Little Syllables: The Blog
Review - Northwoods by Amy Pease
I received a free review copy from NetGalley. All opinions are my own.
Author Amy Pease’s debut novel is a hit! Northwoods is a mystery/detective story that could be the start of a great new series. I say “could” because I don’t know if that is the author’s intention, but the book ends in such a way that follow-up novels with the same characters are a real possibility.
Northwoods follows detective Eli North, an army veteran who has returned to his hometown police force following deployment in Afghanistan. As Eli battles his own demons, he discovers a dead body at Shaky Lake. The bare bones investigative team is joined by an FBI agent as they work to solve the murder and a connected kidnapping. The mystery grows deeper, and Eli struggles to keep it together.
This novel has a beautiful setting, vividly described. The characters are well developed, and the complexity of their relationships—with themselves and each other—adds to the depth of the novel. And, as you’d hope in a mystery novel, the mystery is intriguing.
Northwoods was published earlier this month, and I highly recommend it to fans of the genre. Sensitive readers should be aware of mentions of suicide, war, PTSD, and drug use.
Review - West Heart Kill by Dann McDorman
Dann McDorman presents an ambitious debut with his novel West Heart Kill. This book tells the story of a private detective’s visit to a remote hunting club. But at the same time, McDorman gets a bit meta and breaks from the story to give occasional commentary about the detective genre. This makes it feel like this book is both part of the genre, but also subverting the genre at the same time.
Our detective, McAnnis, has come with an old friend to West Heart, a private hunting club with a storied past and a wide range of characters. It’s Independence Day and nearly every cabin is filled with revelers. McAnnis wastes no time snooping around the clubhouse, meeting various residents, and making everyone suspicious.
Soon there are some accidents, some midnight rendezvous, some deaths, and one big storm.
The club is cut off from the rest of the world, trapping all the residents with a killer. Motives and suspects abound.
The point of view shifts throughout this book, which serves to leave the reader a little unsure of where they stand. Once we leave McAnnis’ POV, we never find out whose POV we’re seeing the rest of the story from. Then, in the final act, McDorman turns the narrative into a play starring all the main characters. This is where many of the secrets are revealed, through a series of arguments and explanations the characters give each other.
Ultimately, I think this was an interesting book with a unique concept. The commentary sections of the book were sometimes entertaining, but otherwise distracting. They pull the reader out of the story and include references to other mystery novels (references which are only effective if the reader is familiar with the works referenced). And after all that, the end of the book felt supremely dissatisfying. It felt as though McDorman was instructing me on how detective stories work, telling me this wasn’t like all the others, but also expecting me to solve the mystery myself. It could be an educational re-read now that I know what to expect, but with a TBR like mine, I don’t know when I’d ever get back to it.
Have you read West Heart Kill? Tell me what you thought!
Review - The Caretaker by Ron Rash
I received a review copy from NetGalley. All opinions are my own.
Ron Rash’s latest work of fiction, The Caretaker, is a character-driven tale of love and loss. The story follows Jacob, his wife Naomi, and his best friend Blackburn (the titular caretaker). Jacob has been conscripted into the army during the Korean War, leaving behind a pregnant Naomi, who is shunned by his parents. Jacob asks his best friend Blackburn to take care of her while he’s gone.
Blackburn does his best for Naomi, to protect her from Jacob’s parents, and to shield her from the judgmental community. But after an accident, she returns to her father’s house in another state. Soon Jacob’s parents see an opportunity to be rid of her—and get their son back. Blackburn proves key in the aftermath, driven both by his desire to create a happy life for himself and by his loyalty to his friends.
This book has beautiful description, complex characters, and an intriguing plot. I was swept up in the world of 1951 Blowing Rock, North Carolina. Rash immerses the reader in the beauty of a cemetery, the pain of loving and losing, and the redemptive power of love.
I absolutely loved this book and highly recommend it! The Caretaker is available now.
Review - The River We Remember by William Kent Krueger
As I read William Kent Krueger’s newest book, The River We Remember, I found myself getting lost in his descriptions of time and place. I felt transported. If nothing else, Krueger’s work feels like a love story to a beautiful river in rural Minnesota.
The River We Remember tells the story of James Quinn’s death and its aftermath in the small town of Jewel. Sheriff Dern and his deputies are called in to investigate the death of Quinn—an important, but hated man, and they are forced to make choices about the true meaning of justice. The story not only follows Dern’s investigation, but also the intertwining lives of the citizens of Jewel—the sheriff’s family; the local newspaperman; the owner of the local diner; teenagers Scott and Del; Quinn’s wife and children; and the enigmatic Noah and Kyoko Bluestone.
The book is a beautifully written portrait of a quaint but wounded hometown where no one is left untouched by the tragedies of their neighbors.
Because in a town this small, everyone is connected.
This book touches on a lot of important themes, like racial prejudice in the aftermath of World War II, the personal impact of war, the appropriation of indigenous lands, and the choices good people are forced to make in impossible circumstances. Krueger makes his characters very human. Nobody here is flawless.
Sensitive readers should know this book contains references to suicide, sexual assault, child abuse, drug use, and racism.
The River We Remember is available now!
Review - It’s Not A Cult by Lauren Danhof
I received a review copy from NetGalley. All opinions are my own.
I requested Lauren Danhof’s new book It’s Not a Cult because I think cults and high-demand religions are very interesting. I went into this book not exactly sure what to expect.
It tells the story of Glinda Glass, a single, late 20’s woman who is down on her luck, living at home with her mother and younger sister. She is estranged from her twin sister for reasons that become clear as the novel progresses. Glinda’s mother is a member of a cult, though of course, everyone insists it’s not a cult.
This book is split between present-day narration and Glinda’s memories as she works to try and free her mother from this organization and figure out her own life.
The Glass family has a lot going on—Dorothy and her partner have severed most contact and moved to Oklahoma to look for Bigfoot; North is just trying to finish high school and get away from her family, Glinda is working at a dunk tank at a Renaissance fair (but keeping it from her family), and their mom is heavily involved in her church and its leader Arlon.
The one thing all these people have in common (besides being family) is their incredible inability to communicate clearly with each other.
I enjoyed the characters and felt that Danhof did a great job building believable characters with fairly believable problems. But the communication breakdowns between characters was sometimes maddening. I kept feeling that much of the conflict in the book could have been solved with a good conversation.
I also liked the premise of this book. It does a good job showing the ability that a particularly charismatic (and narcissistic) person can have to persuade normal people to believe things that at first seemed unbelievable. It shows the power of a cult leader, and how hard it can be to break away. And for most of the novel, this is done somewhat lightheartedly, but everything comes to a head near the end, and we see the true evil behind Arlon’s machinations.
My overall impression of this book is that it was entertaining, though frustrating at times. It highlights important things about high-control religions and family communication. It could be triggering for people who have suffered physical and emotional abuse.
Review - Whalefall by Daniel Kraus
I received a free review copy from NetGalley. All opinions are my own.
It had been a while since I’d read a good science fiction survival story, so I was excited to get a review copy of Daniel Kraus’s new book Whalefall. This book is reminiscent of The Martian in that it’s about a man on his own in a fight for his life. But it’s so much more than that, too. It is also a look at a young man’s fraught relationship with his recently deceased father and the process of grieving.
Jay was raised on the water. His father Mitt taught him about the ocean and scuba diving. The two had a very rocky relationship, culminating with Jay leaving home to live with a friend in his teens. Now Mitt is gone, and Jay is grappling with the loss and his family’s feeling that he abandoned his father at the end of his life. So Jay sets out to redeem himself—by scuba diving in Monterey Bay to search for Mitt’s remains.
As Jay confronts the ocean, the dive, and the search for his father’s remains, his thoughts return to memories of times he had with his father.
But the already dangerous dive takes a turn when Jay gets caught up in a confrontation between a giant squid and a sperm whale. In the aftermath, Jay is caught in the squid tentacles and dragged into the whale’s mouth.
The rest of the story follows Jay as he tries to find a way out of the whale, all while he grapples with losing his father and comes to terms with their relationship. It’s raw and visceral (sometimes literally) as he does whatever he can to escape the whale before his air runs out.
I love how, even though this seems like a completely implausible situation, the author makes it feel very real. And while creating this narrative filled with rich detail about the ocean, scuba diving, and the sperm whale, Kraus also manages to create complex characters and intricate relationships within Jay’s family.
I highly recommend this book! I read it in two days, and I was engrossed from beginning to end. Whalefall is out now!
Review - The Cypress Maze by Fiona Valpy
I received a free review copy from NetGalley. All opinions are my own.
The Cypress Maze is a wonderful book for fans of the genre. It is structured similarly to Valpy's other books with a modern POV and a historical POV. We begin with Tess, who is grieving her recently deceased husband and needs to get away from her everyday life. She heads to Italy to stay with her grandmother’s friend Beatrice. The two bond as Beatrice shares her story with Tess.
One thing I especially liked about this book is its different take on WWII fiction. The historical narrative follows Beatrice when she was a young woman who was stranded in Italy when war broke out. She was forced into hiding and protected by a sympathetic couple in a rural villa.
The politics and fighting of the war are not front-and-center here.
As Beatrice relates her story to Tess, we see the courage of good men and women during the worst times of their lives, we see the redeeming power of love, and the resilience of the human spirit.
The historical portion of the book was my favorite.
In the modern day, we follow Tess as she settled at the villa, helps Beatrice, and gets to know the villa’s new owner Marco. Although Tess is the protagonist of the story, I felt she was a rather passive character who spends much of her time observing others.
I appreciated the parallels between Beatrice's love story and Tess's--both of which ended in tragedy and loss. Having Tess hear Beatrice's history and the story of her love and grief helped Tess heal from her own grief. I love that Valpy highlighted this important component of grieving and healing.
Overall, I really enjoyed this book. I felt I couldn't give it five stars because I really didn't care for Marco and didn't feel his character was developed quite deeply enough to make his character arc feel substantial and sustainable.
The Cypress Maze is available now!
Review - The Way of the Fearless Writer by Beth Kempton
I received an advanced copy from NetGalley. All opinions are my own.
Beth Kempton’s The Way of the Fearless Writer weaves together her knowledge of Japanese language and culture with the process of writing. She offers a mindful approach to writing that is based on Buddhism.
This book was inspiring.
I have been an aspiring writer all my life, but I am often held back by fear of what others will think of me and my writing. So I don’t share. This is exactly the problem that Kempton addresses in this book. She offers guidance for a fearful writer to embrace the process of creativity and to know when it’s time to share the writing.
I found this book and its author to be insightful, wise, and realistic. She provides writing prompts throughout and I found myself highlighting prompts that I wanted to come back to. This would be an excellent book to read slowly and work through the exercises as they are introduced. But it is also an excellent book to read straight through.
I especially appreciated how the author shares her own creative process. I think that writers often don’t know what the initial process looks like for others. Classes and workshops teach the end of the process, the refining, the editing, and the polishing. But Kempton spends a good portion of this book discussing how to get started, how to piece together a larger work, and how to be patient as the ideas form.
I heartily recommend this book for any writer, but especially for a writer looking to be more mindful and less fearful.
The Way of the Fearless Writer is now available.
Review - The Exhibitionist by Charlotte Mendelson
I received a free review copy from NetGalley. All opinions are my own.
I enjoy reading books about family dynamics and characters coming to terms with their true selves, so the description of this book drew me in. It tells the story of the Hanrahan family—patriarch Ray, making his artistic comeback with an exhibition; matriarch Lucia, trying to make sense of her role both within and without her family; shy son Patrick, desperately working to hold himself together and do what is right; daddy’s girl Leah, putting her father and his wishes above everything else; and self-exiled Jess, the one who got away.
Though Ray tries to make everything about him (with Leah’s help), this book is really about Lucia. She is a woman who has put her family first, who has suffered tremendously, and who is abused. And she is a woman who struggles to reconcile her desire to stay faithful with her desire to break free.
The characters in this book are a mixed bag. I absolutely hated Ray, and by extension, Leah. The two of them are a toxic pair, propping up Ray’s narcissism. The rest of the family sit uncomfortably under Ray’s thumb.
I felt that the author did a great job showing the effects that this type of family situation can have on different types of children (and adults). Each character has their own issues that they are trying to work through, and it’s made clear that the combination of dominant, blustering Ray, and submissive, indecisive Lucia have perpetuated these issues in their children, to the point of crisis.
The plot of this book is slow-moving. The whole story takes place over a weekend, but at times, it felt like a slog. The reader is let in on each character’s inner life and is led (frustratingly) to dead ends when the characters fail to communicate clearly with each other.
Perhaps that is what the author was trying to do—show the cumulative damage and frustration of these types of personalities and relationships. If that was the goal, it was done well. Nothing in this book made me feel positive about these peoples’ futures.
By the time the book ends, each character is in a deeper mess than where they started, except maybe Lucia and Patrick—who seem to be breaking free, but not necessarily toward better things. So maybe they’re just in a different mess than where they started.
I think this book could be great for a reader who is interesting in negative and problematic family dynamics or the problems facing individuals who try to break free from relationships with narcissists. I also think the book could have accomplished all this in fewer pages, or perhaps at a quicker pace.
The Exhibitionist by Charlotte Mendelson is available now in the US!
Review - A Most Agreeable Murder by Julia Seales
I received a free review copy from NetGalley. All opinions are my own.
If you’re a fan of Jane Austen, but also love a good parody, A Most Agreeable Murder may be just the ticket for you. I found this book to be amusing and fun.
This book tells the story of Beatrice Steele, a plucky young woman who secretly loves reading about murder (a completely scandalous secret in Swampshire). Her family attends the Stabmort ball to attempt to woo the rich Mr. Croaksworth and save themselves from destitution. The heir to their estate, Mr. Grub, is also in attendance, attempting to seduce Beatrice. But when Mr. Croaksworth drops dead, Beatrice sets out to find the killer. She soon discovers that most everyone in attendance has secrets they might kill to keep.
Seales has created (sometimes quite obvious) parallels to Austen’s characters and plots—Mr. Grub is clearly a Mr. Collins, but worse. I spotted a Mr. Woodhouse, a Miss Bates, a Captain Wentworth, a Mr. Bennet, and more.
One thing I especially liked about this book was the way it bucks conventions of its time, including a diverse cast of characters, showing the most eligible bachelor to also be the most insufferable bore, and allowing its heroine to pursue her own interests. This book is also great at showing why following rules simply for the sake of tradition isn’t always the best route.
A Most Agreeable Murder is lighthearted and doesn’t take itself too seriously. Some of the comic exaggerations are a bit overwrought, but I felt this was a fairly solid book for readers familiar with the tropes and willing to see them turned on their heads.
Julia Seales’ A Most Agreeable Murder comes out June 27, 2023.