Review: "Same Time Next Year" by Tessa Bailey

Same Time Next Year by Tessa Bailey
Published December 2023 via Amazon Original Stories
★★★

Sumner needs a visa, and fast. Britta doesn't need anything, but as long as there are no strings attached—and with a payout to sweeten the deal—she's willing to be Sumner's wife...on paper. For now.

I've only read one of Tessa Bailey's books, and I picked up this novella partly to refresh my memory and see if I should read more of her full-length works. And...well, I'm not saying never again, but this isn't really my cup of tea. 2.5 stars. Let's talk about book length, let's talk about sex, and let's talk about getting an American visa.

Book length: Again, this is a novella. That's great in some respects: it's a quick story, readable in one or two sittings, with a focus on the two characters. But...in other respects this feels like Bailey took an idea for a novel and just left out the side plots and characters to focus on the main characters (and the main characters in bed), and that's not generally the strategy I'd suggest for a novella. Makes me wonder whether a full-length version of this wasn't going where the author had hoped...or whether this is meant as a teaser of sorts for longer books set in the same world.

Sex: When I read It Happened One Summer, I found that the sex was a bit too oh-baby-oh-baby-do-me-harder-oh-baby for my personal reading preferences, and here it's kind of...that on speed. If you like your romance-novel sex explicit, dirty, and full of screaming that should (but inexplicably doesn't) wake the neighbors, this might be one for you. It's still not so much my thing, but I wouldn't be altogether surprised if at some point (in the future or in the past; I haven't gone through her backlist) Bailey opted to eschew the whole 'plot' part of things and write erotica.

Getting an American visa: Don't take your green card advice—or time line—from this book. It is at best wildly optimistic and at worst involved not even so much as a basic Google search of research. This is another place where I might have preferred this to be a full-length novel, as in a longer work it could have made a ton of sense as an extended conflict: naïve hero and heroine thinking they can be married, green-carded, and divorced with nary a whiff of suspicion in a year...only to find out that the process will take much longer than that, and either they'll have to stay married for (potentially) years or Sumner will have to give up his green card dreams. But in the shorter version it just...takes quite a lot of willful ignorance of reality and bypassing of hard questions.

Thanks to the author and publisher for providing a review copy through NetGalley.

Review: "A Night Divided" by Jennifer Nielsen

A Night Divided by Jennifer Nielsen
Published 2015 via Scholastic
★★

In East Berlin, Gerta is living a life divided: her father and one of her two brothers were in West Berlin when the wall went up, and she and her mother and other brother are at the mercy of the communist state—and the Stasi. It's been years, and though Gerta yearns for a freer life, she cannot imagine that it will ever be possible.

Until she sees her father on a viewing platform on the other side of the wall—and he signals to her. Dig.

I read this not long after Over and Out, and if I take anything away from the two stories it's the viewing platforms that were available in West Berlin to peek over into the East—West Berlin was landlocked, but East Berlin was the zoo. (The realities and mechanics of the Berlin Wall still boggle my mind somewhat.) The stories are fairly similar—both middle grade books focused on family and friendship and survival, both with girls ultimately determined to escape into the West. A Night Divided feels a bit more realistic to me in terms of the eventual escape plan, and I appreciate the details about life in the DDR. Things aren't bad for Gerta, but they're not good, either, and in East Berlin there is always, always the threat that things will get worse. Too, informants were common in East Germany, some collaborating by choice and others under threat from the Stasi. I'm not sure how heavily youth were involved in this (Wikipedia tells me that some 10,000 informers were underage, and this article is worth a read), but it's a compelling plot line—a reminder that at the time, even your most trusted friends could not always be trusted, and your most private spaces could be bugged.

I'd love to find some more YA or adult fiction exploring life in East Germany (but without turning into thrillers or noir or whatever—you'd think this would not be such a tall order, and yet), but this makes for a great intro for middle grade readers.

Review: "Over and Out" by Jenni Walsh

Over and Out by Jenni Walsh
Published March 2022 via Scholastic
★★★

I read The Berlin Letters recently and got curious (again) about life behind the Iron Curtain, so...I poked around to see what YA/MG lit has to say about it. In Over and Out, Sophie lives a decent life in East Berlin—decent, but fragile. Her mother's white-collar job means that Sophie will likely be assigned a blue-collar job when she is older rather than be able to follow her dreams to be an inventor. And when Sophie's teenaged neighbor falls afoul of the state, Sophie is asked to be a snitch—with terrible consequences if she doesn't comply. There's only one thing to do: escape over the Wall.

What strikes me most about the (limited amount of) East Germany fiction I've read is that books tend to focus on one thing: escape. Sometimes it's getting somebody else out, and sometimes it's getting the protagonist out, but either way the West represents a happy ending. And...don't get me wrong, I understand why, but at the same time, the vast marjority of those living in East Germany were, well, there until the Wall fell.


Sophie's escape route (no spoilers) feels like a stretch to me, but it is based on real events. The lengths to which people went to get out feel unfathomable to me, and yet when I put them in a present-day context—refugees piling into boats to get to Europe, say, or struggling through the Darién Gap, or perching precariously on a ship rudder—it feels markedly less wild to think that someone, or thousands of someones, might try to get across a wall. I would have liked more details focused on life in East Berlin (or the rest of East Germany) rather than a primary focus on escape, but this makes for a good introduction for MG readers.

Review: "10 Things That Never Happened" by Alexis Hall

10 Things That Never Happened by Alexis Hall
Published October 2023 via Sourcebooks Casablanca
★★★

Partway through the book, my Spidey-senses tingled, and I checked my impressions of one of Hall's previous books...and yes indeedy! Still convinced that Hall read stacks and stacks of fanfiction as a teenager.

I love the snark and Hall's general irreverence in the writing, and I'll keep reading Hall's contemporary books, but I had a lot of trouble getting behind the characters here. We have Sam(wise), who works very hard to be the Cool Manager rather than one who is concerned with sales/his employees' basic professionalism/how often an employee destroys thousands of pounds of merchandise. We also have Jonathan, who cares very much about the bottom line and is a huge fan of micromanaging, yelling at his mother, and throwing a single Christmas party that employees at the one far-flung branch have to travel four hours on their own dime (pence?) to get to. Cue Jonathan trying to fire Sam, Sam ending up with a concussion, and Jonathan thinking that Sam has total amnesia because of it.

So...Sam ends up staying at Jonathan's swanky house for weeks(!) on end in case he takes a concussive turn for the worse—never mind that the NHS recommends 48 hours of monitoring, or that there's no way on earth that the character who is Jonathan would install an employee he actively dislikes in his house—he would hire somebody to look after Sam in Sam's own space so that Jonathan didn't have to deal with him. (He'd also maybe, like, look up amnesia? Because Sam's 'amnesia' would be much more convincing if he was claiming to forget only, say, the past two weeks and not literally everything about his entire life.) I can live with some unlikelihoods, but the amount of rude that Jonathan is to his mother (and his family more generally) is just...not on. I can't root for a character who treats his (exhausting but very well intentioned) family like that. I can't root for a character who sees all that and thinks "Yup, this is the guy I want to bang!"

Again, I'll keep reading Hall's stuff, but...maybe not any sequels to this particular book.

Review: "The Buried Hours" by R.S. Grant

The Buried Hours by R.S. Grant
Published December 2023 via Thomas & Mercer
★★★

Signe is used to dealing with criminals—as an investigative journalist, she's made them her job. But two years ago, a group of unidentified criminals made Signe their job, and her life hasn't been the same since. So when she gets a tip promising answers, she leaps for it—even when everything about the tip screams trap, and even when she's not sure answers will bring anything other than heartbreak.

Now, I am predictable: I read this less for the particulars of the mystery and more for the hiking. A big chunk of the book takes place in the Yosemite backcountry, out where there's nobody to hear you scream. Hiking isn't really Signe's thing—give her a lounge chair and a screwdriver over a camping mat and a bottle of lukewarm water, any day of the week—but if that's what it takes, well, she finds someone who understands the wilderness and throws herself into it with vigor. I don't know Yosemite and couldn't always picture the scenery, but I could feel Signe's fatigue and the relief of an icy lake after a hard day of hiking, and I'll take it.

The mystery side of things is a little hit or miss for me. Organized crime isn't usually my mystery reading style—call me basic, but I prefer a good old-fashioned serial killer stalking his victims through the woods with a knife—but thinking about all the details that go into modern-day organized crime, especially the work involved in flying under the radar, was fascinating. But the villains tend to get a bit...evil villain-y...and I never find that as interesting as a complex, flawed character. Here, when we find out who the ultimate bad guy is, it's a great twist...but then he keeps getting worse and worse and worse, without a single redeeming quality. And, partly because the villains are so Big Bad Wolf, the one character whose motives we're really supposed to question never really feels, well, questionable. (Too much an outdoorsy Ken doll—though this Ken's job is definitely not "beach".)

This will likely appeal to those who like their mysteries gritty with a splash of romance, but it was a bit of a mixed bag for me.

Thanks to the author and publisher for providing a review copy through NetGalley.

Review (Deutsch/English): "Man liebt nicht nur zur Weihnachtszeit" / "Home Sweet Christmas" von Susan Mallery

Man liebt nicht nur zur Weihnachtszeit von Susan Mallery, übersetzt von Ivonn Senn
Hörbuch gelesen von Anna-Lena Zühlke
Herausgegeben von HarperAudio, October 2023
★★★

Camryn ist in Wishing Tree für ihre Schwestern—sie will nicht bleiben. River ist auch in Wishing Tree für ihre Schwester...und sie will bleiben, aber sie findet es schwer, einen Mann zu treffen. Und dann kommen zwei Männer, eins für Camryn und eins für River...

Das ist ein Brot-und-Butter Liebesgeschichte—nichts kompliziert. Camryn hat ihre Schwestern, die fünfzehnjährige Zwillinge sind, und River hat ihre überraschende Geschichte; der Mann für Camryn hat eine anstrengende Mutter (gute Absichten...aber...), und der Mann für River hat ein Geheimnis.

Die Figuren sind für mich nur okay—Camryn mag ich, aber River wurde ich gern schütteln. Sie hat diesen Typ nur seit ein paar Wochen getroffen, sie haben nur ein paar Dates gehabt, sie haben meistens über das Wetter gesprochen—und River denkt, dass er alle seine Geheimnisse ihr erzählen muss? (Und alle die andere Figuren stimmen zu...?) Nein. Das ist kein gesunder Anfang für eine Beziehung. (Und Jakes Mutter...oh lawdy. Run, Camryn! Run!)

Als Hörbuch war das gut gemacht: der Ton der Leserin ist ruhig und klar, und die Stimmen sind verschieden—ganz hilfreich! Manche Stimmen fand ich ein bisschen nervig (zu...gehaucht? schmollend?), aber das Buch war überhaupt ein gutes Hörerlebnis.

Mallerys Liebesgeschichten sind nicht wirklich mein Ding, aber sie sind ganz beliebt—ich bin sicher, dass diese Geschichte ein großes Publikum finden wird.

Thanks to the author and publisher for providing a review copy through NetGalley. Deutsch ist nicht meine Muttersprache, und alle Fehler sind meine eigenen.

Home Sweet Christmas by Susan Mallery
Published October 2022 via HQN
★★★

Camryn is in the sugar-sweet town of Wishing Tree for her sisters—she doesn't plan to stay. And River does plan to stay, but her shyness makes it hard for her to connect with people, at least romantically. But just around the corner is a man for each of them...

This is a bit of an odd choice for me. Susan Mallery actually wrote the first romance novel I can remember reading, when I was maybe 10, and although that particular book still entertains me it's not what I seek out. For Home Sweet Christmas, I picked up the German audiobook because it seemed like something I could handle (it was!), but I added the original English to the mix to make sure I wasn't missing too much: I listened to a few chapters of German at a time, then read the corresponding English chapters. (Can confirm: the translation is good, and I didn't need the double dose.)

Home Sweet Christmas is of course more modern, but it's still a bread-and-butter romance, nothing too complicated. Camryn is responsible for her 15-year-old sisters and reluctant to commit to anyone else in Wishing Tree; River has a slightly surprising history; Camryn's romantic interest has a well-intentioned but terrifyingly meddlesome mother (run, Camryn! run!); River's romantic interest has a secret.

There's not a ton of story, and the characters were for me merely okay. Camryn I like well enough, but I wanted to shake River—she takes the angle that if she's ready to bare her soul after a couple of dates, her lover needs to have the exact same timeline or it's a breach of trust. (It's wild to me that the other characters seem to agree, and to wave off her own enormous violation of his trust.) For a relationship built on conversations about how River doesn't like the cold (so deep!) and Dylan doesn't cheat (...reassuring?), it's a lot. Similarly, Helen's meddling goes quickly from 'quirky' to 'deeply inappropriate', and while the twins were fine, they often felt closer to 12 than to 15.

No regrets listening to the German version—I wouldn't bother two-timing with the English next time—but overall this is a 2.5 star book for me. Does what it set out to do but doesn't go beyond the basics.

German audiobook was thanks to the publisher via NetGalley; English original was powered by the magic of my local library.

Review: "This Country" by Navied Mahdavian

This Country by Navied Mahdavian
Published September 2023 via Princeton Architectural Press
★★★★

In 2016, Mahdavian and his wife moved from a liberal city to the deep, deep sticks: rural Idaho. They had a small house trucked in, they planted gardens in raised bed after raised bed, and they slowly got to know their neighbors—and to understand just how far from home they were. They could live here, and happily...but for how long?

Mahdavian is a cartoonist, and for all that the illustrations here are simple, there's a wonderful level of whimsy to them as well. In This Country, Mahdavian's wife often plays the grounding force to his more playful flights of fancy, and my overwhelming impression is that I would like to be their neighbor, in city or in country. (Although, in country, I can imagine also wanting a crusty old oldtimer around, one who actually knew what was what, because goodness knows I wouldn't.) Mahdavian is also even-handed about the locals, who are by and large welcoming of Mahdavian and his wife—but who are also openly racist and xenophobic, among other things. As the book progresses, the question becomes less Can we build a life here?, because it becomes clear that they can, and more Should we? Because whether or not they are asked to change to fit in, it's clear that the community will not be changing.

I daydream about moving to Idaho—or Montana, or Wyoming, or rural Saskatchewan—sometimes, but I also know that I am probably not made for those places. Reading about living there, for now or forever, is probably my next best thing.

Review: "Growing Up Duggar" by Jana Duggar, Jill Duggar, Jessa Duggar, and Jinger Duggar

Growing Up Duggar by Jana Duggar, Jill Duggar, Jessa Duggar, and Jinger Duggar
First published 2013
★

I took myself on a tour of the books the Duggar family published before things got...how do I say this delicately...more complicated in the media for them. Unfortunately, Growing Up Duggar—attributed to the four oldest daughters of the family, written when they ranged between 20 and 24—is one of those books.

It is about what you might expect from a group of brainwashed young women who are spouting the things their church leaders and father have taught them to say. Among the lessons: don't ever criticise your father; niceness is more important than auto safety or being able to trust your driver; romance novels and pornography are tools of satan; musicians usually die young (good grief I want to know where they got their data—from a wisdom booklet,* or somewhere else?)...

Everyone wants to be respected, but it’s especially important for fathers. I suggested that to begin improving their relationship, the first thing she needed to work on was being positive. If she felt like she was going to say something critical or negative, I advised her that it would be better, at least for now, to choose not to say anything. Along with this goal, I encouraged her to pray for her dad and ask God to help him have more patience and kindness and to pray that he would be “slow to anger,” a phrase that occurs several times in the Bible describing a characteristic of God. (34)

Mom and Dad have stressed that there’s a distinct line between giving advice and degrading someone as a person. We have had friends overreact with some of our siblings and insinuate that they don’t want to be a passenger in the vehicle the sibling is operating—or even come right out and tell the sibling that he or she is a bad driver. That’s definitely a situation when we will speak up and say, “Aww, that’s not nice to say. He’s actually a very good driver! Probably better than I was at his age.” (79)

We have met some girls who have simply fallen in love with the idea of marriage and are just looking for a guy to fulfill their dreams. They have an image in mind of what marriage is, and they are in love with that image. One girl told us recently, “I was in love with the thought of being in love, and it consumed my every waking hour.” This is one of the greatest dangers of romance novels. They paint a picture of an unrealistic, unobtainable relationship. It’s the same thing pornography does to men. Viewing pornography gives them a distorted view of women that leads them down the path of immorality and guilt. (106)

As we have examined the lives of many of these artists, we have seen the outcome of such living. It was sad to find that on average, the life expectancy for rock artists and musicians is around forty; many of them die at a young age for reasons related to AIDS, drug or alcohol abuse, or suicides. It’s a tragic reality. (153)

Jinger** has since sought to distance herself from this book, and from the messaging in it. I'm not sure if Jill has said anything about it directly, but considering that she recently published a book in which she said that the teachings she was living under at this age constituted a cult (I agree, Jill, I agree), I think it's safe to say that this is not a work that she is proud of these days. What the other two might think is a mystery.

But folks, this book is sad. It's sad that they were taught that their parents setting aside one day a month to talk to their children was going above and beyond: Maybe in your family, there’s no way parents and kids can spend a whole day talking one-on-one. And actually, having a set day for family talk time may be the ideal... (42). It's sad that those conversations included questions about favourite colours or favourite foods or things like 'Who's your best friend?" and 'What projects are you working on right now?' (41)—questions that you wouldn't need to ask if you were only able to set aside a few minutes per child per month. It's sad (and disturbing, and gross) that their oldest brother was interviewed for this book, and his vague account of 'struggles' and 'wrong thoughts' and 'failures' when he was younger seems—now that his actions are public knowledge—like an allusion to the fact that he had abused his sisters. (He's in federal prison now for similar crimes, but at the time all that was secret, so I guess the family was still trying to position him as the Golden Boy.) It's sad that there's pretty much nothing in here that reads like an independent thought rather than something that was suggested and approved by their parents.

I'm torn between one and two stars here. It's not their fault that this is what they were taught and told to write, but...it's pretty bad. Call it 1.5 stars, with the caveat that I hope they have all grown significantly in the past decade and would cringe now to read this.

*Wisdom booklets are 'educational' materials put out by the IBLP, a homeschooling organisation (cult!) that the Duggars were heavily involved in. Suffice it to say that they did not provide a balanced education.

**Normally I'd use last names, but there are a lot of Duggars to go around here, so for the sake of clarity...

Review: "Sign of the Slayer" by Sharina Harris

Sign of the Slayer by Sharina Harris
Published August 2023 via Entangled: Teen
★★★

Conceptually, I love this: inspired by Buffy the Vampire Slayer and numerous other bits of pop culture, Sign of the Slayer envisions something more modern (and frankly a hell of a lot more diverse). Raven's life in Texas is nothing out of the ordinary—until that all gets blown to hell, and she's hauled off to a sort of slayer academy to learn to slay and survive.

But in practice, I found this a bit of a struggle. The author clearly had so many ideas here—I imagine fingers flying on keyboard, stopping to gulp some cold coffee and jot down notes for later in the book, and then back to it—but I ended up wishing that the book would slow down and give things time to develop. At school, for example, Raven promptly learns that she's extra special (not just slayer powers, but weirdly powerful and useful slayer powers), so instead of starting to learn how much she doesn't know, she mouths off a lot, disobeys directions, uses a sledgehammer whenever a scalpel would be most useful, and is rewarded for it in the form of immediate induction to the inner circle. (And then the book kind of moves on from the whole "slayer school" concept.) Maybe if this had been broken into two books, with the first one spending more time with Raven learning things and having to get her power under control...? I'm not sure, but I could have used a bit less of a romance focus and a bit less chaos.

Review: "This Wheel of Rocks" by Sister Marya Grathwohl

This Wheel of Rocks by Sister Marya Grathwohl
Published November 2023 via Riverhead Books
★★★

In 1963, Judy Grathwohl stepped out of high school and into a convent and became Sister Marya. But hers was and is not a cloistered life: rather, she found herself taking her Catholic teachings as a starting point and then leaping into a more layered understanding of both her own spirituality and connections between the literal, physical earth.

At one point, reading about Sister Marya's work to reduce the use of fossil fuels within her community—and, perhaps more importantly, to inspire the next generation to do the same—I thought to myself that she was (is!) ahead of her time. But it would be more accurate to say that she was ahead of her time by listening to those who came before her. This is a book some twenty years in the making (per the Acknowledgements, I believe the original book contract was signed in 2003!), but also a lifetime in the making, and then some lifetimes before that.

One of the things that struck me most, reading this, was how different Sister Marya's journey as a nun has been from those described in other nuns' memoirs I've read. I'm not sure whether that's because I tend toward religious memoirs about restrictive (and often cloistered) orders or because I also tend toward religious memoirs by people who have left, whether that means 'no longer a nun but still a practicing Catholic' or 'agnostic now and haven't been to church in decades'; I imagine that both would make rather large differences! But the richness Sister Marya describes in her religious life is one that is at least partly due to the freedom she had, within the strictures of her religious order, to choose her own path: to explore the topics that called to her, work on projects that interested her, and advocate for matters that, ah, mattered to her. Just the fact that her interest in Native American spirituality raised no eyebrows amongst her Sisters is fascinating, but it goes far beyond that. On a sense of discernment/call to religious life, she says this:

The sense of call continues throughout our lives: a call to a different ministry or to a particular group of people, a call that responds to a newly emerged need in society or the Church, a call to serve in a foreign country. Call is lively and energetic; it morphs with a Sister's age, acquired skill sets, interests. It also runs deep like a river in her soul, changing but constant in its flow. (loc. 1776*)

I've never seen call described this way, and I love it. All things considered (e.g., I'm not Catholic...) I'm unlikely to ever become a nun, but in another life I might make an okay Franciscan nun.

The earlier parts of the book, describing Sister Marya's life among the Crow in Montana, interested me most. This is where she started to question what she'd been raised to believe—not to reverse her worldview but to expand it—and to learn just how much she didn't know, but also where some of the most concrete scenes and connections are described. As the book goes on (and Sister Marya moves away from Crow and Northern Cheyenne land), the book becomes more about applying some of the lessons she started learning with the Crow to her broader environmental work, and also more about her further educational pursuits. I lean towards scenes and learning more about other characters when I read, and it's hard, I think, to be quite as invested in another person's revelatory learnings as they are. Still worth the read, but if Sister Marya had written a book twenty years ago focusing exclusively on her work in Montana, I've have gobbled that up. Recommended to those who like their religion grounded in social justice and tangible action.

Thanks to the author and publisher for inviting me to read this book. I received a review copy through NetGalley.

*Quotes are from an ARC and may not be final.