This review is based on an e-galley received from the publisher.

The Rosie Effect is the sequel to The Rosie Project, which I previously reviewed here. When the action picks up, it's about a year later, Don and Rosie are married and living in New York where he's working at Columbia and she's simultaneously working on her PhD and MD. Then Rosie announces she's pregnant.

This book was lots of fun, with Don's unique approach to research and problem solving resulting in the loss of both of their side jobs, an arrest as a suspected pedophile, and more. I also still love the way that Graeme Simsion conveys more to the reader than Don actually understands about the other characters. However, there were a couple of things that bothered me. First of all, I personally don't care for plots that hinge on one character thinking it's a better idea to assemble a massive conspiracy than to just tell somebody something, and it seems even more unlikely than usual when the person doing so is horrible at lying outright. That's probably as much of a personal pet peeve as anything but it did mean one plot thread annoyed me quite a bit.

Secondly, it seemed to me that Rosie was just as much at fault as Don for the difficulties between them in this book, but that the weight was put entirely on his proving himself as a potential father to her and she wasn't ever really called on her behavior. She seems to set him up to fail extremely early on, really just after telling him that she's pregnant when he was under the impression they weren't planning on doing that yet. (Even he figures out that her failure to take her pill was deliberate.) She goes straight to assuming that she will effectively be raising the baby by herself and doesn't want either to accept his help during the pregnancy or to give him the opportunity to learn parenting skills. She probably has a point that he shouldn't dictate her diet but she should at least accept the evidence that he's trying to help as a sign that he could be a good, supportive father. Furthermore, she actually interprets the fact that he does research and buys the best stroller he can find as his not being interested in the baby, only the stroller. And when he tries to tell her about things that he's doing to learn about babies (aside from the bits he can't mention to her because of plot reasons) she doesn't recognize his intentions at all and says she doesn't want to hear about it. He just can't catch a break.

Those flaws aside, the book as a whole was still a great ride.

Overall: B+

The Rosie Effect will be available December 30.

Zombie, Indiana is third in a series after Zombie, Ohio and Zombie, Illinois, but all three books take place simultaneously and follow different characters so they can be read in any order.

I don't read a lot of zombie stories, but I've followed this series because it's always doing something in addition to the zombie mayhem. In Zombie, Ohio, it followed a unique sentient zombie. Since then the focus has been on the humans instead; in fact, although the danger of the zombies is ever present, the bigger threat to civilization has been the humans.

When the outbreak first hits in Indiana, before people realize what's happening, a school group of teenagers goes missing in a cave. The Governor's daughter is in the class, so he sends the IMPD sergeant who handles special jobs for him. Sergeant Nolan finds one teenage girl alive in the cave, a scholarship student named Kesha. As the two of them continue to search for safety and any other survivors, back in Indianapolis, the Governor strives to make sure it's clear he has matters under control without federal assistance.

The zombies provide the catalyst, but the heart of this story is what happens when people see things only in terms of assets and opportunities. The Governor may (or may not) have caused the zombie outbreak by giving corporations free license to pollute the state, and during the outbreak his focus is on protecting and projecting his image as having responded single-handedly, treating the federal government as a bigger enemy than the zombies. There were moments that felt insufficiently justified. E.g., the governor's daughter's conviction that she needed to get to her father because he was going to do something terrible. Although the governor was more concerned about his daughter's safety than anybody else's, there was no sign that it was a motivating factor in any of the bad calls he made. For example, he wasn't diverting resources to locating her that could have been better used defending more of the population. Nor did her reappearance motivate him to do the right thing. Overall, however, this was an exciting story and a credible depiction of what happens when politicians put ideology above delivering what their constituents need.

Overall: B+

Visions is the second in a series after Omens, reviewed here: 
http://unreachableshelf.weebly.com/on-the-shelf/omens-by-kelley-armstrong

Olivia Taylor-Jones discovered in the first book of the Cainsville series that not only was she adopted, but her birth parents are convicted serial killers. She cleared them of one of the murders of which they were accused, but before she can begin investigating any of the others, she sees a dead body dressed to resemble her. Then it vanishes before anybody else can see it.

Although this book was a fun ride, and the murder plot itself was nicely twisty, I felt like the book overall was a bit obvious. My guess from the first book of fairies being behind the weirdness of Cainsville and Olivia and Gabriel having fae blood has been confirmed. 

I have some further predictions:

Although Olivia begins a relationship with Ricky in this book: I officially predict that she's going to wind up with Gabriel by the end of the series and that Ricky will more likely than not die in some heroic way. Former fiance James is at this point too obviously either evil or being manipulated by evil supernatural powers to be taken seriously as a potential direction for Olivia to be pulled between the men in her life. On a non-romantic note, Olivia's parents will turn out to be exonerated of all the murders. I'd find it more interesting if they were guilty for various reasons related to their not being human but I feel like the first book set the tone as far as that's concerned.

At this point I'm reading for the ride and to see exactly how the fairies relate to the murders. And a little bit to see if I'm right.

Overall: B+

A middle aged man returns to his hometown for a funeral and wanders to the farm at the end of the road where he grew up. When he was a child, it was occupied by a young girl named Lettie Hempstock, her mother, and her grandmother. There, he remembers strange events that happened to him and Lettie when he was seven.

I didn't enjoy this as much as Anansi Boys, American Gods, or Neverwhere, but it's still beautifully written and has a number of wonderful, stand out quotes in it. It has a certain fable-like quality to it which, though while it is probably exactly the tone it was meant to have and which suits the matter of fact way the narrator accepted what was going on around him as a seven year old, also leaves the characters sketched rather lightly and made it hard for me to connect with them. Sometimes I hoped that the action was going to shift back to the present and that a true adult perspective (as opposed to an adult remembering childhood) would help, but after a few chapters and in such a short book it became evident that wasn't going to happen.

I still expect I'll be rereading this in a few years.

Overall: B

Rumor has it that Lucien, Duke of Belliston, is a vampire. When a woman is discovered dead with bite marks on her throat, Sally Fitzhugh - certain that the vampire stories are nonsense and this murder has been staged to frame him - intervenes. The two join forces to find out who is behind the murder and possibly that of the Duke's parents, years before, which had been blamed on his mother.

This book is a delight. It's full of adventure, romance, and humor, most particularly in the form of a pet stoat. Sally has grown up to be a formidable heroine, brave but not foolishly so. She comes across as a sort of successor to Miss Gwen for the next generation. And Lucien, although his baggage sometimes temporarily gets the best of him, displays remarkable endurance. They make a perfect couple.

The only slight disappointment from this book is one that I have trouble describing because it would be incredibly spoilery. The best I can do is: although for most of the book, the characters believe that the murders are connected to the ongoing plot of the series, it turns out they have nothing to do with it. Change the names and have the characters not have a theory about who is behind the murders (just a need to investigate) and this could have been any stand alone romance. It was a fun one, but it was missing a crucial element of the series, as far as I'm concerned.

Overall Rating: B+

Theoretically The Mark of the Midnight Manzanilla is released tomorrow, but since I didn't have an ARC, just a copy that shipped early from B&N, I wouldn't be surprised if you could find it already, too.

This review is based on a free copy received from the publisher, a bit late to be considered an advance copy (although not as late as the fact that I'm just now reviewing it would apply).

The Lion and the Rose is the sequel to The Serpent and the Pearl, a novel of the Borgias. Specifically, they follow Guilia Farnese, the mistress of Rodrigo Borgia, AKA Pope Alexander VI as well as two fictional narrators. When I read the first book, it struck me as if somebody had tried to reverse engineer historical fiction out of historical fantasy. Now, the quantity of drama and backstabbing surrounding the Borgias would be rather difficult to exaggerate. It's the two fictional narrators that have me rolling my eyes and saying "Really?" on a pretty regular basis.  There's Carmelina, a rare female chef who learned from her father whose recipes she's stolen, because of course she is, who in the first book appears at the household that employs her cousin while he's out gambling and saves the dinner, because of course she does. And then there's Leonello, the dwarf body guard. Leonello means "Little Lion." I'm not going to say anything else about that, I'm just going to let you think about that for a few minutes (if it takes that long) and draw your own conclusions about whose voice you think the author wants me to be hearing in my head while he narrates.

The second book continues in much the same vein. The Borgia intrigue is tons of fun. Carmelina's apprentice invents French fries. (He is a historical figure, so perhaps I should mention that the author's note does clarify that although potatoes were just being discovered in the "New World," he did not actually invent French fries.) And at one time or another every male character with a significant speaking part falls in love with or tries to sleep with (consensually or not) one or the other of the female narrators. Because nobody can be immune to both of their charms. All in all, it's not that it's bad, it's just that so much of the invented material is material that we have seen many, many times before.

Overall: B

Derek Hollbrook, Viscount Banfield, and Clementine Grey were betrothed when he was seventeen and she was fourteen. For him, it was love at first sight. Now it's seven years later and they're finally to be married. But Clementine is terrified that her difficult childhood with a mother who behaved abusively to her father (though not to her) and her father's drinking will make it impossible for her to be the wife he deserves, or a mother to the children he will need. She initially plans to run away with a friend, Prince Nasser, and though she tells Derek about this, it doesn't exactly help him learn to trust her.

This is not my favorite book by Delilah Marvelle. As usual, the dialogue is wonderful and all the characters are interesting. And I liked the premise itself. However, the resolution seemed rushed and incomplete. Derek and Clementine stumble into the School of Gallantry and Derek is taken on as a pupil, but we don't really see the school playing a major factor in his learning to be a better husband by being a friend to his wife. The only scene of the actual school that we see, not counting the impromptu session before his official enrollment, doesn't serve any purpose except for providing a touchstone to link this book with the others in the series. His conversation with Prince Nasser is more relevant to his development. And there's no indication of how Clementine learns to overcome her fears of repeating her mother's destructive behaviors and be more affectionate with her husband. Although the official school is for men, I think Clementine was as much in need of tutoring as Derek if not more and could have benefited from some private sessions in confidence apart from being given a bag of bondage equipment. Then at the end we go straight from her not wanting children and not having slept with her husband since their wedding night to her deciding she wants babies immediately. We haven't seen that she's feeling secure in them as a couple yet before she announces that she'd like to add some more. Yes, logically a viscount needs an heir so they aren't going to be putting that off for long, but I'd have liked to see her having learned to be a happy wife before deciding she had gotten to a point where she was ready to be a mother, especially since the practicalities of them having sex while making sure they avoid pregnancy had already been dealt with in the plot so it wasn't like that wasn't on the table. (In fact, if only the mention of being ready to have a child could have been omitted from the final chapter before the epilogue entirely, there could still have been a baby in the epilogue I would have assumed she'd gone through those stages a little more slowly and it would have felt a little more natural. Although I would still probably have rolled my eyes a little at the cliche of the epilogue baby.)  The pacing just generally feels a bit off, without enough work having been done on Clementine's part, and with her issues having been fixed all in one step. That said, I'm still looking forward to Brayton's book just as eagerly as I have been since he was first introduced.

Overall: B

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.

Five Days at Memorial: Life and Death in a Storm-Ravaged Hospital is the third book on the nonfiction shortlist for the Carnegie. It reconstructs five days of hurricane Katrina and the ensuing flooding at Memorial Medical Center in New Orleans and the following allegations that several medical professionals planned deliberately to inject several patients with lethal doses of medications.

This was a thorough investigative account, but not wholly satisfying. The cast of "characters" involved was large; details that were mentioned about people's personal lives (such as what one person's spouse or another was doing during the storm) were left lying so long that it was difficult to come back to them later and remember them. The immediacy draws the reader in for most of the book, but the attempted switch to a larger perspective by bringing Sandy into the epilogue felt a bit awkward to me. All in all, this was an interesting account of recent events, but I think my favorite for the Carnegie in this category is remaining The Bully Pulpit.


Overall: B+

Since the rest of the Carnegie fiction shortlist hasn't come in for me at the library yet, I skipped over to the nonfiction list. If On Paper does not literally cover the everything of paper's history, it does at least offer a wide sampling. Besides the more obvious printing, it also goes into great depth about "papers" in the sense of government identification, oragami, shredding/pulping (and the use of pulp), the Nazi's records in context of the Nuremberg trials, and the random bits of paper from the World Trade Center that rained down after their destruction. Perhaps considering the breadth, it's not surprising that the depth sometimes leaves something to be desired, but read out of the desire to hear a little bit about everything, it was mostly satisfactory until the end.

But... the end is the identification of a bit of paper from the WTC. Literally. That is the epilogue. I can understand the idea that something that looms as large as the attacks of Sept. 11 does in American minds needs to be the final subject introduced in this book because nothing else is really going to follow it... but. When a book covers as much disparate ground as this one, either the epilogue or, if there's not a proper epilogue, the final chapter needs to address the big picture and make some effort to tie the whole thing together, possibly looking towards the future of paper, what uses are likely to last the longest and which are more likely to vanish in a generation or so. The total lack of any conclusion, in any sense of the word, seems more appropriate for a book that people are meant to dip into than one people are meant to read straight through. I do have the impression that this is a book people are meant to read from beginning to end (for one thing the chapters are longer than I associate with books people are meant to pick up and turn to a section at random), but it doesn't end so much as stop.

Overall: B+