I remembered really loving The Doomsday Book and To Say Nothing of the Dog, although I apparently read those well before I started keeping track for this site (or its previous incarnations) and I was super excited to hear Willis had a new book out! (And thanks for the bday present, Cat!)

She falls somewhere between the Diana Gabaldon Outlander books (with the time travel, of course) and Maureen McHugh (more sci/fi fantasty, less romance than Gabaldon) in my mind.

I felt this one was a bit slowgoing at first, there are SO many characters to set up, in different places both in space and time. But about halfway through I found myself quite eagerly turning the pages and then…OH NO IT’S BEEN TURNED INTO A TWO-PART BOOK AND THIS IS ONLY THE FIRST HALF NOOOOOOOOO
Yeah, that’s putting it mildly. Apparently part 2 “All Clear” will be out in October.

Really cool intertwining of historians from the future (2060) sent back to research WWII England. The contretemps of trying to find the right outfits, accents, accessories, etc., is quite entertaining. The effect of them navigating the past, trying to observe with the minimum of involvement and no interaction; can that ever really be possible? There have been a bunch of History teachers-to-be in my classes this year and we’ve done a lot of talking about “historical fact” and it’s really interesting to read this with that type of semantics in mind.

I was really psyched about who arrives in the last chapter (or who I think it is that arrives). I hope to see more of that character in book 2…

This is not an unbiased review. I have been friends with Rachael for years.

Be that as it may, I absolutely loved this book.

Now, this IS a romance genre novel and it does abide by many of those conventions. It’s not a mystery who’s going to wind up with who, or even whether they’ll wind up together. Rather the mystery is in how is that going to happen? How will they get past their irks and irritations and hangups and baggage? How will they become the right person for each other?

That said, there is a lot going on here: the integration of knitting lore and farmers meeting ’round the breakfast table at the diner, as well as a mystery popping up from someone’s past…

Abigail and Cade seem very real and very human and very connected. Their interactions have just the right touch.

I’m so proud of my friend that she wrote this lovely book and I’m so excited for her success!

Book #5 in the Mercy Thompson series.

Another fantastic entry in this series. Lots of stuff happens here, we learn more about the pack and its internal dramas/rules/etc., about Samuel, about the fae. I couldn’t put it down!

I’m super into these, I’m into the related Charles/Anna books, I’ve read her more “medieval”-type fantasty as well (here or here or here). I just think everything Briggs writes is fantastic.

Fourth in a series.

Definitely in my top five current fantasy series (along with the Patricia Briggs’Mercy Thompson books and the almost-completed Robert Jordan Wheel of Time books…I’d have have to walk to a different room to look at a different bookshelf to pin down the rest…).

This has a lot of the good stuff of the previous three books, as well as widening the list of characters I cared about, filling in some of the folks who were broader strokes in books past (Shamus in particular). There continues to be a LOT about blood magic that we don’t really know its longlasting effects. Lots of great fighting (magic and otherwise). And a freakalicious ending that is NOT going to keep me patient until the next one comes out in November (YAY SO SOON!).

Allie and Zayvion continue to have a sexy yet more than that relationship. The imagery describing Zayvion in a certain fight at a certain point in this book…is just so so cool. And I do dearly love Stone. (FYI you can knit your own Stone should you wish to. Although in the books he is a LOT BIGGER than that.)

I’ve been wanting to try out some Peter Ho Davies ever since his novel “The Welsh Girl” was longlisted for the Booker prize (I am generally a fan of lots of stuff on the Booker long and short lists). Just happened to see this collection while in the library checking out Robertson Davies (for our March challenge) so I decided to check them out.

Intriguing and unusual mix of stories, representing his unusual background of 1/2 Welsh, 1/2 Chinese. Some of the Welsh stories felt very Australian to me — if you’ve ever been to Australia, after having spent time in England, it’s an interesting mix of British & Asian influences. These were entertaining, interesting and some really nice language choices. My favorite story was “A Union.”