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

Exhausted by her two small children, Emma isn't sure what put-together Nina sees in her. Unknown to her, Nina remembers her from the past, and is now playing a dangerous game of cat and mouse with her life. The description was intriguing, but the details and the execution were lacking.

For the first third of the book, although we learn that Nina remembers Emma from somewhere and that she orchestrated their new "meeting," Nina and Emma barely interact. Once they finally become a regular part of each other's lives, the tension does increase somewhat. But when the reader finally learns what it was that Emma did years before that makes Nina want revenge even though Emma doesn't even remember her, it's anticlimactic. It turns out that the thing Emma did wasn't deliberately cruel. She probably didn't intend to do it and it's entirely possible that she was never even aware it happened. Most of the book's chapters from Nina's perspective build suspense over how she knew Emma and why she wants revenge, and when it's finally revealed.... nothing. Then it ends abruptly without Emma apparently ever having found out what Nina was doing to her or why. This book is in need of a catharsis it's lacking.

Overall: C

Her will be available in the U.S. in January 2015.

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

Elise Dalriss hears her great-granddaughter repeating a story about a princess locked asleep in a tower, and finally tells the true story as she lived it, the princess's companion.

Do not expect too much Sleeping Beauty in this story. The broad outlines are there: a King and Queen who at long last have a child. A curse at the princess's baptism. Her being shut away in the tower. However, the story is really Elise's as she makes her way from the countryside to the palace and from chambermaid to lady in waiting, and about the friendships and romances she forms along the way. There is very possibly also no magic in this story, as it remains ambiguous whether royal aunts Millicent and Flora have magic powers or merely an amazing knowledge of herbs.

Call this historical fiction about history that never happened, to borrow a phrase often used to describe the A Song of Ice and Fire series. I would say the ideal audience for this book would be fans of Philippa Gregory who enjoy the court intrigue and aren't picky about whether the court in question existed.

Overall grade: B

While Beauty Slept will be available February 20

I'm at ALA Midwinter right now, so I have a ton of ARCs and will be reading a much higher percentage of new stuff for the foreseeable future, and I expect I'll be doing more reviewing.

So, yes, this review is based on an ARC received free from the publisher.

Penelope Sparrow wakes up after miraculously surviving a fourteen story fall. Although her injuries are comparatively far less than what would be expected, it's unclear if she will ever be able to resume her career as a dancer. Penny will have to recover and confront her memories while trying to rebuild her body and discover her new place in the world.

I have to fess up: I took this book because the woman in the Sourcebooks booth who was handing it out made it sound like more of a psychological suspense book than it is. I thought Penny's major challenge was going to be trying to fill in the gap in her memory of what exactly she was doing falling out of a window. Instead, it's primarily a story about Penny trying to deal with her issues about her body and her mother. I tried not to hold it against the book that the sales pitch made me think that it was something that it wasn't, but I remained unimpressed.

Penny's shutting her mother out of the events of her career might have been reasonable as herself; if she is so worried about impressing her mother that she doesn't want to tell her anything until after she has already succeeded, that's a reasonable character choice. However, when her roommate Angela's mother can't always come when her CF sends her to the hospital because of her work, Penny's reaction is judgmental. Not only is there a lack of understanding, before she finds out what Dara Reed does, that maybe her work and her finances don't let her get away as often as Angela has to be hospitalized, but there's an incomprehensible contradiction about how much Penny expects mothers and daughters to be involved in each other's lives. I also found the way that Penny gets her first post-dance job to be frankly ridiculous, as was the fact that Angela wanted her as a roommate to help pay the rent but didn't discuss what her share of the rent would be as soon as the discussion of her moving in for real came up. I kept reading because I did want to find out how Penny fell and what would happen when she remembered, but I found Penny not unlikeable, but unknowable, which is unforgiveable in a first person narrator, and all of the non-dance aspects of her world to be deeply unrealistic. (I know very little about the world of dance but I would consider that part of her life to be at least believable, although I can't speak for accuracy.)

Overall Grade: C. The Art of Falling will be released 1/28.

Another review of something I read earlier this year while I'm working on the next book.

When Clemmie arrives at her grandmother Addie's birthday party, her grandmother, slightly dazed from her medication, calls her "Bea." This and a portrait of Addie's cousin Bea, whom Clemmie resembles, leads her on the track of long lost family secrets.

When Addie's parents died, and she was taken in by her aunt and uncle, her cousin Bea was her closest ally. Although they take different paths in life, the deep friendship between the two is the heart of the story.

I always get a kick out of Lauren Willig's Pink Carnation books, but while The Ashford Affair shares the time-slip narrative device of different plotlines running through different eras, it is a more serious book in tone. There is a lot of overlap between fans of this book and that series, but I wouldn't be surprised if it doesn't line up exactly that if you love one, you must love the other.

This is sweeping story that drifts between 1999 and the years just after WWII, with a few stops before and in between, and journeys from London to Kenya to New York, examining love, family, friendship, and deeply buried secrets. Highly recommended to everybody who likes books that work in multiple timelines.

Overall Grade: A