Our reading challenge for July was an Ebook Extravaganza!
The goal this month was to tend to our neglected backlog of unread ebooks. We were supposed to pick ones that we were excited to read and focus on them, but also see if there are any titles we knew we would never make time to read and delete those.
I have hundreds of unread ebooks on my Kindle and I was sure I would get a lot of them read this month, but of course that didn't happen the way I thought it would. I did get to a few of them. I decided I didn't want to just delete any of the books I own, even though a good deal of them were free, so I just removed the ones I have no intention of ever reading from my Kindle, and left them in the cloud. I ended up reading mostly mystery for this challenge, so I didn't read as much fantasy as I would have liked this month, but that's ok.
The first book I read for the challenge was Murder on the Links (Hercule Poirot #2) by Agatha Christie.
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Category: Adult
Genre: Mystery
Content: Clean
Belgian detective Hercule Poirot is summoned to France after receiving a distressing letter with a urgent cry for help. Upon his arrival in Merlinville-sur-Mer, the investigator finds the man who penned the letter, the South American millionaire Monsieur Renauld, stabbed to death and his body flung into a freshly dug open grave on the golf course adjoining the property. Meanwhile the millionaire's wife is found bound and gagged in her room. Apparently, it seems that Renauld and his wife were victims of a failed break-in, resulting in Renauld's kidnapping and death.
The police think they've found the culprit. But Poirot has his doubts. Why is the dead man wearing an overcoat that is too big for him? And who was the impassioned love-letter in the pocket for? Before Poirot can answer these questions, the case is turned upside down by the discovery of a second, identically murdered corpse...
As for the book itself, I liked this one, but not as much the the others I've read. The mystery itself was good, but not as clever as some of the others. I still enjoyed it and it took me a long time to figure out who did it. I enjoyed the dynamic between Poirot and Hastings in this one. Hasting is very much the Watson, with Poirot being Sherlock. For his part, Hastings gets distracted by women and remains pretty clueless throughout most of the investigation. Poirot gets pretty frustrated with Hastings for hiding certain things, and I enjoyed reading how this all played out.
One of the things that really stood out to me in this book was the way Hastings thought of women, which probably matched a lot of people's views during that time period. He was so disconcerted that he was attracted to a women who wasn't the stereotypical type of female. The kind he had in his head as being ideal. I liked seeing how he came to realize that she was, indeed his type. Poirot's amusement at Hastings throughout this was so fun to read, and I liked the way things ended up for Hastings here.
I recently found the old ITV Poirot series on YouTube and, after each book I finish, I've been watching the episodes with David Suchet as Poirot. I had seen episodes of this years ago, but it's been so long that I can't remember much, so watching them again is proving to be a lot of fun. I thought the adaptation for this one was good, but I was disappointed that the parts I just mentioned about Hastings were either changed or some of it left out completely. There were also some other changes, but I'm still enjoying it, and I do think David Suchet is the best Poirot out of all the actors that have portrayed him.
“I had learned, with Poirot, that the less dangerous he looked, the more dangerous he was.”
Now on to the next two books!
I had the fourteenth book in the Kate Burholder series, The Hidden One (Kate Burkholder #14) by Linda Castillo on my Kindle courtesy of NetGalley, and I also had the novella Blood Moon that is set between books 13 and 14, so I read both of those.
I already posted my review of this book so I won't post it again, but I did find this to be an enjoyable addition to the series. As for the novella, I usually enjoy them because Kate and John are usually together, and I like to read their interactions with each other. However, I didn't think this one was as good as some of the others. It was obvious to me, what the animal was that was running around wreaking havoc, and I thought Kate and John came off a little dumb for not figuring it out.
This next book, My Sister's Grave (Tracy Crosswhite#1) by Robert Dugoni, also fulfilled a buddy read I've been doing in a mystery book club, so I got to kill two birds with one stone.
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Category: Adult
Genre: Mystery, Suspense
Content: Strong language, fade to black sex scene, a woman is kidnapped and assaulted but no details are given
Tracy Crosswhite has
spent twenty years questioning the facts surrounding her sister Sarah’s
disappearance and the murder trial that followed. She doesn’t believe
that Edmund House—a convicted rapist and the man condemned for Sarah’s
murder—is the guilty party. Motivated by the opportunity to obtain real
justice, Tracy became a homicide detective with the Seattle PD and
dedicated her life to tracking down killers.
When Sarah’s remains
are finally discovered near their hometown in the northern Cascade
mountains of Washington State, Tracy is determined to get the answers
she’s been seeking. As she searches for the real killer, she unearths
dark, long-kept secrets that will forever change her relationship to her
past—and open the door to deadly danger.
I've had this book on my kindle for a long time and it finally ended up being the new series we are buddy reading in a mystery book club I'm in on Goodreads. Overall I thought this was good. There were a few things about it that I thought were unrealistic, and I didn't buy into the reasons behind why something was kept hidden, but it did keep me guessing and even surprised me with who the killer was. I enjoyed this enough to move onto the next book in the series.
The last book I read for the challenge was a sci-fi novel. Iolanthe (The Spectre War #3) by Margaret Fortune.
On a forgotten planet in the midst of an interstellar war, a resistance leader will rise.
Teal
Sorenson has lost everything in the two years since the alien Spectres
descended upon the Celestial Expanse: family, friends, even her home.
Now condemned to exile on the jungle planet Iolanthe, she can only watch
the war from afar…until a chance invasion sends her fleeing into the
night.
With the colony overrun, the only place left to go is the
jungle, and yet as Teal struggles to survive in a savage alien
rainforest that could as easily kill her as save her, she realizes this
invasion is more than just a simple offensive strike. Iolanthe has
nothing to tempt the enemy: no resources, no strategic value, no
military presence. So why are they really here?
The answer could
spell the end of the war, and the human race along with it. Now only
Teal and a ragtag band of survivors stand between the enemy and certain
victory. Mere survival is no longer enough. It’s time to fight.
The battle for Iolanthe has begun.
This was a book I had been waiting a few years to read and it was finally released this year. I liked the first two books in the series, but didn't love them. I'm still in the middle of reading this book, so I'm not going to rate or review it yet, but so far I feel like it's too long, and not enough has happened to keep me really interested the way I want to be. This is one of those middle of the road series for me where it's hard to abandon it, because it sparks just enough of my interest, but it doesn't make me want to devour it either. It's so hard to rate these, or even make a decision on continuing. I'm hoping this is the last book in the series, but I bet it isn't, so I'm going to be left with this same dilemma again.
That's it for the July reading challenge! I hope to get back to more fantasy in August. I feel like I've read almost nothing but mystery for a while, and I guess that's what I was in the mood for mostly, but I'm missing fantasy now! I'm in the mood for some epic fantasy, and I can't wait to try a couple of the ones I have.
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