The Wolves of Andover

The Wolves of Andover
By Kathleen Kent (300 pages)
Published by Little, Brown
Bookish rating: 4

The Wolves of Andover is one of those books I read with less attention than it deserved. Read in snippets as I waited in Mom-related waiting rooms and before falling asleep at night, I wasn’t at my most discerning.

Whatever. It’s a good book. Set in Massachusetts in the 1600s, it follows the evolving relationship between Martha, a girl sent to live with her fussy cousin as a servant, and Thomas, a man who fled to the colonies to escape certain death after the English Civil War.

For some reason, the English Civil War repeatedly fails to suck me in when I read historical novels. But Kent is a talented writer and handles what apparently is my least favorite war quite nicely.

Kent has a good, believable eye for historical detail, and she hits a good balance of readability and dialect. I’m not the biggest fan of dialect-heavy dialogue, but she’s effective. I can “hear” the characters speak with what I’m imagining our colonial or Welsh accents.

Characters are fascinatingly complex and human, even the high-maintenance cousin (and really, how fussy can you really be in the 1600s?). And I loved that our heroine, Martha, is a prickly, sort of bitchy gal. I get it.

A solid, historical novel, creatively, almost eerily, imagined. Recommended.

Royal Pain

A Royal Pain

By Rhys Bowen (320 pages)

Published by Berkley Mystery

Bookish rating: 4

There’s really only so much you can write about the second book in a slightly (but only slightly) fluffy mystery series.

What to write? Well, the second book in the Royal Spyness series is, delightedly, a solid one. The heroine of virginal Georgie is adequately uppity, satisfyingly original, and, well, the dame is witty. And really, it’s fun to real about the (mostly) fictional British royals in the early 1930s. It’s a time period not often explored for topics other that The (capital T) Great (capital G) Depression (capital D).

So, plot. Our heroine continues to make her way in London (secretly) cleaning houses when the queen asks her to host a Bavarian princess with  the aim of distracting her prince-son from the oh so American Mrs. Simpson.

Of course, some murders take place, this library book having the blue “mystery!” sticker on it with a dude (Sherlock?) with a spyglass and all. Mostly to make the plot work, I suppose, the queen instructs Georgie to get to the bottom of the mystery, as she distrusts her “plodding” police force. So, there you go.

Overall, Royal Pain is another fun romp through historical London. I enjoyed it enough to pick up the third book whilst (see how the brit talk is affecting me?) at the local library branch, so obviously it checked the necessary boxes for enjoyability. Hardly a ringing endorsement, but whatever. Recommended.

Gentlemen and Players

Gentlemen and Players
By Joanne Harris (422 pages)
Published by William Morrow
Bookish rating: 3.75

Have I mentioned my affinity for prep school dramas? Well, that's pretty much the reason I read Harris's Gentlemen and Players, which consists of chapters intended to mimic a game of chess. However, as someone clueless about chess, this symbolism is lost on me.

The plot: At St. Oswald's, a boy's prep school in England, a disenfranchised boy, the son of the porter, decides to bring the school down. Meanwhile, the aging Latin teacher is digging in his heels, refusing all change, from whiteboards to email.

The good: Harris has a natural, free-flowing writing style that is highly readable and effective. It's nothing extraordinary, but it's good enough to get the job done. In the last quarter of the book, she tosses out some major plot twists that I truly did not see coming. So, kudos for that.

The bad: Although I realize many pages must be devoted to setting a particular stage, this book could've been shorter. I mean, the administrative tasks of teachers are simply dull and boring. I'm not saying that they made up 100 uncessary pages . . . but they might have.

So, bottom line? I like the book enough, and it tossed me some juicy surprises. But overall? I wasn't particularly wowed. Quasi-recommended.

The Salt House

The Salt House: A Summer on the Dunes of Cape Cod
By Cynthia Huntington (183 pages)
Published by University Press of New England
Bookish rating: 3.75

This in this memoir, Huntington lives in a little shack on a dune in Cape Cod for a summer. Granted, she has to share it with her surly boyfriend, but she's a freaking WRITER and she has day after day after day wide open to her. No wonder she gets books written.

Anyway, if you can get past your initial jealousy of a young person living on the beach with zero responsibilities, you'll find a super perceptive, lovingly written piece of autobiography that carefully studies the writer's creative process as well as the surrounding environment. Although I admit I got bored with so! many! descriptions! about freaking birds. Yeah, they're interesting WHEN YOU'RE ACTUALLY AT THE BEACH, but water fowl just aren't as interesting to someone reading in an armchair while the children wail about who got the pink cup.

I started this book during our week at the beach, and it's definitely a more appropriate book to read during that openness that comes with beach living. Granted, I was on the Carolina coast, not Cape Cod, and I'm smugly certain that Cape Cod has nothing on my beautiful Carolina coast, but salty air and sand IS pretty universal.

Recommend for a summertime read.