist Leonora  Shaw lives a solitary but comfortable life in London.  One day while checking her email she finds an invitation to a hen weekend for Clare Cavendish, a friend from childhood whom she hasn't spoken to or seen for ten years.  After some urging by a mutual friend, Nora reluctantly agrees to go and finds herself at a mysterious house with a group of near-strangers, deep in the forest far from the city.  Quickly, old rivalries and new relationships bubble to the surface and the weekend turns violent, leaving Nora battered and bruised in a hospital bed.  As she struggles to reconstruct the sequence of events that brought her there, secrets emerge about her past and her present that force her to question everything she knows about herself and everyone she has ever loved.

While I was aware of what a hendo, or hen weekend, is before reading the book, it probably would have been helpful to American readers to have this British term defined in the beginning of the story.  You basically know from the start that inviting your fiancé's ex-girlfriend to your hendo will not have a good outcome.  However, the advertisement of this book as a psychological thriller falls short. It just wasn't suspenseful and during the first half of the book there were a few boring sequences.  I was not engaged until the latter third of the plot.  

The assumed wooded setting, taken from the title, is not the true setting.  Most of the events take place in a house owned by a relative of one of the characters.  While the house is located in the woods, all of the action takes place inside.  The plot is revealed through dialogue, both inner and spoken, from the characters.  Speaking of the characters, only one was interesting to me and she was a foil for the main characters.  All in all, this was an OK book, nothing to write home about.

3 out of 5 stars.

One by One

 

One by One is a modern locked room mystery, offering technology with old-fashioned suspense.  Locked room mysteries consist of a key set of ingredients: a fixed location, a fixed set of characters and a murder or two.  There is a striking aspect to this novel which I doubt the author intended as it must have been written before its 2020 publication date.  The characters, as well as the readers, are confined in isolation.  Sound like a pandemic? 

The publisher's summary of the plot:

"When the co-founder of Snoop, a trendy London based tech startup, organizes a weeklong trip for the team in the French Alps, it starts out as a corporate retreat like any other:  PowerPoint presentations and strategy sessions broken up by mandatory bonding on the slopes.  But as soon as one shareholder sends the agenda by pushing a lucrative but contentious buyout offer, tensions simmer and loyalties are tested. The storm brewing inside the chalet is no match for the one outside, however, and a devastating avalanche leaves the group cut off from all access to the outside world. Even worse, one Snooper hasn't made it back from the slopes when the avalanche hit.  As each hour cases without any sign of rescue, panic mounts, the chalet grows colder, and the group dwindles further . . . one by one."

I loved this book! There were a few hiccups, though. There are nine major characters in the novel.  Initially, it was hard to remember who was who. Once I got them all firmly set in my mind, I could not put the book down. The suspense was riveting. Another hiccup is that the story is told from the point of view of two characters. I could not tell the difference between them because their personalities were similar. I am not sure why the author wrote the story in this way but these points of view didn't make a difference in how the plot unfolded. However, the suspense was ratcheted up high and it carried the novel. 

I will definitely be reading more of Ware.  4 out of 5 stars.

What's in a Name 2021

I have participated in this challenge off and on over the years.  However, it was fun this year so I am rejoining the challenge in 2021.  The challenge is hosted once again by Carolina Book Nook. Of course, the challenge runs the calendar year.  Any format of books is acceptable.  However, you cannot use one book for more than one category. As usual, there are 6 categories of words that must in the title of every book you read for the challenge.  The 2021 categories are:  

1)      One/1

2)      Doubled word , ie, in a dark, dark wood

3)      Reference to outer space

4)      Possessive noun

5)      Botanical word

6)      Article of clothing 

The possessive noun category will be difficult for me as I will need to think what a possessive noun is.  Perhaps I should try to knock off that category ASAP so I don't have to think about it all year.