Tuesday Book Review on Wednesday

Five-star review of The Ministry of Unladylike Activity by Robin Stevens

Hazel’s little sister May has snuck out of Deapdean school for girls with the intent of joining Big Sister Hazel at the ministry, but when Daisy turns her away from the headquarters in London, she teams up with Eric, a boy with his own backstory, and sets out to prove she’s as good a spy as Daisy and Hazel. It’s 1940 and children are being evacuated from London and they take that as an opportunity to get close to one of the addresses May found of the homes of potential spies for Germany. At a country home near Canterbury, their early dislike of Nuala, a girl their age, gradually wears away as they investigate the murder of her uncle during an evening game with the extended family. The book was at least as much fun as the Murder Unladylike books about the teenage exploits of Daisy and Hazel. Hope this series is at least as long as the first one. 

Tuesday Book Review

 

Four-star review of Red Mesa by Aimee and David Thurlo

 This early Ella Clah novel gives a superb look at the struggles of juggling traditional and modern ways by a police officer/mother on the Navajo reservation. I was reading this at the time I traveled to the Four Corners through Farmington and Shiprock and noticed how well the book maintained a sense of place. Ella’s friend, partner and cousin Justine goes missing and clues indicate she’s dead. The only way Ella can prove her own innocence is to find out what happened but factions are working to convict her of a crime. Some of her choices were questionable to me, but her life is so different from mine that I accepted them. All of the characters are believable, but especially Ella, her mother who’s trying to take care of Ella’s toddler daughter as she ages, and the little girl herself.

Tuesday Book Review

 

After a short hiatus, I've returned with another review:

Four-star review of Cosega Source (The Cosega Sequence book 5) by Brandt Legg

This fifth book in the series introduces the literal source of the Eysen spheres, the Cosegans from eleven million years ago. Supposedly a peaceful civilization, the individuals were involved in several conflicts in their ideas about how to save the future of mankind. The implications in the first four books was that the Cosegans died out, becoming extinct like the dinosaurs, and there are several obvious reasons why. The readers of the earlier books are, of course, more inclined to side with Trynn, the scientist that Rip and Gail call The Crying Man, the one who appeared to them in the first Eysen they found. His goal is to insert more and more Eysen spheres in times in his future (and our past) to warn of the impending doom to all mankind. Much of this book was interesting, some even exciting like the Imazes’ voyage to a time and space barrier, but I missed having more Rip, Gale and especially their daughter. There was even an Easter egg related to the first Legg series I read, the Last Librarian series.