My July Reading

I have neglected my blog shamefully in the past few weeks. I had hoped to cover my accounting of my reading in July in my usual monthly post, but I didn't have a chance to get that post written. So I thought I would do a joint post for July and August.

Well, lo and behold, August brought with it a meltdown at my daughter's school and sending us scrambling to find an alternate school as well as participate in parent activism to shore up the school it could start on time. To cut a long story short, we succeeded very well. The school opened its doors a week late but with a strong teacher presence. The students are back in school, the administration is trucking along, etc. etc.

However, in all of this, my reading suffered. I got not a single book read in August. Not a one. I can't remember the last time this has ever happened. Not a day goes by when I have not read a book; not a week goes by when I have not finished a book. And yet, here, a whole month went by with nary a page read. So I come to you with only the short list of books that I read in July.

The Horse Dancer by Jojo Moyes
Category: General Fiction
Comments: Sarah is a fourteen-year-old girl living in one of the projects of London with her grandfather, Henri. Boo is her horse, whom she loves with every particle of her being. Henri is training Sarah to become one of the écuyers of Le Cadre Noir, the premier French riding school, and this involves intense concentration and unrelenting perfectionism for both Boo and Sarah. In the meantime, Natasha Macauley is a solicitor-advocate, speaking up for the rights of children, whether they are teenagers seeking asylum, young hoodlums, or little children caught in the middle of acrimonious divorces. Her career, by its very nature and by her own ambitions, is all-consuming, leaving very little time for her husband, Max. How Natasha and Max resolve their differences and how Sarah's path crosses theirs is a story written with great finesse. I love Moyes's work—her storytelling and writing style really speaks to me. My review is here.

Beauty Like the Night by Joanna Bourne
Category: Historical Romance
Comments: Jo is a delight, online and offline. I enjoyed talking to her about her writing—her replies are so refreshingly honest, modest, and funny. And her books floor me every time I pick a new one up. I would rate every one of them among my most prized collection. While Black Hawk remains my most favorite, Beauty Like the Night, has a new fan. Comte Raoul Deverney is a vintner and a sometimes jewel thief, while Séverine de Cabrillac is a French aristocratic ex-spy and now a private detective in Regency London. Deverney hires Sévie, against her better judgment, to find Pilar, his former wife's daughter, who’s now lost in London’s stews. Together, they search for Pilar with growing urgency while Sévie's past rises up to engulf her. My review & interview are here.

Meet Me at Willoughby Close by Kate Hewitt
Category: Contemporary Romance
Comments: Wychwood-on-Lea is a quaint village in Oxfordshire, with organic farms stores, expensive clothing, and of course, Yummy Mummies, which all means keeping up with the Joneses. However, Ellie Mathews, a Northern transplant, is insecure and barely surviving and definitely not able to keep up with the sophisticated crowd she encounters in Wychwood-on-Lea. Along with her 11-year-old daughter, she has decided to make a fresh start in the Cotswolds, away from the domineering and cloying influence of her older sister and parents. Ellie's new boss, Dr. Oliver Venables, is a very well-respected Oxford don. She's to be his personal assistant and her main task is to type up his handwritten nonfiction manuscript on Victorian children. He's stiff and formal and exacting, and she makes a fool of herself from day one. But both notice their inexplicable attraction for the other. I saw "Oxford" and "village" in the book description and I bought the book, and I was delightfully rewarded. My review is here.

The Nearness of You by Dorothy Garlock
Category: Contemporary Fiction
Comments: I simply can't recommend this book. It had such promise: a hard-bitten photographer who travels to the world’s hotspots in pursuit of newsworthy photographs, is swept away by a small-town gal who’s seen nothing of the world. Despite that interesting start, the story falters almost immediately, brought low by overwriting and clichés. My review is here.

Lord Carew's Bride by Mary Balogh
Emily and the Dark Angel by Jo Beverley
All Through the Night by Connie Brockway
Category: Traditional Regency Romance
Comments: This is my first column covering three traditional Regency historical romances for Happy Ever After. All three of them I have read and re-read many times and consider them as among the top keepers of my collection. My brief reviews are here.

The 5 Misfits by Beatrice Alemagna
Category: Children's Picture Book
Comments: This is a story about five creatures who have something wrong with them and don't fit in society at large. Then along comes this perfect being who asks them what are they doing in their house. And they say nothing, because they mess everything up. The Perfect One then tells them that they need to "find a purpose, a plan, an idea! You are good for nothing. You are real nobodies", says and punctures their already-low self esteem. But in discussing themselves further with him, each of the misfits discovers their good qualities: one doesn't get upset, one always has happy thoughts, and so on and so forth. Then they realize, they're great all by themselves and they do not need the Perfect One. This is a book for preschoolers but displays the difference between British and American style of writing with its sophistication of language.

I am a Unicorn by Michaela Schuett
Category: Children's Picture Book
Comments: Why be a frog when you can be a unicorn? Well, that is what this one green frog thought. He stuck a horn on his forehead and a bunch of sparkly foil strings on his butt and called himself a unicorn. But his friend the goat was not impressed. Frog tries to convince Goat of all the ways he is a true unicorn by displaying all that he can do, including: "I eat flowers and toot rainbows." After a lot of frustrated haranguing, Goat convinces Frog that all he had was a good unicorn costume, Frog's can of Magical Unicorn Sprinkles burst open and transforms the green frog into a bonafide purple unicorn. He may still say "Ribbit," but he has a genuine horn and swish his genuine tail to the fascinated horror of Goat. Dreams do come true if you believe in them hard enough. This book is meant for the very young; preschoolers remain unimpressed.