The Christmas Boutique

The Christmas Boutique is an Elm Creek Quilts novel. This 21 book cozy series returns after a seven year hiatus and the inside cover blurb summarizes the book as follows:

"Just weeks before Christmas, severe wintry weather damages the church hall hosting the Christmas Boutique-an annual sale of handcrafted gifts and baked goods that support the county food pantry. Determined to save the fundraiser Sylvia Bergstrom Compson offers to hold the event at Elm Creek Manor, her ancestral family estate and summertime home to Elm Creek Quilt Camp.

In the spirit of the season Sylvia and the Elm Creek Quilters begin setting up market booths in the ballroom and decking the halls with beautiful handmade holiday quilts. Each of the quilters chooses a favorite work to display, a special creation evoking memories of holidays past and dreams of Christmases yet to come. But while the Elm Creek Quilters work tirelessly to make sure the Christmas Boutique happens, it may take a holiday miracle or two to make it the smashing success they want it to be."

More than half of the writing was backstory, which means of course that there wasn't much to this plot.  The prior 3 or 4 books in the series were also predominantly backstory so I have to wonder if the author  has run out of new ideas for this series. In the interim since the last book was published the author wrote several historical fiction novels. They were OK. She excels, however, in writing cozies so I think she should consider writing another cozy series.

The characters in the series are fascinating but I think the most interesting ones were from the beginning of the series who have now passed away. The series is supposed to be about the Bergstrom family but only one member is still alive and she is not the main character.  In fact, there really isn't a main character. There is a group of women who make up the core of characters in the series.

Quilting was not as prominent in this installment of the series. I am a quilter and would have loved to have read more of the usual so-and-so selected such-and-such pattern to sew and the sentimental reasons why the selection was made.

While I have written some negative comments that does not mean that I didn't enjoy the book. I did. It was nice to get reacquainted with characters who seem like friends to me. Having a significant amount of background is not bad given that there has been 7 years since the last book in the series was published. I had forgotten much of each character's past and needed to be reminded.

4 out of 5 stars.

The President is Missing

Former President Bill Clinton co-authored this political mystery with James Patterson. It is eerily similar to Clinton's presidency.

The synopsis from the publisher:

"As an unprecedented cyberterrorist attack cripples the United States, the president must face an unthinkable truth:

There is a traitor in the White House.
His life is in danger.

And the only way to stay ahead of the shadowy forces tearing at the heart of America is to go off grid, leaving behind his presidential protection. The president must go missing and he may never resurface... Set over the course of three days that shake a nation to its core, The President is Missing
sheds a stunning light on the inner workings and vulnerabilities of the American government."

I expected alot from this book. I heard many friends say they couldn't wait to read it. If I was using my brain I would have realized that no one said anything else about the book.  At the midway point in reading this novel I read a few reviews of it because I was disappointed with it. Most of the reviews were negative. It finally clicked in my brain that the problem was the plot.

In The President is Missing there is something that never happens...the president never goes missing. Why this title was chosen is a conundrum.  The main character, the president, was basically Bill Clinton. This president faced an impeachment, was the former governor of a small southern state, met his wife in the law library at Yale law school, hired his best friend whom he met in kindergarten to work for him in the White House and failed to capture a foreign terrorist. As these details about the character unfolded, I was disappointed. I'm not sure why. Perhaps it just wasn't creative to use the author's background for a character.

The plot wasn't believable. First of all, I kept waiting for the president to disappear. Second, there were several groups of commandos shooting characters and I couldn't tell who the good guys were and who the bad guys were. The story was confusing. Third, there is no way in hell the Secret Service would allow a president to go off grid and meet someone who is probably a terrorist without protection. In the book the president orders the Secret Service to not follow him and also orders his physician to not treat him for an illness which is about to kill him because the drugs he needs will cloud his judgment.

The story was written with suspense to keep you reading. While I was bored and disappointed at the halfway point, I kept thinking that there was more to this story than I could see. Also, with the synopsis telling me that there is a traitor in the White House, I expected to read about this traitor early in the book. The reader doesn't read about it until the conclusion of the story. Why the build up in the media about a traitor when there's no build up in the story? Finally, it would have been nice for the authors to have written a Note to the Reader describing their writing collaboration.  Who contributed what? I wonder how much writing Clinton contributed to the novel, if any. 

Book of the Month: September

My best book for the month of September is Saving Meghan. This medical thriller was so captivating that it kept me up all night until I finished reading it.  Meghan Gerard has an undiagnosed illness and her mother loves, really loves, taking her to doctors and screaming at them if they don't order tests or additional physician consultations. Meghan's father Carl thinks his wife is nuts. His wife's mother had munchausen's and he thinks she has it too.  So does White Hospital where Meghan is a frequent patient. When the hospital tries to do an intervention, the story intensifies.

Saving Meghan

Daniel Palmer has written another amazing medical mystery with Saving Meghan. With this novel he examines the illness called munchausen's by proxy.

The Gerard family is falling apart due to daughter Meghan's undiagnosed illness and her mother Becky's constant demand for her to see new doctors and have more tests. Husband Carl doesn't seem to believe that his daughter is really sick.  Meghan, a former high school athlete, is now homebound with nausea, cramping, fevers, fatigue and dizziness. However, every medical test keeps coming back normal until the family meets Dr. Zach Fisher who thinks she has a mitochondrial disease. She begins treatment but White Hospital is considering an intervention. They think Becky is intentionally making Meghan sick.

This novel was one heck of a page turner! I had to stay up until 2 am to finish it this morning. The plot moved very quickly and each chapter ended with a bang so I had to continue reading. I was familiar with Munchausen's so I knew what to expect from the mother's character. However, the daughter's character surprised me. By age 15 she had already learned what made her mother happy so Meghan was somewhat complicit in acting out her illness. I had no idea that was normal in these situations.

The plot had incredible twists and plenty of suspense but the final resolution of the story caught me off guard. I wasn't expecting it and I don't think it fit the story well. Still, it was a fun read and I am looking forward to Palmer's next novel. 

A Far Horizon

This is the second book in the Broken Kingdom Series about the English Civil War of the 1640s where Charles 1 is on the throne with his Catholic wife Henrietta. A Far Horizon primarily is about three women trying to survive on their own during the war.  Caroline Pendleton leaves her home for London after her husband is killed in battle. Lucy Hay is a widow who takes care of the two youngest royal children while their mother is in exile in France. Queen Henrietta is always on the run from her husband's enemies.

The book had a slow start. I had a difficult time getting interested in it as I couldn't find a storyline. The characters were reacting to news about the war and that's about it. Most of the historical characters bored me and there were many of them to keep track of. However, at the midpoint the story picked up. This is where the author used created characters to enhance her story. These characters were appealing and they carried the book.

I can't figure out why Vantrease wrote this kind of book. It's drastically different from her historical mysteries which I think were fantastic. I hope she returns to writing the mysteries because that is where she shines.

The Concubine's Tattoo

The Concubine's Tattoo is the fourth Sano Ichiro mystery by Laura Joh Rowland. It takes place in Tokyo in 1690 under the reign of Shogun Tokugawa Tsunayoshi.

In this installment of the series Sano gets married to the feisty Reiko who wants to  help him with his criminal investigations. Before the wedding celebrations can begin, the body of the shogun's favorite concubine, Harume, is found dead. The shogun decides that he needs Sano to begin investigating this death ASAP. The honeymoon is abruptly cancelled as Sano and his assistant Hirata begin their work to determine how the concubine died.

I was surprised at the amount of sex in this book. Prior books in the series did not have any sex.  This one had explicit descriptions of sexual encounters, including kinky sex and gay sex. Every character was described having sex. Even the concubine's tattoo is in a sensitive area. You don't expect that in historical fiction.

Aside from that, the author presented a colorful picture of life in the women's quarters at Edo Castle. It was noisy, vengeful, had rich appointments and extravagant kimonos but the women were kept behind screens so that they would not be seen by men. My impression was that they were prisoners. I don't know if that is what the author intended but wealth never makes up for freedom.

Sano wanted a compliant wife but Reiko was raised to be independent and refused to sleep with him until he relented in making her a work partner. I didn't see this as plausible. It just wasn't Sano's character to be anything but a traditional samurai. In prior books he never had thoughts about treating women differently than society dictated. It didn't fit his character to suddenly jump into being a women's rights samurai.

The investigation and resolution of the murder was outstanding. There were plenty of suspects and red herrings. However, as I write this review I cannot escape my overall impression that I just read a romance novel, not a historical fiction story.  It's romance in feudal Japan. When I bought this book I expected to read the 20+ novels in this series.  Now I am not so sure. I like history, not romance.

Pandemic

Pandemic is Robin Cook's 36th medical mystery novel. The plot was inspired by a 2012 article in Science magazine concerning bacterial immunity. In his Preface the author stated that the article also introduced the world to a biologically active chimeric molecule called CRISPR/CAS9.  This molecule can be custom-tailored to alter genes in plants and animals.  With CRISPR/CAS9, any gene whose sequence is known can be replaced, removed, turned on and turned off and this can be done by anyone, even a high schooler in his garage. You don't need to be a molecular biologist to know how to do this. Therein lies one of the dangers. Another danger is that this technology is unregulated.

The story opens with a woman suddenly dying on a New York subway. Medical Examiner Jack Stapleton performs her autopsy and is astonished to find that she had a recent heart transplant but was not on any immunosuppressive drugs to prevent rejection of the heart. Her DNA also matched the DNA of the transplanted heart which would be impossible unless it came from a twin. A lung virus is the expected cause of death and the woman's short period of illness is reminiscent of the 1918 flu epidemic.

With troubles at home that he wants to avoid, Stapleton throws himself into this case. He tries to identify the woman by visiting a  tattoo parlor to determine the origin of her unusual tattoo of a puzzle piece with the name Helen on it. He locates the hospital that performed her transplant and is led to a Chinese billionaire who owns a hospital and research facility that uses CRISPR/CAS9. Then, a second woman ends up in his morgue with a puzzle piece tattoo with the name Carol in the middle.

I loved this book. It was fast paced and the search to identify the cause of death was interesting. When the plot came to what the Chinese billionaire was doing with his transplant business, I was astonished that anyone would even think about doing what he was doing. I won't be a spoiler here but it was shocking.

The relationship between the two main characters, Jack Stapleton and his wife Laurie Montgomery, was quite different from prior novels. Laurie is now Jack's boss. She has no problem yelling at him. He cannot handle it though. Jack is usually the dominant person in this relationship and this mixup feels awkward. To make things worse, they have a new child who was just diagnosed as being autistic. I am not sure where these two characters go from here. Is this 11th book featuring them the last one?

4 out of 5 stars.

Mistress of the Throne

Mistress of the Throne is a novel in the Mughal Intrigues series by Ruchir Gupta.  It was published in 2014.  The author has written several books on anesthesiology as that is his day job but I have not seen any other books in this series being published by him yet.  The main character is Jahanara, daughter of Shah Jahan and Mumtaz Jahan, who is appointed as Empress of India after her mother dies.

In the opening pages Jahanara's family unit is held together by her mother. When her mother dies in childbirth, the sibling rivalry among her brothers becomes extreme.  Dara, the oldest son and heir to the throne is a liberal who accepts all religions in India. Another brother, Aurangazeb, is a strict Muslim who believes that it is Allah's will to destroy Hindu and Christian buildings. While her father remarried, he appointed the 17 year old Jaharana as Empress of India instead of his new wife, giving her broad political power. While Jahanara used her political powers to rule the country, her primary objective was to keep her brothers from fighting each other.

The setting descriptions were delicious, from the elaborate meals and the clothing to the palace decor. The building of the Taj Mahal was a prominent secondary plot.

The plight of women in Mughal India was a major theme. Female children of the emporer were not allowed to marry. If a woman was chosen to marry an emporer or an empire's son and he rejected her, she had to spend the rest of her life with the concubines, unloved. Descriptions of life in the zenana where all of the women in the palace lived abounded throughout the book. They played alot of games with each other as they tried to get power in the kingdom.

I loved this book and wish there was a sequel. I rate it 5 out of 5 stars!

Courting Mr. Lincoln

Courting Mr. Lincoln is a fictionalized account of Mary Todd and Abe Lincoln's courtship and eventual marriage.  However, the story alternates between the point of view of Mary and Joshua Speed, Lincoln's best friend and roommate.  Can I presume that they were both courting Lincoln since they are both telling the story?

While Speed and Lincoln had a deep bond of friendship, there is a hint in one chapter that Speed may have wanted more from Lincoln. It was unclear whether Lincoln understood that or considered extending the relationship. He seemed to waver at the thought but my impression was that that Lincoln just had something else on his mind. He always had something else on his mind.

Mary Todd captivated Lincoln with her political intellect.  If Speed was ever really a romantic interest for Lincoln, Speed could not compete with Mary's brain. Politics is what Mary and Abe had in common and its what their relationship was based on.

I think Speed was gay.  When he eventually married, his wife did not want to have sex with him. He was OK with that arrangement. Twenty years later when Speed and Lincoln were again together, traveling to his inauguration, it was mentioned that he and his wife still had no children.

This was an enjoyable, fast read. I am curious how much of the book is fiction, especially the part about Mary's political instincts.  It would make sense that 2 people with nothing else in common would want to be together for a joint political future. I know plenty such couples today.  Politicians look for spouses like that and politically astute people are attracted to politicians.

5 out of 5 stars!

The Bookworm

The Bookworm is a fantastical thriller set in both WWII and the modern era. It provides an interesting theory on why Adolph Hitler decided not to invade England after the Blitz and instead send his army east toward Russia.

Lara Menelova Klimt "the bookworm" is a geohistorian.  She studies how geography determines a people's history, rather than its politics.  When not teaching classes at Moscow State University, Lara spends time in the Osobyi Arkhiv reviewing Nazi documents and listening to Dictaphone recordings of the dictated letters of Hitler, Himmler and others in the Third Reich.  One day after class she is approached by a stranger who hands her a shopping bag full of six Dictaphone cylinders for her to listen to and tells her that they have the testimony of one man who started the Great Patriotic War. Then the stranger abruptly leaves.

The man giving his testimony is none other than the actor Noel Coward.  In real life he worked as a British spy during WWII.  The transcripts also show a young John Kennedy coming up with an idea to trick Hitler into invading Russia instead of England. This trick, of course, protects the U. S. because if England fell then the U. S. would be next to be attacked by Hitler. The trick? Have a fortuneteller say that Hitler would be successful in invading Russia. The fortuneteller?  Nostradamus. Hitler was known to be a mystic and the idea was that if a page in a book could be created with a Nostradamus rhyme to convince Hitler of his success that he would decide not to invade England. It is a historical fact that after the Blitz Hitler did not invade England. No one knows why he decided not to invade. He made several similar decisions that his generals opposed and they resulted in his defeat.

The book goes back and forth between WWII and the current year.  There is a G20 summit in Moscow going on and a new American president who is loud mouthed and a womanizer with a wife from Slovenia is present. Lara has been snagged to be the moderator at a townhall meeting with the American president and the Russian people.  After discovering a plot that he has to drill oil in Alaska,  which will have a disastrous effect on Russia's economy, she comes up with a plan to expose it.

Kudos to the author for his creativity in devising this plot.  It may seem fantastical but it sure was entertaining.  I was totally absorbed in this book from the first page.  It has been a long time since that has happened to me and it felt sooooo good.  Adding in a Trump-like president and Nostradamus in one book was a genius idea.  I was laughing all the way through it.  As far as suspension of belief is concerned, the only thing that bothered me was having John Kennedy come up with the trick.  I don't know why he had to be in the book.  It did not seem very natural because he was in college at the time and had his girlfriend, Marlene Dietrich, with him.

The Bookworm is Mitch Silver's second book and I will have to check out his In Secret Service soon.  What I would love to see from him is another book featuring another made-up Nostradamus rhyme for another politician.  I just thought this was hilarious.  

The Third Daughter

I received an advanced review copy of this book through the Early Reviewer's Program at Librarything.  Talia Carner's The Third Daughter is a fictionalized account of the hundreds of thousands of Eastern European Jewish girls ensnared into sexual slavery in South America in the 1890s.

The story begins with 14 year old Batya and her family pushing their belongings along a road away from their village in Russia. The village has just been burned down in a pogrom and her father believes they can eventually reach the Pale of Settlement and board a ship to America.  Her mother knows better. They have no money for tickets for the ship.  Upon reaching the Pale the family is offered temporary work at a tavern. They feel lucky. They finally have a roof over their heads and food to eat after weeks of travel.

While at the tavern, a wealthy Jewish man from America, Reb Moskowitz,  passes through on his way to his home village to find a bride. When he sees Batya he falls in love and asks her father to marry her. Batya's father agrees to the marriage because Moskowitz is wealthy and can provide a wonderful life for his daughter. He is thinking, however, that the family can eventually join them in America. Batya does not want to marry him but goes along with the plan. To her surprise when they are about to board the ship for America Moskowitz leaves her with an assistant and stays in Russia. He has still not formally married her but has raped her twice because "he cannot resist such a beautiful bride." Of course, the assistant treats her the same while sailing for America. When the ship docks in Buenos Aires Batya realizes that she is in South America, not the country that she hoped to emigrate to.  She quickly understands that she must live as a prostitute for Reb Moskowitz in order to survive. To resist meant torture and/or death by the powerful pimp association Zwi Migdal whose members included politicians and police officers.

The story was only graphic enough to get the point across to the reader what was happening to Batya and the other girls in her situation. It was not overly graphic sexually. The author added in characters from real life such as Baron Maurice de Hirsch who founded the Jewish Colonization Association in order to repatriate and educate Russian Jews.  The pimp association, Zwi Migdal, actually existed in Buenos Aires. Members of Zwi Migdal would travel to Russia, Ukraine and other Eastern European countries to kidnap girls and force them into prostitution. Most of the girls ended up in Buenos Aires. If they tried to flee they were killed. Even if they stayed the life expectancy was no more than 10 years.  These girls were kidnapped around age 14 and died by age 25. At 25 they were considered too old to prostitute and put out on the streets where they starved to death.

This book tells a not too well known part of Jewish history that occurred in the 1890s to 1910.  It will be published next month on September 5, 2019. I highly recommend it. While it is a horrifying story, because it actually happened to approximately 150,000 - 200,000 girls I feel that we owe it to them to read their story.

Status of Reading Challenges

Since life is getting in the way of my reading and since we are at the end of July, I thought that I would write a post about where I stand with the nine reading challenges that I signed up for earlier in the year.

For the Read it Again, Sam Challenge 4 books are required to be read.  I have read 2:  Siddartha and Winesburg, Ohio.  The other 2 are just sitting on the bookshelf waiting to be read but I am just not interested in them anymore.  I thought that I would want to reread some of the old classics I had read in high school but they are no longer calling my name.

I have not even begun the Memoir Reading Challenge or the Series Challenge although three graphic novels could have met the requirements for the Series Challenge.  They were all written and drawn by Dan Daughterty and from his Beardo series: Til Debt Do Us Part, Self-Employee of the Month and The Miracle of Creation.  I was expecting to read Laura Joh Rowland's Sano Ichiro Novels for this challenge but haven't started any of them yet. 

I have met the requirements for the Library Love Challenge.  12 books were required and I have read 19:

Fear 

Mememto Mori 

The Sisters of Versailles

The Rivals of Versailles 

The Splendor Before the Dark 

The Enemies of Versailles 

The Gown 

Tombland 

Harvest of Secrets 

The Malta Exchange 

Island of Sea Women 

Kid Gloves 

Broken Bone China 

A Plain Vanilla Murder 

The Satapur Moonstone 

The Bengal Identity 

The Persian Always Meows Twice 

A Body in Barcelona 

The Queen's Promise 

The Creativity Reading Challenge had no set requirements concerning the number of books to be read.  I have read and reviewed 6 books:  Drawing Comics, Painting Light in Colored Pencil, The Fleece and Fiber Sourcebook, Botanical Portraits with Colored Pencil, Drawing Birds with Colored Pencil, and Treasury of Crazy Quilt Stitches.  I am considering this challenge to be met.

In the My Kind of Mystery Reading Challenge there was no required number of books to read either. However, I have read and reviewed 9 books to date:

Broken Bone China

The Malta Exchange

Harvest of Secrets

A Plain Vanilla Murder

The Satapur Moonstone

The Bengal Identity

A Body in Barcelona

The Persian Always Meows Twice

Murder by Misrule

I have met the requirements of the Historical Fiction Reading Challenge but plan on reading more books for the challenge.  While 10 books were required to be read, I have read and reviewed 13. Many of them overlap with other challenges:

Mememto Mori

The Sisters of Versailles

The Splendor Before the Dark

The Gown

The Rivals of Versailles

The Enemies of Versailles

Murder by Misrule

Tombland

The Gondola Maker

The Weight of Ink

The Island of Sea Women

The Satapur Moonstone

The Queen's Promise

I have been rather slow in meeting the requirements of the 12th Annual Graphic Novel and Manga Challenge.  12 books are required for the level that I signed up for and I have only read 6.  The problem is that my favorite authors put out books every 2 or 3 years and last year was the year that most of them published a book.  The books that I read and reviewed are:

Til Debt Do Us Part

Self Employee of the Month

The Miracle of Creation

Kid Gloves

Where We Live

Jane

Finally, for the Christian Reading Challenge 12 books are required to be read.  I knew when I signed up for this challenge that I would not meet it.  However, I thought that I would do better than the three books that I have currently read so far. In fact, there are 4 books that I have already bought that I just don't want to read anymore.  I have read Irresistible, 7 Days that Divide the World and Leading Lives that Matter.  

So, what comes next?  I feel that my interest in reading is waning again as it did about three years ago.  I don't know if it is just because life is getting hard this month and the interest will quickly return or whether I will go back into a lengthy slump.  Only time will tell but in the meantime, I need to return my 5 library books back to the public library because I am not going to read them any time soon.  

The Queen's Promise

This is the first book in the Broken Kingdom Series by Brenda Rickman Vantrease.  It takes place in 1642 England. The book is quite different from Vantrease's earlier books. It is a strictly historical fiction novel while her prior books, i.e., The Illuminator and The Mercy Seller, were historical mysteries.

The book opens with Henrietta, the wife of King Charles, leaving England for Amsterdam with their 10 year old daughter.  The purpose is to marry her off.  However, the real reason is the Queen's unpopularity due to her Catholic faith. Henrietta leaves behind her three youngest children. Shortly after her departure, the Duke of Buckingham is executed for doing the King's bidding in Catholic Ireland. Charles goes on the run to set up an army but has his two youngest children cared for by Buckingham's mistress, Lucy Hay who is also a close friend of the Queen. Hay runs the fanciest salon in London and is a Protestant like the King. She agrees that she will not teach the Catholic mass to the children and is regularly visited by the King's enemies in Parliament and questioned about it.

This was a short book, only 230 pages, but it had a fast pace. I was kept interested enough in the plot to read the book in one sitting. This was a pleasant surprise given my dissatisfaction with some of the books that I have read in the past two months.

While the title is The Queen's Promise, Lucy Hay is the main character in the book. The author has written her to be a sympathetic character even though she cannot be without a lover. It seems strange that a woman who can't stop herself from committing adultery is the sympathetic character but she is. The reader doesn't get to know Queen Henrietta much. Hay's strength is prominent as she tries to protect the children from the warring factions in England who would love to use them as tokens in their war against the king. While the Queen eventually returns to England she must disguise herself. Her character as a queen was not prominent or interesting.

4 out of 5 stars.