Jessica Crawford

Book Review: THE HAUNTING OF MOSCOW HOUSE by Olesya Salnikova Gilmore

October 5, 2024October 5, 2024 | Jessica Crawford

The Haunting of Moscow House by Olesya Salnikova Gilmore is a 383 page standalone novel published by Berkley in 2024.

Genre:

Historical Fiction, Horror, Gothic, Romance

Opening Line:

If someone from their past should catch a glimpse of the formerly aristocratic Goliteva sisters, they would find two wraiths instead of countesses.

My Thoughts:

…the ghosts wouldn’t have returned unless there was space for them among the living…to let them and the past in, maybe in hope of healing it and themselves.

Irina and Lili were Russian countesses, but after the revolution they are “former people” living at the mercy of the Soviet regime. In 1921 they live in their family’s Moscow estate with their grandmother, aunt, and young cousins, although electricity has long since been shut off and they have had to resort to selling valuable family heirlooms in order to be able to feed themselves. A group of Bolsheviks arrive one day and commandeer their home, forcing the family to move into the attic. But then things start happening in the house, frightening things, and people start dying.

A good portion of this book is historical fiction about post-revolutionary Russia, the Cheka, the Bolsheviks, the American Relief Administration providing former aristocrats with jobs helping to ease the famine. There are two separate romances, which I’m not sure were really needed. The Gothic part is due to the fact that the main characters live in a derelict mansion where spooky things are happening. The horror and folklore parts were by far the most interesting to me.

There is no slow, creeping build up of suspense here, as right from the get go our sisters are confronted up close with footsteps from behind, a growl, an earsplitting screech, something skittering past in the dark, glowing red eyes, an implosion of air throwing them off balance as furniture crashes and things smash, culminating with the discovery of a dead body in their home–all in one go. Well, okay then, you can’t have imagined ALL of that, I guess there’s no questioning an actual haunting going on here, then! (Although actually, Irina sees dead acquaintances sporting their fatal wounds appear before her very eyes at her dining table, and “still doesn’t believe in the supernatural, but it’s growing harder and harder to refute its existence”…ya think?!)

The last, I don’t know, 15% or so of the book really ramps up on the horror and excitement, and I enjoyed it the most.

The rest I only felt lukewarm about. There were a couple of things about the writing that I didn’t love. It is understood, even mentioned, that except when speaking to the Americans, everyone is speaking Russian and we’re just reading about it in English. So why mix the two languages in some sentences, like with, “Your family, nothing but upyrs” (vampires)? If all of those words were actually delivered in Russian, why present it mostly in English with one word randomly in Russian? It seems just because the author wants to impress.

Also, we are treated to several diary entries, one of which reads, “‘What happened, Marie?’ I demanded in rapid French.” No one would write like that in a diary. It’s like me writing, “Dear Diary, ‘What would you boys like for breakfast?’ I cheerfully inquired this morning”.

There was also a parakeet in the book, a somewhat anthropomorphized one that was never caged but just flew around the estate wheresoever she wished, and I couldn’t help but think, “Gee, there must just be bird shit all over that house.”

For me this was a case of “Come for the horror, stay only for the horror”, because the romances and the historical fiction just weren’t that engaging to me. But that Domovoy sure was!

Bookshop.org

Book Review: LUCY UNDYING: A DRACULA NOVEL by Kiersten White

September 10, 2024September 10, 2024 | Jessica Crawford

Lucy Undying: A Dracula Novel by Kiersten White is a 452 page standalone novel published in 2024 by Del Rey.

Genre/Subgenres:

Romance, Horror, Gothic, LGBTQIA+, Paranormal, Vampires, Retelling

Opening Line:

It starts the moment you look out the window.

Synopsis:

A vampire escapes the thrall of Dracula and embarks on her own search for self-discovery and true love in this epic and seductive gothic fantasy from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Hide.

Her name was written in the pages of someone else’s Lucy Westenra was one of Dracula’s first victims.

But her death was only the beginning. Lucy rose from the grave a vampire and has spent her immortal life trying to escape from Dracula’s clutches—and trying to discover who she really is and what she truly wants.

Her undead life takes an unexpected turn in twenty-first-century London, when she meets another woman, Iris, who is also yearning to break free from her past. Iris’s family has built a health empire based on a sinister secret, and they’ll do anything to stay in power.

Lucy has long believed she would never love again. Yet she finds herself compelled by the charming Iris while Iris is equally mesmerized by the confident and glamorous Lucy. But their intense connection and blossoming love is threatened by outside forces. Iris’s mother won’t let go of her without a fight, and Lucy’s past still has Dracula is on the prowl once more.

Lucy Westenra has been a tragically murdered teen, a lonesome adventurer, and a fearsome hunter, but happiness has always eluded her. Can she find the strength to destroy Dracula once and for all, or will her heart once again be her undoing?

My Thoughts:

Forever is composed of nows.

Yas, queens!

The newest novel from Kiersten White focuses on the story of Lucy Westenra from Dracula. It is told through alternating timelines and POVs. For the first two thirds or so these primarily consist of excerpts from the journal Lucy kept before being turned into a vampire at age 19 in the year 1890, transcripts from current day Lucy’s talks with a therapist as she explains everything that has happened to her since then (a la Interview with the Vampire), and a narrative following a woman named Iris, who is trying to escape her abusive and controlling family and its company/MLM empire. Her connection to the rest of the story becomes apparent over time as hints are dropped like a trail bread crumbs. Later, we get several chapters from the POV of the Transylvanian count himself.

I was always good at moonlight, though, because moonlight isn’t real, either. It’s just a wan reflection of something else’s light.

This is the story of women who are expected, by their families and by society, to be a certain way, fit into a certain mold. These women may try to please these others so much that they are unable to even recognize who they truly are behind the act. They play at being meek and cooperative, but then no one pleased by their resultant vulnerability bothers to protect them when called for. The damage wrought by this kind of trauma can ultimately be cured by being wholly loved for exactly the people they are, nothing less and nothing more.

Dear, dear Mother, who loves like a knife, slicing me into ever smaller pieces until I’m exactly the shape that pleases her the most.

In that way, this winds up being a really sweet and inspirational sapphic romance story. It also has mysterious and Gothic elements, and the tension and dread of being constantly watched by those who believe they own you. Lucy’s story takes us from England to China to Istanbul, and through two World Wars. Eventually we are brought to the States to take on the horrifying company that will never willingly let Iris go, and even Dracula himself.

Speaking of…the character of Dracula was the least compelling here. Maybe that’s intentional as he thinks he’s the best thing since sliced bread and everyone should worship him, but after centuries of growth some of the women he’s screwed with realize he isn’t worth taking up any more space in their thoughts. These women, though – by the end of the story, I loved them so much! Over the course of her Unlife, Lucy met and…sure, “befriended”, a handful of other women turned into vampires by Dracula, and they wind up all being quite delightful in their own ways! Girl power!

First things first, though, we start this girls’ trip the proper way: arson and then a visit to my therapist.

Not just doom and gloom, there are some quite funny moments in this book as well. These are often provided by snarky and irreverent Iris, but not always. I got a real kick out of one of the vampires only just trying to learn about cell phones, sending a blurry picture of a squirrel. The recipient sends Who is this?, and the dear, sweet, insane vampire replies You mean what is this it’s a squirrel.

The main reason I decided not to go with 5 stars for this book was because it did seem overly long and dragged a bit in the middle. But when it did pick back up once the three timelines converged, I loved all of the ass-kicking, and the healing of trauma through being loved for one’s true self. Great stuff!

Thank you so very much to NetGalley and Del Rey for the eArc in exchange for my honest review.

Note: “Forever is composed of nows” is attributed to Emily Dickinson in this book

Book Review: THE SECRET SERVICE OF TEA AND TREASON by India Holton

September 7, 2024September 7, 2024 | Jessica Crawford

The Secret Service of Tea and Treason by India Holton is a 334 page novel published by Berkley in 2023. It is third in the Dangerous Damsels series, but can be read as a standalone.

Genre:

Historical Romance, Cozy Fantasy, Humor

Tropes:

Rivals to lovers, fake marriage

Opening Line:

It was the best of dress shops, it was the worst of dress shops.

Synopsis:

Two rival spies must brave pirates, witches, and fake matrimony to save the Queen.

Known as Agent A, Alice is the top operative within the Agency of Undercover Note Takers, a secret government intelligence group that is fortunately better at espionage than at naming itself. From managing deceptive witches to bored aristocratic ladies, nothing is beyond Alice’s capabilities. She has a steely composure and a plan always up her sleeve (alongside a dagger and an embroidered handkerchief). So when rumors of an assassination plot begin to circulate, she’s immediately assigned to the case.

But she’s not working alone. Daniel Bixby, otherwise known as Agent B and Alice’s greatest rival, is given the most challenging undercover assignment of his life— pretending to be Alice’s husband. Together they will assume the identity of a married couple, infiltrate a pirate house party, and foil their unpatriotic plans.

Determined to remain consummate professionals, Alice and Daniel must ignore the growing attraction between them, especially since acting on it might prove more dangerous than their target.

My Thoughts:

THE SECRET SERVICE OF TEA AND TREASON by India Holton 🫖☕️🕵️🏴‍☠️🧙‍♀️💗

A rivals to lovers, fake marriage historical romance with fantasy elements and neurodiverse main characters? Yes, please!

My Books on Tap group (we meet at a different brewery twice a month and go around the table taking turns discussing whatever book we’re reading at the time) recently had a mystery book swap night. We each brought a book wrapped up to hide its identity, then wrote a few descriptors on the front. This was the book I picked (actually, I wound up picking two because the host brought extra in case someone came empty handed). It is the third in the Dangerous Damsels series, but worked perfectly well as a standalone. I could tell which of the characters here had wound up together in previous books in the series.

Alice and Daniel are the two top agents in an underground agency that trains “the help” (maids, housekeepers, butlers, footmen, valets) in espionage. They must join a party of pirates (who, by the way, use incantations to make their houses fly) posing as a married couple in order to thwart a conspiracy to assassinate Queen Victoria. What follows is a fun and absurd romp that prioritizes humor over a sensible plot. Chapters begin with amusingly modified literary quotes from the likes of Austen.

There are pretty explicit open door love scenes, and mild comedic violence.

One complaint that is exceedingly minor in the grand scheme of things: I counted four instances of characters’ mouths shrugging. Wut?

I had been wanting to try this author and am glad the book swap gave me the opportunity. It was a fun story that managed to be fairly swoonworthy to boot.

Book Review: STILL THE SUN by Charlie N. Holmberg

July 11, 2024July 11, 2024 | Jessica Crawford

Still the Sun by Charlie N. Holmberg is a 299 page novel published by 47North in 2024.

Genres: Fantasy (primary), science fiction, romance

Opening Line:

Something is missing.

Synopsis:

An ancient machine holds the secrets of a distant world’s past for two intimate strangers in the latest romantic fantasy adventure by Wall Street Journal bestselling author Charlie N. Holmberg.

Pell is an engineer and digger by trade—unearthing and repairing the fascinating artifacts left behind by the mysterious Ancients who once inhabited the sunbaked planet of Tampere. She’ll do anything to help the people of her village survive and to better understand the secrets of what came before.

Heartwood and Moseus are keepers of a forbidding tower near the village of Emgarden. Inside are the remnants of complex machines the likes of which Pell has never seen. Considering her affinity for Ancient tech, the keepers know Pell is their only hope of putting the pieces of these metal puzzles together and getting them running. The tower’s other riddle is Heartwood himself. He is an enigma, distant yet protective, to whom Pell is inexplicably drawn.

Pell’s restoration of this broken behemoth soon brings disturbing visions—and the discovery that her relationship to it could finally reveal the origins of the towers’ strange keepers and the unfathomable reason the truth has been hidden from her.

My Thoughts:

Well wasn’t this just a wonderful fantasy/sci-fi story! I was a little nervous going into this because I felt a bit lukewarm about the other book I’ve read by this author, but this was quite good!

Our POV character Pell is a short, dark, strong woman with a passion for tinkering with unearthed Ancient tech. She lives in a small community with no children, in a desert, next to an impenetrable pink crystal wall and an inaccessible tower, where the sun remains in the same place in the sky at all times, although there are cycles when a tone is heard throughout the world and mists descend. As you learn about this world she lives in you will have no idea what is going on, but just sit back and relax and all will be explained in good time!

One day a tall, pale stranger (there are no strangers on this world!) shows up at Pell’s door asking for her help. He and his companion have access to the tower and it’s filled with broken machines that they desperately need functional once more. Can she figure out how to repair them? While working on the machines, Pell begins to experience visions that feel like they might be hidden memories…She has fixed these machines before.

As I said, for a good portion of this book you have no idea what’s going on, and I got pretty annoyed with Pell and her associates at times (SO MANY TIMES she says, “I need answers, and you have them!” and they refuse to tell her anything or even explain that there is a good reason why they can’t tell her, so she gets angry and has a tantrum, over and over again ad nauseum). Additionally, I lost count of the number of times a character smiling is described as “his/her lip ticked”. And all the details about the machine repairs made my eyes glaze over.

But once we finally get some answers about what this world is and what is truly going on, it was absolutely epic. I will spoiler tag the rest only because when you start this book you’re supposed to be as clueless as Pell, but it was really quite wonderful. SPOILER, BEWARE! You’ve got full lore about different types of gods fighting a war against Ruin, and a plan to actually halt a planet from turning in order to imprison the enemy and stop him/it from destroying, well, everything. And demigods diminished by tendrils of the void. Epic! END SPOILER

I found this story to be unique and interesting and pretty rad once revealed in its entirety. I will now gladly read more of this author’s work!

Note: there is a romance, but any steaminess that happens is fade to black and not explicitly on the page. And if you’re reading this book BECAUSE you like romance, just know that the falling in love bits already happened before this book starts (and were just forgotten for…reasons I cannot reveal without spoiling things). As far as violent content, there is one pretty mild physical confrontation.

Bookshop.org

Book Review: SOMEONE YOU CAN BUILD A NEST IN by John Wiswell

April 2, 2024April 6, 2024 | Jessica Crawford

Holy moly! This is one unique story!

This is a sapphic romance where the monster falls in love with a woman in a family of monster hunters, told from the POV of the monster. It is GRISLY, full of body horror, but also rather charming and sweet. It tackles so much, including issues in regards to healthy relationships. It touches on autonomy, consent, and working through trauma; love, sexuality (and asexuality), and diverse feelings toward begetting and raising offspring. These things are masterfully woven into a story that is complete with a(n) (anti)hero, truly awful villains, romance, harrowing fights, and many things besides. This book may churn your stomach at times, but it is also guaranteed to warm the cockles of any fantasy-reader’s heart and/or egg sac (that’s a little monster humor there, you’ll have to read the book to be in on the joke.)

I can honestly say I’ve never read anything else quite like this before, and am truly impressed!

Book Review: WHAT THE RIVER KNOWS by Isabel Ibañez

October 31, 2023November 4, 2023 | Jessica Crawford

What the River Knows by Isabel Ibañez is adventurous historical fiction with a dollop of magical realism following Inez Olivera, a spirited young woman from Argentina, and Whitford Hayes (Whit), a disillusioned British ex-soldier who lost his way. 90% of the book is written from Inez’s POV, although several chapters have a short end cap from Whit.

In the late nineteenth century, Inez’s parents are presumed dead after going missing in the deserts of Egypt, and she is determined to discover what exactly happened. She joins her archaeologist uncle in Cairo, where she meets Whit, the man hired to help Tio Ricardo, and also to do his dirty work. Why does an archaeologist have need of someone like this? There is seedy business going on in the field, where there are those who would steal and sell priceless historical artifacts for personal profit, rather than preserve it for its significance to cultural heritage. This makes for downright dangerous business, and Inez’s tio immediately tries to send her back home to Argentina.

He tries and he fails (see the description of Inez, “a spirited young woman”). After repeating this cycle a few times, Inez successfully finds herself part of the team searching for the tomb of none other than Cleopatra. She is thrilled at the idea of assisting with such an endeavor, but her main goal is always to learn the truth of what happened to her parents.

This story is chock full of mystery, adventure, history, and magic. There is a prominent romance element as well. It was really a good deal of fun! The one thing I found irritating was that an easily avoided lack of communication was used to develop the majority of tension in the plot. Inez asks for information over and over again, and if people JUST TOLD HER THE TRUTH, so many of the things that go wrong in this story would have been avoided. This is always pretty frustrating to me as a reader!

I’m not sure why this is billed as Young Adult, as the main character is 19, and there are no particular themes that stand out to me as YA.

Also, BE FOREWARNED, it seems this is planned to be the first book in a series, because it does “end” with some pretty major cliffhangers, including one big twist,

The comparison of this story to The Mummy is apt (I couldn’t speak to Death on the Nile.) I greatly enjoyed the Egyptian setting, although couldn’t say how much of the way it was depicted here is accurate (possibly very, it seems well researched, I just don’t know much about how it felt to visit Cairo in 1844). I really liked both Inez and Whit, so the romance piece worked for me as well. This is my first time reading a work by this author, and I was not disappointed.

Book Review: VAMPIES OF EL NORTE by Isabel Canas

October 2, 2023October 9, 2023 | Jessica Crawford

October days were hot, but when the sun set, autumn announced itself with a nip in the air, its smell piney and crisp with the promise of change.

I was expecting a horror novel, but this is a romance novel. Not only was I taken aback by this fact, the romance relied on my biggest pet peeve of the genre–almost all of the romantic tension was due to a lack of communication. If the characters had one simple conversation, the first entire half of this story would not have been necessary. And then once they finally have that conversation, there is another miscommunication to keep it going. The other portion of romantic tension is introduced by the fact that he and she are from different classes and parents would never approve of them being together.

The supernatural vampires account for maybe 20% of this story. Additionally, it uses the comparison of foreigners greedy to suck people dry of their land and cattle to another kind of vampire. Part of Tejas has joined the U.S., but the Anglos want more, and the Mexican government isn’t standing by its people, so the rancheros have to defend themselves against this threat.

What this novel does well is develop a strong sense of setting. The reader feels immersed in the chaparral, hears the night creatures come alive after dusk, smells the rosemary used by the curanderos in their folk healing. The author does a good job bringing 19th century Mexico to life for us. And I did really like what she did with her beastlike vampires. But beyond that, I just felt very annoyed with all of the totally avoidable romantic angst.

I enjoyed The Hacienda by this author much more, but while that was a horror novel featuring a romance, this is a romance novel featuring a horror element, and not what I thought it would be. It’s still very possible I would be willing to read more from this author, though, depending on what she brings next.