Well, my S&L updates are sadly lagging behind my actually dice rolls and book reads; hopefully I'll pick up the pace on posts.

 

So my fifth roll using two dice gave me an eight which took me to square #40 and the prompt: "Characters involved in the entertainment industry". The eighth book in Rhys Bowen's Royal Spyness series has been sitting on my TBR pile for a while, and it fits the prompt perfectly. "Queen of Hearts" finds our protag, Lady Georgiana Rannoch, accompanying her actress mother to the US for a quickie Reno divorce and a film shoot in Hollywood. 

 

TBH, this series started getting old for me around book four, and I'm a little upset with myself for continuing to buy the audiobooks.  Initially the premise was fun, and while the characters were somewhat stereotypical and short on depth, it was still a frothy humorous cozy read. Unfortunately, the continuing lack of character development in later books has led to a cast of mostly annoying caricatures, and the writing can be repetitive and simplistic at times, so my expectations for "Queen of Hearts" aren't high.

 

ETA: Weakest entry so far. If I didn't already have book nine, I'd bail on the series at this point. :(

 

  

Progress to Date:

 

 

 1. Author is a woman / start: Their Lost Daughters by Joy Ellis

 

     Roll #1 - Two Dice Roll:  3 + 3 = 6

     Timestamp: 2019-02-24 21:59:09 UTC (working on the screen shot thing) 

 

 7. Author's last name begins with the letters A, B, C, or D: The Mysterious Affair

     At Styles by Agatha Christie 

 

     Roll #2 - Two Dice Roll:  5 + 5 = 10

     Timestamp: 2019-02-26 07:26:51 UTC

 

17. Genre - horror: The Mummy Case by Elizabeth Peters (skipping horror)

 

       Roll #3

    

 

21. Set in Europe: My Family and Other Animals by Gerald Durrell

 

       Roll #4

   

 

32. Genre: thriller: The Dry by Jane Harper

 

      Roll #5

  

 

 40. Characters involved in the entertainment industry: Queen of Hearts by Rhys 

      Bowen.

 

 

 

 

Dollycas’s Thoughts

Kimmery Martin takes us into the lives of best friends Zadie Anson and Emma Colley. She alternates between their points of view and the present and the past. Emma, a trauma surgeon, and Zadie, a pediatric cardiologist, have faced grueling schedules to get to where they are in their lives, married with families and successful careers. Then Nick Xenokostas, Dr. X, transfers to North Carolina and turns their lives upside down. That third year of medical school comes back to haunt them and when secrets are revealed it could rip these two best friends apart.

I dove right into this story thinking it would be a combination of Grey’s Anatomy and other medical television dramas, but it was so much more. You know immediately the author is a physician by all the details she brings to this story. From medical terms to the struggle medical school, residency and beyond can be. I drank it all in and was riveted by Zadie and Emma’s stories. These characters were very realistic in both the bond they have and the lives they have created for themselves.

The underlying drama and tension runs throughout the story with little humorous breaks usually by Zadie’s 3-year-old Delaney. Her “Hi, beloved dear!” always broke through and made me smile. I was following along closely knowing something major had taken place in these women’s lives. Something they had tried to forget about. But when the event was revealed I became totally overwhelmed. Not exactly the same as an event that rocked my life but close enough that I had to stop reading for some time before I could pick it back up again. I still had to skip or just skim a few pages but I had to see how the story ended. I am so glad I did because there was yet another shocking twist that I didn’t see coming.

I was moved by this novel. I can’t believe it is the author’s debut. She is an excellent writer, she carries off the switching points of view and times, along with all the medical jargon so well. Her descriptive style puts readers right into each moment. Except for the one point I mentioned above I totally enjoyed the story, and that is on me. If you haven’t dealt with a similar traumatic event, you will absolutely love this story.

I am excited by this author and can’t wait to see what she writes next.

Dollycas’s Thoughts

Kimmery Martin takes us into the lives of best friends Zadie Anson and Emma Colley. She alternates between their points of view and the present and the past. Emma, a trauma surgeon, and Zadie, a pediatric cardiologist, have faced grueling schedules to get to where they are in their lives, married with families and successful careers. Then Nick Xenokostas, Dr. X, transfers to North Carolina and turns their lives upside down. That third year of medical school comes back to haunt them and when secrets are revealed it could rip these two best friends apart.

I dove right into this story thinking it would be a combination of Grey’s Anatomy and other medical television dramas, but it was so much more. You know immediately the author is a physician by all the details she brings to this story. From medical terms to the struggle medical school, residency and beyond can be. I drank it all in and was riveted by Zadie and Emma’s stories. These characters were very realistic in both the bond they have and the lives they have created for themselves.

The underlying drama and tension runs throughout the story with little humorous breaks usually by Zadie’s 3-year-old Delaney. Her “Hi, beloved dear!” always broke through and made me smile. I was following along closely knowing something major had taken place in these women’s lives. Something they had tried to forget about. But when the event was revealed I became totally overwhelmed. Not exactly the same as an event that rocked my life but close enough that I had to stop reading for some time before I could pick it back up again. I still had to skip or just skim a few pages but I had to see how the story ended. I am so glad I did because there was yet another shocking twist that I didn’t see coming.

I was moved by this novel. I can’t believe it is the author’s debut. She is an excellent writer, she carries off the switching points of view and times, along with all the medical jargon so well. Her descriptive style puts readers right into each moment. Except for the one point I mentioned above I totally enjoyed the story, and that is on me. If you haven’t dealt with a similar traumatic event, you will absolutely love this story.

I am excited by this author and can’t wait to see what she writes next.

Claude (Claudette) is a feline shifter and owns a pawn shop. She also happens to be a semi-retired "Collector." The Collectors pick up supes who are misbehaving. Jason is a gargoyle working for a magician. The Queen of Hearts is an elaborate ruby necklace that was stolen by Jason. Claude soon finds out not all is as appears.
This was good. I really adored Claude. She is strong, intelligent, and just plain awesome. Jason wasn't bad either. I liked that he was a gargoyle. I liked giving him a weakness that was then used against him. Very well done novella with the plotting and pacing.

Either I've grown out of YA fiction, or my patience and forgiveness for it has diminished over the past couple of years. It also doesn't help how many Wonderland retellings I've seen, which made "Queen of Hearts" already a tough sell. But sometimes a nice easy read sounds appealing, which I thought this would end up being. And it was easy - easy to skim through and get distracted from, because while there's certainly a lot of text describing events and presenting dialogue, it all stayed on the surface as a dry cardboard-cutout.

I'll give the book credit for trying to present a different identity of the Mad Hatter, who happened to be the only character I cared even a little for. Considering how vague and up in the air the "plot" was, the characters were the default focal point for attention. Even then, Dinah was unlikable and difficult to feel any empathy for, whereas too little was known about any of the other characters, particularly the king, Wardley, and Vittiore, all of which fit the stereotypes of the cruel-for-no-known-reason father, the hot and drool worthy guy who's been a friend from childhood, and the girl who's a rival for power and who is hated by the heroine for, also, no clear or entirely believable reason. There's also the familiar cast of Wonderland characters like Cheshire who are slotted in just to satisfy the criteria of having them in the story - it is, after all, a spin on "Alice in Wonderland.  The classification of the Cards was the only other interesting aspect that altered the original story, but it did little in redeeming the book.

The "plot" was a mixture of loose threads thrown around that was more like sketchy exposition in a prequel style than any kind of coherent story. The writing lacked the alluring tone of voice that would draw a reader in, instead dry and stereotypical in the way in described characters or events. It was a book that was driven more by the unappealing heroine than by plot, although the former was surely the goal.

Beyond that there isn't much more to say. The fact that it was easy to get through felt like a small mercy considering how frustrating it felt to read it. I think I won't be touching any more Wonderland retellings after this one, as "Queen of Hearts" set a new low in the genre. It simultaneously had characters and action going on, but also lacked both of those things tremendously. It was predictable and boring, worse than I feared it might be. It looks like, with the immense about of takes on Wonderland, it is slowly losing its magical touch, which is probably a sign that it's time for publishing companies to stop churning out more dime-a-dozen books because they think they'll sell.