This review is based on an advance reading copy received from the publisher.

Last Night at the Blue Angel alternately follows Sophia, the precocious ten year old daughter of a Chicago jazz singer, Naomi, in the mid-1960s, and Naomi herself, ten years before as she makes her way from Kansas to the city. The relationship between Sophia and Naomi is complex and believable, as are the relationships between them and their circle of friends. In Naomi's chapters, we learn the histories that she has with the men and women around her. In some ways their household is unstable; Sophia is used to men and women spending the night in her mother's room and asks only why their friend Jim, when he stays, sleeps in the living room. But as the story unfolds in both decades, it becomes clearer and clearer that Naomi and Sophia are surrounded by a family of choice. Sophia is an odd but thoroughly believable child; her preoccupation with the aftermath of a nuclear war comes across in childlike ways like her list of random things it occurs to her that she might need to reinvent. Naomi comes across as a force that's too big for the space that currently holds her. She's far from perfect, but at times her strength is admirable, and she always remains sympathetic.

Overall: A

Last Night at the Blue Angel will be available July 1.

This review is based on an ARC received from the publisher.

I was torn about whether or not I could write this review. I haven't written a DNF review before. Usually if I'm going to dump a book, I do it before I'm far enough in to write anything of substance about it. But, I was on the exercise bike at the gym without anything else to read, and it's both fast reading and a short book, so I was actually half way through before I gave up.

I can deal with a lot of ugliness in literature. I'm a Song of Ice and Fire fan, so it's not like I have trouble with seeing awful things happen to fictional characters. The cover text on the ARC says that it's about Didi's obsession with the son, Tarun, that her husband had with his secret, second family. I found it to be instead about her abuse of the son, emotionally and sexually in the portion of the book that I read. It was clear from the rest of the description that she did abuse them, but I think that I must have expected a psychological look at her obsession, which would require spending the book in her head. Instead, the only time the close third-person narration has come close to being from her perspective so far has been in the preliminary chapters before the abuse began. Instead we're following Tarun exclusively, and instead of a book about obsession it's a book about abuse Stockholm syndrome.

I don't object to reading about awful things, but I want them either to be part of a larger plot (see G.R.R.M.) or to be interesting awful things. I want to be shown something terrible and fascinating, either in the scale of the awfulness or by taking me inside the mind of the perpetrator in a way I couldn't normally understand (e.g. Hannibal Lector). I don't read fiction to for a story that I could find in a newspaper easily.

No Grade: DNF

The City Son will be available June 17.

This review is based on an advance reading copy received from the publisher.

Melanie is one of a group of children being raised on an army base in England after civilization has collapsed. Every morning, armed soldiers come to her room, strap her into a wheelchair, and roll her into class. Her favorite teacher is Miss Justineau. Sometimes she asks questions about what will happen when she grows up, but those seem to make Miss Justineau sad.

It's hard to say much more than that about this book without giving too much away. Melanie, Miss Justineau, and the rest of their small band are each wonderfully rendered, complex characters, including Dr. Caldwell. Although her interests are fundamentally opposed to Melanie's, her motivations are understandable and not entirely unsympathetic, no matter how heartlessly she goes about pursuing them. Although there is plenty of post-apocalyptic suspense, this is at heart a touching story of devotion and survival.

Overall: A+

The Girl with All the Gifts will be available on June 10.

This review is based on a free e-galley received from the publisher that will eventually expire, and which I will then miss greatly.

That Summer is a gothic time slip novel, traveling between 1849 and 2009. I'd say it is not, strictly speaking, a romance novel, for reasons that I will not go into for fear of spoilers. Honestly, I did not The most intense aspect of the book for me were the mysteries. What might the modern heroine find in the house? What exactly would happen to the 19th century lovers? I did not love the historical portion of the book quite as much as I did The Ashford Affair, mostly because aside from Imogene and Gavin, the characters seemed more thinly drawn, nor does Imogen seem to have a significant relationship (even a significantly complicated relationship) with anybody but Gavin once the book is truly underway. However, the modern heroine, Julia, and the modern supporting characters seemed more complex. Between them and wondering how everything would end, I had a lot of trouble putting this book down at the end of my breaks at work.

I'll be sad to see the Pink Carnation series come to an end after two more books, but I'll happily read whatever else Lauren Willig chooses to write.

Overall: A

That Summer will be available on June 3.

This review is based on an advance reader copy received from the publisher.

Fifty some years in the future, Meena wakes up with mysterious snake bites and decides she needs to run. She sees the Trail, a series of connected cells meant to draw power from the sea, and decides to walk it from India to Ethiopia where she was born.

In an earlier time, we hear the story of a young girl named Mariama whose mother was trying to escape slavery before Mariama was forced to run on her own, relying on strangers.

Meena's journey across the Trail is transformative, sometimes hallucinatory, and sometime revelatory of the truths that she is running from. I kept thinking that to an extent it's the SF equivalent of Wild by Cheryl Strayed (Meena is also dealing with many different kinds of grief), and wishing it had been around to be our community's Big Read instead. I'm adding it to my list of possibilities for the book-club-in-a-bar one of my coworkers and I lead.

Overall: A

The Girl in the Road will be available May 20

This review is based on an advance reader copy received from the publisher.

In the third book in the Scotland Yard Murder Squad series, Inspector Day and Sergeant Hammersmith have been pressed into service searching for four, or possibly five, prisoners who escaped after a train car derailed and crashed into a prison wall, apparently deliberately. One of them is a murderer whom Day caught in the first place, and who may possibly go after his wife, Claire, who is expecting a baby any day. To make matters even worse, Jack the Ripper is back on the loose after having been secretly captured and held prisoner by a shadowy organization.

After three books, Day, Hammersmith, and the reoccurring supporting characters still come across as rather lightly sketched. Jack is the most compelling character, although he still feels a bit derivative. I worry that it sounds a bit ridiculous, when Jack the Ripper is one of the models for all fictional serial killers, but we are dealing with a fictional version of Jack that was just created here. His fixation with "transforming" people is reminiscent of Thomas Harris characters, and since I do not believe that theme was in any of the Ripper letters, I can't excuse it by saying that it's an actual association with the historical Jack. If I've missed a letter that suggested Jack the Ripper did think in those terms, please correct me.

What keeps me reading this series is the setting. The little details of weapons, the things that Scotland Yard can and cannot do with forensics in the 1890s when modern ideas of forensic science were just starting to be formed are worth the time and keep the reader's attention in between the pure action scenes. That's why I'll be looking for the fourth book, which was rather more obviously set up at the end than other installments in the series have been.

Overall: B

The Devil's Workshop will be available May 20.

This review is based on an advance readers copy provided by the publisher.

For four years, Malorie has been raising two children who have never seen the world outside their house. This is because of a strange phenomenon that began about a year before their birth. Victims lose their minds, become violent, and ultimately kill themselves, and it's believed that it's caused by seeing some unknown thing. They have survived this long by staying inside with the windows covered and wearing blindfolds when they must go into the yard. Now, Malorie has decided it's time to go to a safer place, but she must take the children down the river while they are all blindfolded in order to do it.

Flipping between Malorie's journey down the river and the events that led to her and the children living alone in the house, Bird Box is a gripping work of suspense. Aspects of it are familiar from other post apocalyptic or horror books and movies, but the way it all comes together without anything unnecessary results in a book that I didn't want to put down.

Overall Grade: A

Bird Box will be released on May 13.

This review is based on an advance reading copy received from the publisher. I did almost finish it in time for the "advance" part to do some good.

The Oversight, a free company of people of mixed supernatural and human blood, has guarded the line between ordinary life and the magical world since ancient times. In early 19th century London, their number has fallen to the bare minimum to keep the order intact and their enemies have seen the opportunity to steal a powerful item they guard.

This book reminded me of a historical Neverwhere more than anything else. The world is permeated by a magical, dreamlike quality, and yet individual people have a matter-of-fact, natural quality that makes it seem perfectly normal in a way that I associate with Neil Gaiman. There were a few characters whose stories seemed underexamined to the point that I wondered what they were doing in the book, but in the last couple of chapters it became clear that this is intended to be the beginning of a series. (That was not apparent from the cover text or any publicity that I've seen.) Most likely those threads will be picked up at another time.

Overall Grade: A

This review is based on a free copy provided by the publisher.

This book attempts to mix show business memoir with career advice book, and it comes off better as the former than the latter. It's a perfectly nice book but don't let the title or the bits of the description that treat it as a how-to to fool you into thinking it will be useful.

Most of the advice is the incredibly basic sort that's only appropriate for people who are new to the job market, like be on time for interviews and shower first. I was hoping that Leifer, as a woman in a largely male dominated field, would also put more depth into advice specifically for women regarding how society's perception of gender roles can create extra workplace challenges for them. Alas, her thoughts there are pretty much limited to the find-a-way-to-make-it-help-you level.

A pleasant read but far less valuable for practical information than I was led to believe by the marketing.
 
Overall: C

This is the second of the Carnegie fiction shortlist books I've read, and at this point it's my favorite. Still waiting for the last one to come in at the library.

Ifemelu comes to America as a young woman and finds success as a blogger on race. As a black woman from Africa rather than an African American, she is simultaneously categorized with black Americans while having a different history and having grown up in a different context. Obinze, the man she left behind in Nigeria and with whom she cut off contact sometime thereafter, lives as an undocumented worker in London. Their stories largely told in flashbacks, both eventually return to Nigeria changed.

This book simultaneously addresses cultural clashes directly and maintains the individual stories of all the characters (Ifemelu's family in particular, in addition to the two main protagonists) as people. It was deeply engrossing, and at this point I think the best thing I can say is a simple "read it."

Overall: A