The Kiss Curse

The Kiss Curse
by Erin Sterling
isbn: 9780063027527
Publication Date: September 20, 2022
Pages: 320
Genre: Fiction, Paranormal, Romance
Publisher: HarperCollins

Gwyn Jones is perfectly happy with her life in Graves Glen. She, her mom, and her cousin have formed a new and powerful coven; she’s running a successful witchcraft shop, Something Wicked; and she’s started mentoring some of the younger witches in town. As Halloween approaches, there’s only one problem—Llewellyn “Wells” Penhallow.

Wells has come to Graves Glen to re-establish his family’s connection to the town they founded as well as to make a new life for himself after years of being the dutiful son in Wales. When he opens up a shop of his own, Penhallow’s, just across the street from Something Wicked, he quickly learns he’s gotten more than he bargained for in going up against Gwyn.

When their professional competition leads to a very personal—and very hot—kiss, both Wells and Gwyn are determined to stay away from each other, convinced the kiss was just a magical fluke. But when a mysterious new coven of witches come to town and Gwyn’s powers begin fading, she and Wells must work together to figure out just what these new witches want and how to restore Gwyn’s magic before it’s too late.

I got to 60% and thought … why am I doing this? So, nope. The first book, The Ex Hex, had enough humor in it that I could mostly overlook the romance, but this one is just straight up romance and it’s not my jam.

Not badly written, just not my thing, which is why I’m not rating it.

DNF @ 168 pages: Invisible Women

Invisible Women: Exposing Data Bias in a World Designed for Men
by Caroline Criado Perez
isbn: 9781784706289
Publication Date: March 17, 2020
Pages: 410
Genre: Science
Publisher: Vintage Books

Imagine a world where...

· Your phone is too big for your hand
· Your doctor prescribes a drug that is wrong for your body
· In a car accident you are 47% more likely to be injured.

If any of that sounds familiar, chances are you're a woman.

From government policy and medical research, to technology, workplaces, and the media. Invisible Women reveals how in a world built for and by men we are systematically ignoring half of the population, often with disastrous consequences. Caroline Criado Perez brings together for the first time an impressive range of case studies, stories and new research from across the world that illustrate the hidden ways in which women are forgotten, and the profound impact this has on us all.

Discover the shocking gender bias that affects our everyday lives.

Here’s me, being all contrarian and swimming against the tide, but I could not finish this book. It engendered a level of page rage in me that I haven’t experienced since being forced to read Orwell, although, not so much that I’d like to flick a bic at it, so Orwell’s title remains safe.

Why the page rage? Because this book was sold to me as an academic look at the bias towards men in everyday living; if that’s what it was meant to be, it’s poorly written, with very little context, and next to no data to inform the author’s assertions. As a diatribe or manifesto, however, it’s an excellent piece of writing, full of snark and sarcasm and barely repressed vitriol, in spite of the forward where she claims to take an agnostic view, because so much of the bias is unintentional. Understand that I don’t make any claim that these bias don’t exist – I don’t disagree with her premise in the slightest. But I don’t like anyone of any gender that rages against the machine and does little else.

But the biggest reason for my page rage and my DNF is that I couldn’t help thinking as I read it that I’m not a female in Perez’s world. I’m too tall, my hands are too big, my seatbelt sits where it’s supposed to, but most damningly of all: I don’t have children. I’m not a care-taker or giver, and therefore I am irrelevant.

I have never encountered this attitude in my books before, and the irony is not lost on me that my first experience with it is in a feminist title.

DNF: Still Water: The Deep Life of the Pond

Still Water: The Deep Life of the Pond
by John Lewis-Stempel
Rating: ★★
isbn: 9780857524577
Publication Date: March 14, 2019
Pages: 289
Genre: Natural Science, Non-fiction, Science
Publisher: Doubleday

The Pond. Nothing in the countryside is more humble or more valuable. It's the moorhen's reedy home, the frog's ancient breeding place, the kill zone of the beautiful dragonfly. More than a hundred rare and threatened fauna and flora depend on it.

Written in gorgeous prose, Still Water tells the seasonal story of the wild animals and plants that live in and around the pond, from the mayfly larvae in the mud to the patrolling bats in the night sky above. It reflects an era before the water was polluted with chemicals and the land built on for housing, a time when ponds shone everywhere like eyes in the land, sustaining life for all, from fish to carthorse.

Still Water is a loving biography of the pond, and an alarm call on behalf of this precious but overlooked habitat. Above all, John Lewis-Stempel takes us on a remarkable journey - deep, deep down into the nature of still water.

Straight up this book was not at all what I was expecting. The title implies a close analysis of pond life; the pull quote at the bottom reinforces this expectation.

Instead, this is a philosophical naval-gaze / memoir / diary. Disappointing, given that I was in the mood for a discussion of bugs, amphibians, fish … maybe some algae for color. But I’ve also enjoyed other books similar to this (A Farmer’s Diary comes immediately to mind) so I shifted my expectations and persevered. Unfortunately, even with shifted expectations I could not get past “Winter”; the writing was just a bit too meta and the prose was trying too hard to be poetic. One season in – about 25% of the book – and I still really wasn’t sure what he was trying to accomplish.

I gave it two stars because it was technically well written, the cover is gorgeous, and it might just be me.

DNF: The Cursing Mommy’s Book of Days

The Cursing Mommy's Book of Days
by Ian Frazier
Rating: ★★
isbn: 9780374133184
Publication Date: January 1, 2012
Pages: 244
Genre: Fiction
Publisher: Farrar Straus and Giroux

Based on his widely read columns for The New Yorker, Ian Frazier's uproarious first novel, The Cursing Mommy's Book of Days, centers on a profoundly memorable character, sprung from an impressively fertile imagination. Structured as a daybook of sorts, the book follows the Cursing Mommy―beleaguered wife of Larry and mother of two boys, twelve and eight―as she tries (more or less) valiantly to offer tips on how to do various tasks around the home, only to end up on the ground, cursing, surrounded by broken glass. Her voice is somewhere between Phyllis Diller's and Sylvia Plath's: a hilariously desperate housewife with a taste for swearing and large glasses of red wine, who speaks to the frustrations of everyday life.

This book has been on my TBR for years; the title appealed to me in the moment – I’m not a mommy but I can curse with the best of them. A few months ago, I had it in hand to purge, but I read the flap and the author is a New Yorker columnist so I held it back. After reading Are We Having Fun Yet by Lucy Mangan, I thought it would be the right time to read this one as a comparison of sorts: how would the American version of the concept compare to the UK version? How would a male author’s portrayal of a columnist-working-from-home mother of two stack up against the same dynamic in the UK?

It didn’t, obviously. I wasn’t able to make it through February. But I’m not sure this is a condemnation; it’s just a very different delivery and one that ultimately didn’t suit me at all because – hilariously – of the swearing.

Do you remember the comedian Sam Kennison? For those that don’t, he was an American stand-up comedian and actor. A former Pentecostal preacher, he performed stand-up routines that were characterized by intense sudden tirades, punctuated with his distinctive scream, similar to charismatic preachers. The Screaming Mommy is the Sam Kennison of mommy diarists, and I think you have to have a certain sense of humor to appreciate it. Entire paragraphs of all-caps profanity, using f*ck as every part of speech, usually in the same sentence.

Apart from that, it’s not bad, but still didn’t work as a book; if I skipped those tirades, the narrative still failed to connect with me and frankly, I found some of it disturbingly hypocritical – like when she’s wondering why her 12-year-old son needs to be medicated to control his angry, emotional outbursts in school, as she’s smashing an entire sink full of dishes with a hammer because she tried to rinse her hands off, and the splash back from a dirty cereal bowl stained her silk blouse.

In the author’s defence, this book was based on a series of columns written for The New Yorker, and as columns, I think they’d have worked much better; outbursts like this are probably easier to chuckle over when they’re fed to the audience once a month. All together like this in book form, it’s just way too much. Lucy Mangan manages to convey the same frustration and angst in a way the reader can laugh with, rather than feeling as though they’re laughing at the crazy person who escaped the asylum, and she manages to do it with a semblance of continuing plot, or at least character, development.

DNF: A Fiancée’s Guide to First Wives and Murder

A Fiancée's Guide to First Wives and Murder
by Dianne Freeman
Rating: ★
isbn: 9781496731609
Series: Countess of Harleigh Mystery #4
Publication Date: October 8, 2021
Pages: 295
Genre: Mystery
Publisher: Kensington

For Frances Wynn, widow to the late Earl of Harleigh, life has a cosmopolitan flavor of late. No sooner has she sent her mother and daughter off on a shopping trip to Paris than she and her fiancé, George Hazleton, are socializing with visiting members of the Russian royal family. Yet amid this whirlwind, scandal also comes calling when Inspector Delaney turns up outside Frances's house with a young French woman with a shocking claim: she is Mrs. George Hazelton.

As the future Mrs. George Hazelton, Frances assumes the woman is either lying or demented. "Mrs. Hazelton," aka Irena, makes other outrageous statements. Among them, she insists that she is the illegitimate daughter of Russian royalty, that she has been abducted and held for ransom many times, and that someone is sending her threatening letters. When George arrives, he clarifies that he is certainly not married to Irena--though he can confirm her royal parentage. But even as he agrees to investigate whether Irena's life is in danger, her claim proves tragically true. Irena is found strangled in Frances' garden.

To uncover a killer--and clear their own names--Frances and George must determine which of Irena's outlandish stories were based in fact, and who stood to benefit from her death. And as the search reaches a shocking conclusion, they may find that villainy lurks all too close to home...

It’s rare that I DNF a book, and I enjoyed the first three of this series, but I got 45 pages in and … a big fat no.

I’m never going to be able to suspend my belief enough to read about a spoiled rotten by-blow of the Russian royal family who baldly lies about being the MC’s fiancé’s wife so she can blackmail him into investigating someone sending her letters.

In an age where a woman would be sent to a sanitarium for merely reading the wrong book, the idea that this silly child could successfully throw this tantrum and manipulate the main characters is beyond ridiculous. I don’t care that she does end up dead, it’s a terrible, weak premise.

The Haunting of America – DNF @ pg. 105

The Haunting of America
by Joel Martin, William J. Birnes
Rating: ★★
Publication Date: September 15, 2009
Pages: 400
Genre: History, Non-fiction
Publisher: Forge

In the tradition of their Haunting of the Presidents, national bestselling authors Joel Martin and William J. Birnes write The Haunting of America: From The Salem Witch Trials to Harry Houdini, the only book to tell the story of how paranormal events influenced and sometimes even drove political events. In a narrative retelling of American history that begins with the Salem Witch Trials of the seventeenth century, Martin and Birnes unearth the roots of America's fascination with the ghosts, goblins, and demons that possess our imaginations and nightmares. The authors examine the political history of the United States through the lens of the paranormal and investigate the spiritual events that inspired public policy: channelers and meduims who have advised presidents, UFOs that frightened the nation's military into launching nuclear bomber squadrons toward the Soviet Union, out-of-body experiencers deployed to gather sensitive intelligence on other countries, and even spirits summoned to communicate with living politicians.

The Haunting of America is a thrilling exploration of the often unexpected influences of the paranormal on science, medicine, law, government, the military, psychology, theology, death and dying, spirituality, and pop culture.

How do you ruin a book with a name like that? Wrap a textbook in it.

It might not actually be a bad book if one is looking for an anthropological view of superstition and paranormal belief and their effect on the American political system, but I was just looking for some fun and slightly spooky stories about haunting in America. You know, what it says on the tin.

Ah well, another one off the TBR; progress is progress.

DNF: A Dangerous Engagement (Amory Ames, #6)

A Dangerous Engagement
by Ashley Weaver
Rating: ★
isbn: 9780749024581
Series: Amory Ames #6
Publication Date: April 23, 2020
Pages: 382
Genre: Historical, Mystery
Publisher: Allison & Busby

Amory Ames is travelling to New York, excited to be a bridesmaid at her friend Tabitha's wedding, but with Prohibition in full swing, her husband Milo is less than enthused. When a member of the wedding party is found murdered on the front steps of the bride's home, the happy plans take a darker twist.

Amory discovers that the dead man has links to the notorious - and notoriously handsome - gangster Leon De Lora. While the police seem to think that New York's criminal underworld is at play, Amory feels they can't ignore the wedding guests either. Milo and Amory are drawn into the glamorous, dangerous world of nightclubs and bootleggers. But as they draw closer to unravelling the web of lies the murdered man has left in his wake, the killer is weaving a web of his own.

I tried. I walked away and gave it a few days, and tried again. I couldn’t do it. While the series started off strong, and interesting, it has bottomed out with this book, wallowing in mediocrity with bland and tedious descriptions of every little thing (they went to an automat; she describes what an automat looks like, then describes all the categories displayed, then describes Amory and Milo getting change for the machines, then getting their trays, then which food they’re choosing). It’s endless. And the paragraphs of Amory’s internal dialog outnumber actual dialog by at least 5 to 1. I have decided that the abundance of internal dialog that has become so common in most of today’s mysteries is because authors and editors are forced to assume their average reader is stupid, and so lacking in critical thinking that they must be led through the steps of the mystery like a particularly dim child. The misanthrope in me understands the likely necessity, but I am not stupid, and I’m quite capable of thinking critically, so I find the trend irritating.

Oh, and speaking of irritating trends: wonder of wonders, she’s pregnant, only she doesn’t know yet, even though it’s obvious even to someone like me, who has never so much as had a scare. I’m willing to bet .50 cents that Milo will figure it out before she does.

And speaking of Milo – he’s an ass. I’m assuming the author is going for something akin to insouciance, but really, just an ass. He talks down to Amory more often than he ever has anything nice to say to her, and she just takes it. It’s all way too stiff-upper-lip for my patience.

It’s a shame to see this series go to the dogs, but after this one I can’t imagine it rebounding in my eyes, unless Amory were to ditch Milo in some spectacular fashion, and that isn’t going to happen, so instead I’m going to ditch the series and re-claim valuable bookshelf space.