Book 22: Tread of Angels by Rebecca Roanhorse

A book club book! At the last minute my work schedule cleared just enough for me to read this in time for my May book club, and I'm glad it did! It was the perfect length for that kind of turnaround - this novella is a very quick, enjoyable read. 

This story is a real blend of genres and tropes - it's got flavors of the Old West frontier standing in as a sort of liminal space for both the Elite and the Fallen, two kinds of people who either have divinity or do not. Angels and demons are real and walk among the humans, and the story centers on Celeste and Mariel. Both are Fallen but Celeste can pass as Elite, and that becomes very useful when Mariel is arrested for the murder of a Virtue and has to figure out how to prove her sister's innocence. There are saloon brawls and ex-lovers and secret lovers and so on and so forth, and it's very fun! I think I was hoping for a bit more from it overall than it gave; the world is interesting enough that I would have enjoyed a novel that fully fleshed out the elements of the society and the various characters living in the town. The end in particular didn't quite land the way I was hoping it might, and some of the tropes felt gestured at, rather than really developed. Someone at my book club said that it felt a bit like a pandemic book to her, and that felt right to me. Perfectly enjoyable, but not exceptional. 

Grade: B

Book 21: The Guest List by Lucy Foley

A friend read this and recommended it, and boy did I have a great time reading it! It's a classic Agatha Christie-esque mystery setup (extremely posh wedding set on a tiny remote island off the western coast of Ireland), with five narrative point of views that tell the story of the day leading up to the murder. The reader doesn't know who's dead until very close to the end, but what makes a wedding an ideal setting for a murder mystery in general is bringing together a wide assortment of people who all know various aspects and eras of the bride and groom's pasts. The groom's schoolmates from his days at public school are one key era, and the bride's oldest friend (and his wife) and her sister are another, and the book really draws you through the story because you just want to know how it all fits together as it flips from point of view to point of view. It's extremely satisfying and the characters are so clearly drawn, and I loved how clear-eyed the story is about who the real villains are. A great and fast contemporary mystery read. 

Grade: A