How to Cheat Your Own Death by Kristen Perrin

How to Cheat Your Own Death by Kristen Perrin

by CarolNo Comments
The mystery was good and I enjoyed the mix of murder and art. I don't love London as a setting as much as Castle Knoll, but I get it. Annie's relationship with her parents is a mess. As is her whatever is going on with Detective Crane. I like that's we're sticking with the fortunes as our connecting point. I enjoyed the dual timelines, but maybe prefer the people and events of the 60s over the current time period....
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Home Before Dark by Riley Sager

Home Before Dark by Riley Sager

by Carol2 Comments
The set-up is good. Twenty-five years ago, Maggie Holt's father wrote a book, House of Horrors, about their family's three weeks in the haunted Baneberry Hall. The book became a best seller, but now her father is dead and she's inherited the house. Maggie's convinced the book was fiction and remembers nothing from their time there, so she moves into Baneberry Hall to renovate it for sale and, hopefully, find out the truth of what really happened that summer. It turns out that the house is creepier than Maggie had expected. The book alternates between the present timeline and chapters from House of Horrors, using what her dad wrote to echo what she's living through. It turns out that more might be true than she thought. I listened to the audio and having two narrators, one for House of Horrors and one for Maggie's point of view, worked well. I don't read many horror books and this is my first...
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Homicide and Halo-Halo by Mia P. Manansala

Homicide and Halo-Halo by Mia P. Manansala

by CarolNo Comments
Homicide and Halo-Halo is the second in the series, and while it would work as a stand-alone, Lila is still processing the events that happened in the first one a few months ago. Detective Park has given her the name of a therapist, but Lila is adamant that she doesn't need help - and worries how her aunt would view counseling. Lila has a lot going on. Not only is she dealing with PTSD, she is opening a new cafe with her best friend, Adeena, and Adeena's girlfriend, Elena, but is having trouble coming up with new recipes to serve, She's also a judge for the Miss Teen Shady Palms Beauty Pageant, which takes up an absurd amount of time. Do place still have pageants like this? At least it involves things like community service and creativity. It also brings up some of Lila's body image issues and mixed feelings about her mother, who died when Lila was a child. We're...
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Arsenic and Adobo by Mia P. Manansala

Arsenic and Adobo by Mia P. Manansala

by CarolNo Comments
I don't know why it's taken me so long to pick up this series. I love culinary cozies, especially when the food featured is not a style I'm familiar with. Lila has returned to her hometown after a bad breakup to help her Aunt Rosie run the family Filipino restaurant. It's not going well, though, and then a local restaurant critic/Lila's high school boyfriend ends up dead, poisoned after eating at the restaurant. Lila becomes the primary suspect, which is her reason for investigating. Every amateur sleuth needs a legitimate reason to nose into the investigation, at least for the first couple of books. Lila's family and friends, mostly women, are wonderful- supportive and quirky. We have tons of yummy food and a couple of recipes in the back. Lila herself is not my favorite, yet, but has potential. I need her to be a little more focused and I don't like the potential love triangle forming for her. The...
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On the Road by Jack Kerouac

On the Road by Jack Kerouac

by Carol2 Comments
I am maybe not the right audience for On the Road. I know if's a classic and definitely a product of its time. I found it a slog to get through. It's a series of road trips take by Sal Paradise (Kerouac) and Dean Moriarty (Neal Cassady) back and forth across the continent. They meet a variety of people, see a variety of towns, make money in a variety of way - and to be honest I couldn't care less. It's racist and sexist and, yes, it's the fifties and would usually overlook those to some extent, but I didn't enjoy the rest of the book enough. It's also pretentious and, at the same time, purposefully naive. I will say Kerouac has a strong voice which the narrator conveyed well in the audio I listened too. Honestly, that's probably the only reason I didn't set the book down. Well, that and I needed a "stream of consciousness" narrative for a...
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The Hacienda by Isabel Cañas

The Hacienda by Isabel Cañas

by Carol2 Comments
The Hacienda will probably be my last spooky story of the year. Newly-married Beatriz has just moved to her husband, Don Rodolfo's, hacienda, San Isidro, where she will live with her husband and sister-in-law. It's not long until Beatriz realizes something is wrong with the hacienda, aside from neglect. She begins hearing voices, having vivid hallucinations, and constantly feels like she is being watched. Fearing the house is haunted, she turns to a local priest, Padre Andrés, for help. The writing is beautiful and descriptive. The atmosphere is "hauntingly lovely" and oppressive. I listened to the audio and having two narrators worked well with the two viewpoints, Beatriz' and Andrés'. In print, I'm not sure their voices would have been as distinct. Overall, it was an enjoyable read: a bit of supernatural, a unique (for me) setting, a touch of romance. It did touch briefly on some tough topics but ended up skirting around them....
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