Book 5: The Soldier's Scoundrel by Cat Sebastian

What a delightful m/m regency romance by a new-to-me author! Oliver Rivington is a former captain who is now at loose ends after his time in the army is cut short by a leg injury. Jack Turner is a man who takes care of problems for ladies when more conventional (and legal) methods won't do. They find themselves thrown together when Oliver discovers that Jack has done some sort of service on behalf of his sister Lady Montbray. Oliver is repelled by Jack's loose regard for the law, and Jack has sworn to himself that he would never be so foolish as to fall for a gentleman, so I'm sure you can all see where this is going.

I really enjoyed the set-up, and the examination of class, and in general the pairing of a morally righteous yet lonely gentleman and a prickly rogue with a secret heart of gold is always going to work for me. I found the mystery the two of them worked together to solve fairly compelling as well. My only real complaint about the book is that the two of them would occasionally get mad at each other for reasons that were never particularly believable, and the great conflict they have is the sort that either should matter a lot (and not be as easily solved as the book's end suggests it is) or not actually be that big of a deal. But those issues didn't do anything to truly affect my enjoyment of the overall story. The next book by this author featuring one of the minor characters in this novel comes out next week, and I will definitely be reading it.

Grade: A

Book 4: The Lie Tree by France Hardinge

This was my January book club read, and man, I loved it. It takes place in the 19th century and focuses on a fourteen year old girl named Faith whose family is in the middle of a mysterious crisis. Her father is a minister and well-respected naturalist until an article accuses him of forgery, and he and his family are forced to flee England for the tiny island of Vane. Faith has long idolized her father and his work, and her attempts to discover the truth behind her family leaving England and her father's alleged misdeeds make up the first third of the novel, until an unexpected death turns the story into a murder mystery. And then we finally get to the lie tree at the heart of it all.

This was the sort of book that I liked a lot for most of it, and then the final five pages turned it into a book I loved; everything that I had found frustrating or that had made me angry pays off, in the end, and it left me wanting nothing. It was a fascinating book to read after having read Bill Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything, in part because the conflicts within the upper class scientific community in the novel echoed the actual history so closely that it made it super easy for me to buy into the more fantastical elements of the story. It managed to feel both totally grounded in reality and just out of focus enough to make the mystery ring true. I would categorize this book as historical magical realism YA, which is a mouthful but anything less wouldn't quite capture it all. A fantastic story, beautifully written and beautifully told.

Grade: A