"Illiterate" (read: dyslexic) working class home help kills her well-meaning but utterly clueless upper class employers.  The end.  (And because it's an inverted mystery, we know literally from the first sentence that this is going to happen.)  Aaaannnd ... I'm out.

I'm not merely bored, though.

Chiefly, I'm furious at Rendell for deliberately framing dyslexia:

(1) as a class issue (which it patently is not and never has been), and

(2) what is infinitely worse, as the trigger that causes a psychopath who is secretly morbidly ashamed of her lack of literacy to fatally lash out at others.

Shame on you, Baroness.  You ought to have known better.

Let no part of the blame fall on Carole Hayman, however, whose spirited reading made me give this book way more of my time than I should have.

Okay, is it just me or is this a filler book? While it was full of the usual craziness that is a part of this series, I felt that the story hadn’t even kicked off when it ended! 

Another issue I had with this instalment was with the main character’s love interest. She is an abuse survivor and the author is building their relationship gradually. The woman finds human contact difficult to bear, and John isn’t rushing her or pushing her in any way. I love that! But what I don’t like is that aside from this fact and that the woman is a badass — possibly insane too — we still don’t know much about her. Maybe develop her character a bit?

Nonetheless, books like these satisfy my craving for when I have recently given up on watching Supernatural for the 100th time. Or when I have finished the season of The Umbrella Academy — even after watching one episode a day to stretch it for as long as I could have — and can’t be bothered to find a new show to watch.

This story is about a young girl who seems to not have the confidence she needs. She is not excellent at reading and she gets nervous when reading aloud to her peers. She worked and practiced at night. She would practice by reading to her dog at home. Finally the day came for her to read in front of her classmates. She did great! This book will show the students what constant practice will do for one's reading capabilities. This book could also be used to build students knowledge of an encouraging environment. Students could learn knew ways to support and encourage one another. They could learn knew ways to build people up rather than breaking them down. I would say this book will work great for 2nd to 6th grade. The older grades would might need to focus more on the confidence building rather than the text itself. The text could act as a guide.

This story is about a little mouse (girl) who has been told her whole life how wonderful and perfect she is. She truly believed this until she started school. All of her classmates teased her about her name, saying it's too long or that she was named after a flower. Each day she would go home upset and her parents would assure her that her name is beautiful and perfect just as she is. The cycle continued throughout the book until the end. Her music teacher stood up for her and shared with the class that she too was named after a flower and that her daughter has the chance to be named Chrysanthemum. This makes her feel much better about herself and suddenly all the students want to be named after flowers. This story would work well with first through third grade. It would be great to introduce bullying and also it would show that teachers are here to help, not just teach. Student could also be assigned roles of the peers in the book and act out different ways they could have responded instead of their rude comments.

This story is about a young orphan who is on a mission to find his father. His mother has recently passed away and he does not particularly like the foster homes in which he is place. He chooses to travel until he can get closer to finding where his father might be. This story is placed around the time of Jazz. I feel as though this will give students a different outlook on history and time frames, it is a great opening into history of this era. I would use this book in a 5th-6th grade classroom. It might be too advanced for any younger of a classroom. Not only will this book be a good resource for the history of Jazz, it also might show children another insight on how other student's home lives might be. It could be used to be a great lesson on how some students are not as well off as their peers. It could also be used to explain the importance of family. Many times families are taken for granted because we do not know what it is like to not have one. This could lead into the topic of thankfulness of what we are blessed with. Overall, it might just teach students how to be more sympathetic of their classmates.