February Wrap-Up

Holy moly. I finished 7 books in February. Buckle up, buttercup. Here we go!

Bonded in Death by J.D. Robb - This installment in the In Death series was really good. Lieutenant Eve Dallas is married to possibly the richest man in the universe. The man who took him in when he was a street urchin is now his house manager (major domo?, butler?). I'm not really sure how this came about, but here we are. A man is murdered by being gassed in the back of a limo. Turns out he was a spy during the Urban Wars in the 2020s. There were 12 of them then. One of them was a traitor and 2 of them died. He went to prison and died a few years ago. Who else was one of that group of spies? Somerset, the house manager. The other remaining spies descend upon their house while Dallas closes in on the guy who is intending to pick off the rest of the group. It's called Bonded in Death because the group of twelve promised to come to the others' aid if they ever call. It was a bond.

Half a Soul by Olivia Atwater - Dora lost half her soul in a run-in with a fairy when she was a child. She doesn't respond to things the way she should. She says the wrong thing at the wrong time. She doesn't feel things the way her favorite cousin Vanessa does. Vanessa is going to London to have a season with the idea of finding a rich husband. She won't go without Dora, so off to London she goes. Caught in a rain shower one day, Dora ducks into a shop and runs into the Lord Sorcier. This man is known to be really unpleasant. Society only tolerates him because he is the most powerful magician in the land. When he is rude to Dora, she sasses him back, which gives him pause. He pauses long enough to notice that she sees something in the mirror other than what is actually reflected there. This means she is more than she seems, but he doesn't stick around to find out more. That evening he turns up at the ball she and Vanessa are attending. His best friend is a doctor and has a metal arm that the Lord Sorcier made for him after he lost his real one in a war. This makes him "other" and a perfect match for Dora, according to her aunt. Dora and her former-governess-turned-companion get sent with Dr. Albert on his visit to the poor houses. It turns out there is a magical epidemic happening that makes children fall asleep and waste away until they die. Elias, the Lord Sorcier is working tirelessly to cure it. Dora herself falls victim to the sleeping sickness and helps him defeat the evil fairy (the same one that took half her soul) who is causing it.

The romance was weird. All of a sudden, Elias is paying attention to Dora and taking her advice on things. The reader can tell that he loves her, but is not really sure what made that happen. She didn't really see him that often. It was cute, but a little rushed.

Framed in Death by J.D. Robb - In this one, an artiste whose work has not been well received by local galleries starts killing street walkers, but not before dressing them up like famous paintings and painting them. Then he takes them to the homes or galleries of people who rejected his work and poses them like the paintings. He is the youngest child and only son of a very rich and pampering woman. He is convinced that when people see this series of paintings they will recognize his greatness and they won't even care that he murdered people to do it. Those people were throw aways anyway. Nobody will miss them. This guy was real psychotoic.

Hidden Libraries: The World's Most Unusual Book Depositories by D.C. Helmuth - This book is full of beautiful pictures of libraries no one knows about. It's also full of a ridiculous number of typos. My kid says that's because it's really a coffee table book and they don't expect anyone to read the words in those. It was very distracting.

Passions In Death by J.D. Robb - This one stars another artist, but this time she's the victim. Erin Albright is a painter who was beginning to get some attention. She was at the bachelorette party to celebrate her coming wedding to Shauna Hunnicut, and was about to surprise her with a trip to Hawaii for their honeymoon when she was garotted in a private room in the club where the party was. The killer was someone who knew about the surprise and knew she would be in that room during the party. Was it her former lover, the sexy, hispanic, hot-tempered Chichi who insists Shauna manipulated Erin into marrying her? Or was it Shauna's high school boyfriend who just happened to move to NY just after Shauna did and move into her actual apartment building and then just happened to start dating her best friend? Another fun listen. I have to say the narrator for these audiobooks really gets put through the ringer for accents. Dallas' husband is Irish, the house manager is British, Chichi has a strong accent, and she even does a great imitation of someone talking while chewing.

Medicine River: A Story of Survival and the Legacy of Indian Boarding Schools by Mary Annette Pember - The author's mother was sent to an Indian Boarding school in Wisconsin when she was 5 years old. Her parents split up and she and her siblings went to live with her grandmother, but she couldn't afford to feed them so they went to the boarding school. Her mother came to visit her once, to tell them she had married a white man and the kids had to stay at the school. Her father came to visit some, but mostly he was drinking the profits from his illegal distillery. The boarding school was run by nuns who were abusive to say the least. The food was not great and there was never enough. The children were called dirty Indians daily and punished by whipping for speaking their native languages. Her mother was locked in the basement repeatedly. Sometimes for days on end. She and her siblings would run away to her father's house in the woods, but eventually he would have to send them back to the school. When she got out, she went off with a white guy who was abusive. Her brothers and cousins went and got her and brought her back. Then she married the author's father, also a white man. She was mostly unavailable to her own children, struggling with migraines and mental illness caused by trauma. The author then became and alcoholic. Luckily, her husband stuck by her until she realized what she was doing and they both went through rehab and therapy (he was an enabler, not an alcoholic.) In the process of delving into her past during rehab, she realized she wasn't the only one out there living with the consequences of Indian boarding schools. The author's story is set in Wisconsin, but she talks about the history of Indian Boarding schools and most of those were in Oklahoma, so several are mentioned. Many of those didn't shut down until the 70s. She spoke to people who were in those Oklahoma schools who talked about their experiences there.

Random in Death by J.D. Robb - This one featured a teen serial killer. He chose his targets at random. He went to dark, crowded places popular with teens, carrying a syringe loaded up with pure heroin, a powerful sedative, and rohypnol (a date-rape drug), and infected with a fast-spreading form of syphilis. The extra drugs were unnecessary since the heroin dose was enough to kill anyone in minutes, so why a date-rape drug? And why syphilis? The victims die in less than 10 minutes. They are teenage girls. Cute, clean, passionate about their hobbies. Turns out the kid is a nerd who has been ignored by girls and is extremely intelligent, so he thinks he is owed their attention because he's so smart. His mother died of a drug overdose when he was eleven. His father is a doctor and kind of just turned him loose in his own personal lab and let him raise himself. It was really chilling, the way this kid thought.

There you have it. All 7 books I finished in February. Thank God for audiobooks keeping my reading stats up.