Operation "Fifty in Twelve": January, February and March Round-Ups
Yeah. So, uh, it's been a while since my last book post, huh?
Mainly, this has been due to acute laziness in February (and freaking out about having to prepare for semi-moving to Munich for the new job) and work basically eating up my cognitive ressources in March and April. I really do like my job, like, a lot but the transition from being jobless for two years to being fully employed and having to hitting the ground running if I want to get somewhere with this project I'm working in has (predictably) been messing with my brain, especially since my job entails more traveling than I thought at first* and while I don't mind traveling, I do have to get used to being on the road (or tracks, since I do practically all my traveling by train) so much and learn how to use the time spent on trains both for work and R&R.
So I decided to use the completely flat-mate free Sunday and the fact that I was actually getting bored (a feeling I haven't had in a few months O_o) and not in the mood for Netflix or linear TV and that I made the mistake of thinking "Well, I'll be back in Berlin at some point in May, so no point in taking all my new books with me to Munich, won't get to read them anyway" to finally catch up with my book posts and round up the reads of the first quarter of the year (how is a quarter of the year already over? How?). So.
Here we go, then.
January
Okay, not exactly. Because the first book I read in 2019 was Jessica Scott's Until There Was You which I already reviewed here but which I love so very, very much that I used the New Year's post-party lull to spend an entire day reading it again. I think I'll make this a new New Year's tradition, honestly. I'll still put it in the book count because honestly, it's still an entire book, and I even read the paper version I finally have instead of the e-book version.
And now on to books I hadn't read before:
The Dark Days Club, Alison Goodman
A holdover from 2018 that I couldn't bring myself to finish because I totally didn't the direction it was going in. Basically, Lady Helen, the protagonist is a seventeen-year-old Lady in London's Regency society with a dark past and newly awakened super powers such as super strength, super fast healing, hyper acute senses etc. She seems to have inherited those from her mother who died under mysterious and scandalous circumstances, and is supposed to become a member of the "Dark Days Club" - a secret society of other people like her who have made it their mission to fight dark creatures taking possession of innocent people and feeding on them. It's an interesting premise, original enough to have kept my attention. I do like Lady Helen (but I like her handmaiden and her best friend more, to be honest) but I actually can't stand the male protagonist, the (of course *rolls eyes) dark and mysterious Lord Carlston. He's exactly that kind of "dangerous" and "dark" and "broody" kind of protagonist with some dark past I can't stand because they never actually talk about their issues and are overbearing towards the heroine and just make me rolls my eyes so hard it physically hurts. All. The. Manpain. I also have a bad feeling that Goodman is setting him up as Lady Helen's love interest (there's another one - her brother's best friend whom I like way more but whom I'd bet is going to die at some point), and ugh. She's seventeen and he's like almost thirty (or even over thirty, can't remember anymore) and like, yes, I know that's not actually that unrealistic for Regency England but ugh. This is young adult, can we not romanticize shit like this in books marketed to girls as young as fourteen to sixteen? Please? Because if this turns out to be true in the next two parts of this trilogy, one of those books is going to end up getting thrown at the nearest wall, despite the interesting premise and the smypathetic heroine and the very likable secondary characters and the engaging style >(
Rating: * * * */* * * * *
The Lieutenants' Online Love, Caro Carson
This was a cute one. It's the first part in a military romance series about officer couples in the US Army (Fort Hood, to be precise, all in the same unit, mostly military police), and I really, really liked it. The lieutenants in question are both platoon leaders in the same military police company, and I liked both of them a lot. She is a no-nonsense new platoon leader, eager to prove herself in her first command post, he's already a successful platoon leader feeling a little lonely. As for the plot, Carson takes the good old "Shop Around The Corner"/"You've Got Mail" thing and transports it into the 21st century, with a friendship matching app and chats instead of letters or e-mail, including the "best friends online, hate each other at work" thing. It still works, though, and what I really, really loved about this was that Carson managed to get around every cringe-worthy or creepy trope this kind of plot offers. Her protagonists make mistakes and are jerks but, and this is why I loved it, they own up to them, and the male protagonist especially learns a lot about not being an asshole, by himself. He doesn't actually have to be told this by the female protagonist or a female friend, he realizes this on his own. This is a first in romance for me, and I loved, loved, loved it. It shows that yes, writing good, engaging, fun and sexy stories in which male protagonists are smart enough to realize shitty behaviour and correct them, without anyone telling them to is absolutely possible. So, please, more of this!
Rating: * * * * */* * * * *
The Captains' Vegas Vows, Caro Carson
I was on the fence about this for a big part of the book. The premise - two strangers wake up in a Vegas hotel bed, married, but only one of them actually remembers the wedding - basically makes lots of cringey and creepy shit inevitable, and the male protagonist - who's the one who remembers the entire thing - does a lot of stupid shit. It's always borderline but there were a few times when I actively wanted to hit him over his damn head (but yes, I wanted to his his commander even harder because he's the one ordering the protagonists to share married quarters despite the vocal protests of the female protagonist, because she remembers jackshit about the wedding, and the male protagonists is a virtual stranger to her). He does, yes, spoiler, I know, get his shit together at some point, though, and he does realize the extend of how much he's been an asshole up to that, again without a female character having to feed it to him. That did make up for a lot of what happened up to that point and yes, I got around to liking this book, too, just not as much as The Lieutenants' Online Love. It's still worth the read but yeah, be prepared for wanting to hurt the male protagonist for at least the first half of the book.
Rating: * * * */* * * * *
The Majors' Holiday Hideaway, Caro Carson
I have to admit, I found this a little meh. Not bad, just... not as engaging as the other two. Which is a little disappointing, since it's a Christmas romance, and I really do love those. I'm still not sure why that is - it's not the fact that children play a big part in this books, because the male protagonist's twin daughters were actually well-written and not half as annoying as children in romance can sometimes be - but I just didn't find the protagonists as engaging as I thought I would. It's still a nice book and technically, the protagonists are pretty cool - he's a widowed single father, she's a globetrotting successful officer - but it just... didn't really manage to spark. What I did like, though, was that it didn9;t end with the female protagonist entirely giving up her globetrotting military career but with a compromise, which is much more realistic and makes much more sense than her just resigning her commission and becoming a stay-at-home mum. That did save a lot of the book's meh-ness.
Rating: * * */* * * * *
February
The Colonels' Texas Promise, Caro Carson
This one, I really liked again. The protagonists are both in their mid-thirties (in other words: closest to me in age), and the female protagonist is a single mother to an eleven-year-old son. The plot is the classic marriage pact ("If we're not married by the age of [insert number], we're going to marry each other") trope, complete with the male protagonist already having been in love with the female protagonist by the time they made the pact but too insecure/stupid/shy to act on it. She married someone else, had a son, discovered the husband to be an asshole, had a divorce and is now back at Fort Hood, about to be promoted to lieutenant colonel and doesn't waste any time to walk up to her college buddy to ask him to honor that marriage pact they made (since she thinks she needs a father for her son). Interestingly, Carson manages to make it a lot less horrible and cliched than it could have been with a premise like this, and gives the male protagonist a lot to chew on, touching on issues of found family, patchwork families, shitty exes and not being shitty to the woman you've been kind of dating, even when your college crush just came to your door to ask you to marry her. She gives her protagonists enough challenges to make them work for their happy ending but doesn't make it impossible for them to achieve it. This was fun to read, definitely a good close to the entire series.
Rating: * * * * */* * * * *
Hot Response, Shannon Stacey
So. Have I ever mentioned that while military romances are and will always be my first love when it comes to contemporary romance, firefighters hold a very special place in my heart, too? Yeah. This one was advertised in the back of The Colonels' Texas Promise, and I decided to give it a go. I liked it. It's not exactly a light-hearted romance (as it deals with pretty heavy family issues on the heroine's side) but it works out well, and I like that it doesn't gloss over the hard working conditions of firefighters and paramedics in a big city. It's a workplace romance, and the protagonists actually work in this book, meaning they have shifts, they get stressed out, they have to worry over making ends meet and balancing family and love life in a stressful, time-consuming, dangerous job. That's what made this readable and interesting (yes, I actually do like a certain degree of realism in my romances, and I like everyday protagonists, working stressful and dangerous public service jobs, especially the contemporary ones. So, definitely no billionaire or cowboy romances for me), and while it's not one of those romances that totally stand out for some reason, it was a nice diverting read.
Rating: * * * */* * * * *
The Mortal Word, Genevieve Cogman
Whee, another Invisible Library one (part five, now)! This one was pretty scary at times (the Blood Countess is modelled after Elizabeth Bathory who is an actual historic figure and really, really gruesome and scary. But honestly, I found The Cardinal - yes, modelled after Richelieu - almost scarier) and somehow Cogman manages to still write engaging stories after four parts of an engaging story, continously building her universe but bringing back secondary characters from earlier books and somehow managing to keep up continuity and advancing the overall plot arc. Irene is still my favorite character in this series (as we all know, I have a tendency to find main characters meh and concentrate on secondary characters instead, so this is definitely a mark of quality here), I'm still not a big fan of Vale, and I loved the setting in a cold and wintry Paris. This is a thriller clothed as a fantasy novel, and I loved it. Can't wait for the next installment!
Rating: * * * * */* * * * *
The World As It Is: A Memoir of the Obama White House, Ben Rhodes
Another Obama era memoir, and I could still hit myself for not realizing that Ben Rhodes was in Berlin in February shortly after I finished reading this. I only learned about it after he'd gone on to Munich (where I wasn't due until March 1. Story of my life, really), and I really wish I had known about this earlier. I'd so have gone there and got my copy signed. Hell, I'd even have bought another copy if that would have been necessary because this book was awesome. The first non-fiction book I read in 2019, and it was already a kicker. Rhodes worked on Barack Obama's National Security Council, mostly as a speechwriter and spokesperson, but also playing a role in shaping Obama era American foreign policy (Rhodes was the guy that made the Cuba thing possible. If it hadn't been for him, there probably would have been no attempts at reconciliation between Cuba and the US, and yes, I stay away from contemporary news about American Cuba policy because then I can't help thinking of how someone like Ben Rhodes must feel at seeing what is probably his greatest achievement in life being ripped to shreds right in front of his eyes) and staying with Obama from the beginning to the end, right down to the Obamas' last ever ride on Air Force One. Just like the other ones, this is both a political and a personal book, talking about the heights you can soar when you work in the White House and the stress a life like that takes on basically everything else. It's funny, it's honest, it's grueling, it's very much enlightening. Definitely worth the read, so go out and buy it, if you haven't done so already!
Rating: * * * * */* * * * *
Ich diene Deutschland: Ein Plädoyer for die Bundeswehr - und warum sie sich ändern muss, Nariman Hammouti-Reinke
I'm still on the fence about this book. I'm generally not a big fan of books written by active or former German soldiers, mostly because most of them - sorry to say this - just can't write (or have bad editors, I'm still not sure which it is). Hammouti-Reinke - a former NCO gone green to gold and currently the German Navy's equivalent to a lieutenant junior grade - is fairly readable and suitably passionate about her subject: the condition the German Armed Forces are currently in and all the things that need to change. She makes some correct analyses - the Bundeswehr's let's call it bumbling approach to taking care of Muslim soldiers, for example - but falls short in others - for Hammouti-Reinke, nazis aren't a systematic problem in the Bundeswehr, and honestly, has she ever heard the term "Hannibal"**? - and also once again brings up the claim that soldiers are some kind of hated occupational group, which, quite frankly, is not what that data says (in fact, "benignly ignored" would be a more correct approach). When it comes to diverse voices from the Armed Forces, this is definitely an important and relevant book and needs to be read and discussed but I just wish she would have been more clear-eyed about several issues within the Armed Forces and that she would have done better research on the already existing data (and there is actually a lot of that). More data crunching and less "Well, I never had that problem, so it can't really be a general problem" would have actually made this a better book.
Rating: * * */* * * * *
Fully Ignited, Shannon Stacey
Yep, another firefighter romance. Same 'verse as Hot Response, only earlier in the timeline. The protagonists are both firefighters in this, with the female one - and this is really rare in romance - the senior one, and, if I remember it correctly, also the older one. There aren't many romances where the female protagonists is the older one and almost none where she is, if we're talking workplace romance, the senior one in the workplace relationship. In this one, the female protagonist is the male protagonist's lieutenant, so his direct superior, which is a little tricky (though not as tricky as in a military setting) and yeah, it needs a little navigating around by the characters (and suspension of disbelief from the readers) but it does work out. It's refreshing that the male protagonist at least has absolutely no feelings of "emasculation" for being in a relationship with an older and more senior woman (because honestly, that's a boring trope if there ever was one). Other than that, it's a fairly conventional story but still works as some light reading on the go, if you need a break from heavier reading.
Rating: * * * */* * * * *
Das Seehospital, Helga Glaesener
Glaesener is more or less the only German author of historical books with romance in it who can actually pull it off. She doesn't overdo it, it's part of the story, but not at the heart of it, feels natural... yup, that's why I love her books. I really wanted this one because it's been a while since I read anything by her, and I wasn't disappointed. Somehow, Glaesener manages to write in an engaging style that fits the narrative and the setting, without sounding as contrived as is often the case with other German authors writing historical fiction. The story is one about three sisters, living on the Frisian island of Amrum, 1920. They inherit their grandfather's house and a small clinic for sick orphans from Hamburg, and we follow them through their struggle to retain their inheritance and defend it against their Prussian stepfather, while also trying to find their way in life and make their own way, instead of becoming a rich investor's wife, like their mother wants. It's a story of female emancipation, of finding love in troubled times, of coming to terms with differences, with the aftermath of a World War... it's a good story, with engaging characters and a good, if a little conventional plot. A typical Glaesener, and I liked it very much.
Rating: * * * */* * * * *
March
It's Getting Scot In Here, Suzanne Enoch
Yup, another Enoch. It's the newest one, so no re-read. Another Highlander romance, this time a new series. It's, I think, three brothers and a sister, with the twist that the sister grew up in London and the brothers in Scotland. The premise is that all brothers have to marry within a certain timeframe so as not to lose their mother's fortune, with one of them having to marry a bride of their mother's choosing. It's, erm, interesting as a premise but I wasn't sure if it's going to work. So far, though, it did, and I liked it. The usual Enoch wit and comedy was missing a little but the heroine was both feisty and outspoken and vulnerable, the hero accepting of her and in fact encouraging her to be herself, in a non-overbearing, non-patronizing way, supporting her instead of shaping her. It was fun reading it, and I'm totally looking forward to the next one in this series.
Rating: * * * */* * * * *
Book count as of March 31: 13/50
OMG WTF, yes, I did it, I actually wrote another book post, yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaassssssss!
Maybe I can go finally back to fanfiction writing, too *rolls eyes
So how are you? Read anything interesting this year yet? How's life been treating you so far?
*it's not entirely fixed yet but it looks like I might be doing an interesting tour in May, meaning I'll be away from Munich for about ten days and my itinerary will be something like Munich - Kiel - Berlin - Strausberg - Berlin - Munich. Also, for vacation reasons, I'll be traveling to the Baltic Sea over Ascension Day and then again for business reasons the week after Pentecost... or, even more fun, I might do Munich - Berlin - Bielefeld - Berlin for Pentecost and then Berlin - Rostock - Berlin the week after Pentecost and then back to Munich... June's gonna be a lot of fun
**This refers to the tageszeitung's investigative research into a possible right-wing network spanning the Bundeswehr, federal and national police, the intelligence community... and yes, it's as scary as it sounds. And yet, no one really cares about it.