Book of the Month - July

I have two favorite books for this month. I could not select just one. Both books stayed with me for days after reading them. Singapore Sapphire and The Stone Doors are fantastic reads that satisfy the your reading soul. Both books take place in settings that are new to me in historical fiction. Singapore and Iceland could not be more different but it was nice to read something other than English, French or Italian stories.

I Know Your Secrets and Becoming RBG were close seconds which makes the month of July one of my better months for reading. Now that I am back to work full time I won't be able to read as much as I have since March when the coronavirus shutdown began. It's been a fun time. I have read 57 books as well as finishing several art projects. 

I Know Your Secret

Ruth Heald has written a gripping psychological thriller with her 4th novel I Know Your Secret.  It is a tale of two women, Danielle and Beth. Danielle is separated from her husband Peter and Beth is her marriage counselor.  Beth is also separated from her husband Richard and has custody of their young son Charlie.  The chapters alternate between Danielle's story and Beth's story. Both women have secrets, hence the title of the book.

The publisher's summary:

"She thinks she knows me.  She believes my marriage is falling apart at the seams, that my husband can barely look me in the eyes.  She thinks I'm desperate for a baby, that my longing for a family keeps me up at night.  As much as I hate to admit it, all of this is true.  She thinks I listen to her advice, that I care about her opinion.  That couldn't be further from the truth. Because she has no idea who I am, she has no clue that I know everything.  I know her secret. I know that she did the unforgivable. I know how many lives she ruined.  I know exactly what she did.  And I'm here for her."

Revenge is sweet. This slowly evolving story becomes unputdownable as each chapter unveils how twisted these two ladies are.  The tension is addictive. This story has just as many twists as the ladies have.  Upon finishing the book I felt that I had missed many clues and need to reread it to fully appreciate them as well as appreciate how twisted the characters are. The author created amazing characters in Danielle and Beth. Their husband's had such small roles that it is hard to consider them secondary characters. I Know Your Secret is all about the women and they are both strong enough to carry the plot.

This story is one for the movie producers. 5 out of 5 stars.

The Stone Doors

Brendan Baker's Stoneborn trilogy begins with this novel in the year 1013. It is an Icelandic tale of love, loyalty and law.  After finishing this fantastic tale I tried to find the next two books in the series. With The Stone Doors publication date of 2016 I expected to find them. Sadly, there are none.

The story begins with Kvelduf Thorbjornsson and his young son Tryggvi working on their Brauoavatn horse farm. Tryggvi's horse Orri was beloved by him so when 2 men approached the farm and were seen stabbing Orri, Kvelduf ran to the horse to try to save him. Unfortunately, Orri was dead and in an angry fit Kvelduf killed the man who stabbed Orri. The other man ran away in order to save himself. The dead man was buried on the farm and Kvelduf met with his gooi, Gunnar Ingolfson, to discuss whether he broke the island's law. Gunnar said that technically the law was broken but promised to help him if an accusation was made against him at the next annual Althing. Althing was the young country's Parliament where every citizen was required to attend. Keeping a low profile at Althing, Kvelduf felt that he was safe from prosecution. However, after Tryggvi got involved in a fight he and his father became noticed and an accusation was made against Kvelduf. Gunnar represented him. If found guilty he could be banished from Iceland and lose all of his possessions.

I loved this story. It was so engaging that I could not put it down and read it in one sitting. The pace was fast. The characters were strong. In fact, the secondary characters were just as compelling as the primary characters. Of course, the beauty of the Iceland setting was wonderful to read about.
While the dialogue was written in contemporary language, there were a few words that I had to look up in the dictionary as I was reading. They were mostly used in setting descriptions. This story has remained in my mind after reading it. It was difficult to begin another book. I tried 4 new books but abandoned them quickly and worked on art projects instead.

5 out of 5 stars.

Paying the Land

Paying the Land is a phrase that means to offer something to the land. It is also the title of Joe Sacco's newest reportage comic about the history of the indigenous tribes of Canada's Northwest Territories during the twentieth-century.  The Canadian government pursued a policy of taking the Indian out of the child by sending young children to residential schools far from their homes for 10 months of every year. This is also a story concerning extracting oil from native lands at their expense. By getting the tribes to accept money or modern conveniences they became less dependent on their natural environment and more dependent on the government for survival.

Sacco traveled to northern Canada to interview members of the Deni tribe, a First Nations tribe who primarily live in the Northwest Territories. He wanted to find out why they were disengaged from their culture. Fracking is the main issue addressed in the book. It has divided the tribe. While it brings in jobs and money, fracking destroys the environment. Another issue is alcoholism and drug addiction. Those who attended the residential schools no longer fit in with their families or the tribe anymore. The result is excessive drinking and an increased death rate from it.

Paying the Land is another great graphic novel from Joe Sacco. 5 out of 5 stars.

The Low Road

The Low Road is the fifth book in A. D. Scott's Highland Gazette Mystery Series. It takes place in the 1950s in Scotland. I have read all of Ms. Scott's earlier books in the series and loved them. However, The Low Road falls short with a poorly written plot and heavy usage of the Scottish language that made it unreadable.

The series amateur sleuth is Joanne Ross, a reporter for the Highland Gazette. In this installment of the series she is inactive. Joanne is recovering from brain surgery and has nothing to do with the investigation of the murder. Her boss and fiance John McAllister was the sleuth. The murder did not occur until page 200 of this 328 page book. The first clue came on page 250.  With no action and every page heavy with Scottish sayings, The Low Road was awful reading. I have to wonder if A. D. Scott actually wrote it. The writing style was different from earlier books and she did not use much Scottish language in them.

For the third time in this blog I am rating a book 0 out of 5 stars. 

The Crow's Call

It's been awhile since I have read Wanda Brunstetter.  I have been wanting to read something different and thought that an Amish mystery would do the trick.  The Crow's Call is Book 1 in the Amish Greenhouse Mystery series which I think is going to be a trilogy.

The publisher's summary:

"When Vernon King, his son, and son-in-law are involved in a terrible accident, three women are left to cope with their deaths, as they become the sole providers of the family they have left.  The women's only income must come from the family greenhouse, but someone seems to be trying to force them out of business.   

Amy King has just lost her father and brother and her mother needs her to help run the family's greenhouse.  It doesn't seem fair to ask her to leave a job she loves, when there is still a sister and brother to help.  But Sylvia is also greiving for her husband while left to raise three children, and Henry, just out of school, is saddled with all the jobs his father and older brother used to do.  As Amy assumes her new role, she also asks Jared Riehl to put their courtship on hold."

The book has an interesting plot but I feel that the pace was rather slow.  There are only so many pages a reader can stand of the characters doing the same things over and over. Amy was always having angry thoughts about her lazy brother Henry and Henry was always angry over nothing in particular. This went on for over 100 pages. I became bored but kept reading because I wanted to know how Amy and Jared resolved their relationship problems. Also, if there had been a few more twists and turns in the plot the book would have been more interesting and there probably would have been a lot less of the character's angry thoughts. Providing the reader with a resolution of the vandalism of the greenhouse would have been nice since it was mentioned in the blurb.

3 out of 5 stars. 

Last Wool and Testament

This is the first cozy that I have read in a few years.  I got tired of their simplistic plots and Stepford characters. Because this book is about weavers and I am a weaver I decided it was a good time to try a cozy again.  I was not disappointed. Last Wool and Testament was fantastic.

The story opens with amateur sleuth Kath Rutledge traveling from Illinois to Blue Plum, Tennessee to attend her grandmother Ivy McClellan's burial.  Kath has planned to stay for 2 weeks so that she can decide what to do with her grandmother's home and yarn shop business both of which she inherited. When she arrives at her grandmother's home for her stay, Kath finds that the lock has been changed. She is quickly handed a piece of paper stating that her grandmother and now Kath owes back rent for the property.  She is also told that the home and The Weaver's Cat, a yarn shop, are now owned by someone else.  Kath meets with the TGIF - thank goodness it's fiber - group for advice.  The TGIF members meet regularly at the shop to work on fiber projects.  Kath also meets with her grandmother's attorney, Homer Wood, for assistance with the estate.  Wood puts her off several times before he finally tells her that her grandmother was a suspect in a murder.  The murdered man's relative now claims to own both of her grandmother's properties.  Kath works with her new friends from TGIF to determine what is going on in Blue Plum.

I loved this book.  However, in the beginning I had a difficult time determining what character was speaking.  It finally dawned on me that a ghost is one of the characters.  All I had to do was look at the cover of the book and see that this new cozy series is a haunted yarn shop mystery.  When I finally figured out which characters were speaking, the reading was smooth sailing.  The ghost character began to bother me after a few chapters though.  I just am not in to ghost stories.  I wonder if the identity of this ghost will be a recurring character or if there will be different ghosts in subsequent books in the series.

Solving the mystery of who murdered the dead man was thrilling.  Two more murders occurred later in the plot and it was interesting to watch Kath try to connect them to the first murder.  There were plenty of red herrings and twists in the plot to satisfy me.  The writing was crisp making Last Wool a great introduction to a new cozy series.

4 out of 5 stars.