Book 7: Say Nothing by Patrick Radden Keefe

When I started reading this book, I worried that I might not be able to follow all of it because my knowledge of the Troubles in Northern Ireland was so limited (along with my general knowledge of Irish independence and history). It starts with a pretty narrow focus on one disappeared woman and a few key individuals who played major roles in the IRA in the late sixties and seventies, and gradually broadens the scope, until by the end of the book I wanted to go back to the beginning and reread it immediately, because now I actually had the context I needed for understanding everything. 

This isn't a criticism at all; it's actually one of my favorite things about the book and the way that it builds a world for someone who came in with practically no political understanding of how the Good Friday Agreement came to be and how contentious it was, and how impossible a conflict between neighborhoods and streets can be to navigate, no matter what your religion or position. It's also a murder mystery, and the final third of the novel has a series of reveals that I truly didn't know where they could possibly land. 

I started reading this in the fall and continued into the winter in part because there's a miniseries dramatizing the book, which I wanted to watch after I had read this, and I'm really glad I experienced the narratives in that order. The show is also very good, but I think that my experience of watching the show was deepened significantly by having read the book first. The story itself is highly compelling, but the structure the book gives the story is so effective and so impressive, and I'm already tempted to do a full reread. It's my favorite kind of narrative nonfiction.

Grade: A 

Book 6: The Christmas Swap by Talia Samuels

This is almost a really sweet and satisfying Christmas romance novel before it kind of falls apart in the end, sadly. Margot and her girlfriend break up right before the holidays, so when one of her clients asks her to be his fake girlfriend at his rich parents' home for Christmas, she says yes. All goes well until she meets Ben's hot gay sister Ellie, oh no! Ellie thinks she's a gold digger but is also drawn to her, of course. 

I thought this novel was going to avoid most of the worst pitfalls of this genre when Ben and Margot confess that they're faking it at about the midway point, long before Margot and Ellie actually kiss, but then the final conflict and resolution is so both overdone and underbaked that the whole thing falls flat. Not mad I read it, but it could have been much better with a bit more work, for me. 

Grade: C 

Book 5: Dark Heir by CS Pacat

I finally made it to the sequel of Dark Rise! And it was both exactly what I'd hoped for/expect while somehow being a bit less than the sum of its parts, unfortunately. 

The whole book is built around the tension that Will knows who he is deep down but none of his friends do, and if they did know, they'd immediately turn against him. And that's a pretty good central tension to a story, but either I've simply read too many of these kinds of stories at this point or the book didn't quite hold the tension as well as I'd like it to, because the moment of his reveal didn't quite hit for me. This is partly because James is on his own journey that's separate from Will's path, but it's one that's less about discovering who Will is and more Will continuing to somehow always be a step ahead of him in terms of accepting their intermingled destiny. I don't know! I get why Will is like oh noes he only loves me because he thinks I'm NOT the big bad and/or because he doesn't realize that the collar is linking him to me because I'm that guy, but I thought by the end of this book we might actually get to the next stage of it. I wanted more actual juice in the central relationship of the story. 

This may also be because so many of the other characters felt sidelined to me. This is a classic second book/movie in the trilogy issue, where the main crew gets sent off on their own journeys before finally coming back together at the end, but as a result I felt cut off from Violet and the whole Lions plotline and Elizabeth dealing with Visander. 

Having said all that, I think it was a much more coherent book than the first one, and I am still looking forward to the final book of the trilogy because I do think it'll probably land the plane pretty well. I think I just wanted a bit more tropey nonsense from these books and less lore. 

Grade: B

Book 4: It's a Fabulous Life by Kelly Farmer

As is probably obvious from the title of this Christmas romance novel, it's a take on It's a Wonderful Life. But instead of an actual angel, we have a group of drag queens who need to get the wings of their costume, and the small town has a sad lesbian who never got to leave the town to go out and experience the world because her dad died her senior year of high school, and the love interest is the girl who got away from high school who's just moved back. 

There's a lot in this that's cute, but the central conceit really falls apart in this version of it. We're supposed to think that by the end Bailey George (yes, really) will of course be happier if she stays in Lanford Falls and never leaves or moves to a different town (let alone city or country like her dream was), and that literally the entire town will fall apart and stop thriving if she leaves. And you can kind of buy it in the movie version, that a small town banker really could be the thing to keep an entire town and family together. But the book doesn't actually want to get as dark and sad as the movie does, and as a result both the low point and the catharsis fall flat. I have read this kind of movie romance novel adaptation many times, and this one unfortunately both misses the emotional impact of the movie and also doesn't give us new characters who make me feel anything different. Bah. 

Grade: C

Book 3: Make the Season Bright by Ashley Herring Blake

Exes who reunite is one of my favorite romance novel tropes, and it pairs especially well with a Christmas romance, since it's so easy to dwell on the past during the season and people end up seeing old friends and family in a way that makes an unexpected reunion more likely. But the big pitfall is always whether the reason they broke up in the past still exists, and whether forgiveness etc. can actually be had. 

Unfortunately, for me this book really failed on that front. Charlotte and Brighton were childhood best friends who became high school sweethearts and got engaged their senior year of college, and then Brighton left Charlotte at the altar, and I never came close to thinking that Charlotte should forgive Brighton for it. The explanation that Charlotte was also sort of at fault for not seeing that Brighton was miserable living in New York doesn't make up for that, and they can't fix any of that with good sex. 

It's also the sort of romance novel where they exist basically in a vacuum - there's a queer social group of sorts, but apparently neither of them had any other friends aside from each other in high school or college, and it honestly all just made me kind of angry by the end. I had high hopes but the central conflict and resolution just fundamentally did not work for me, which makes it a hard sell in the end. 

Grade: C

Book 2: The Jolliest Bunch by Danny Pellegrino

I picked up this collection of essays about the holidays after watching and enjoying a Hallmark Christmas movie that the author had also written. It is a fun, light read of stories about a variety of aspects of holiday remembrances: our experiences as children vs. adults, the sometimes bizarre people who get thrown into our lives around Christmas, how important the Scholastic book fair was to many of us who were born in the '70s and '80s, and the way end of year celebrations often make us melancholy and think of people who are no longer in our lives for many reasons. A well-timed read for right after the season has ended. 

Grade: B

Book 1: Everyone This Christmas Has a Secret by Benjamin Stevenson

We're still within the Twelve Days of Christmas, so I'm still reading Christmas books and watching Christmas movies! This one is a festive mystery novella in a series I haven't read any of the other books in, but I've heard very good things about the main books, and based on my experience with this, I'm not surprised!

This is a very meta mystery series, with a detective/protagonist who knows that he's playing that role in his 'real life' and so comments on elements of it within the story. In this case he discusses the specific aspects of a Christmas special, where the mystery is lighter and the story as a whole doesn't include every reoccurring character and plot element that you would expect from the main story. It's a festive story in which five days before Christmas, his ex-wife's current partner is murdered, and she's the main suspect, so he travels to help her clear her name. It's also about a magician and stagecraft hijinks and also includes commentary on how celebrity charity works, with a satisfying ending that I in no way predicted but that did all come together when he laid it out, and I could see how I could have put it all together if I was that kind of mystery reader. A very pleasant way to spend New Year's Day! 

Grade: A