Lightning Reviews: London, Mysteries, & Elizabeth Boyle

Welcome back to Lightning Reviews, where we give some quick and dirty thoughts on books in a mini-review format. We’ve been away from this feature for a while because of all the RITA reviews, but now we’re back into the swing of things. This trio features a historical romance, some historical fiction with romantic elements, and a thriller!

The Dry

author: Jane Harper

The Dry is an Australian-set mystery perfect for those who (like me) enjoy a good cold case.

Federal Agent Aaron Falk returns to the small community he grew up in after a childhood friend, Luke, kills his family before committing suicide. His horrifying actions are chalked up to stress: drought has plagued the community for years, farms are failing, and the town is fracturing.

Falk isn’t sure he buys the murder-suicide theory. When Aaron and Luke were teens, a friend of theirs, Ellie, was found dead in a river. Luke and Aaron, under suspicion, provided each other with alibis. The truth is, Aaron doesn’t know where Luke was when Ellie was killed all those years ago, and his friend’s death is dredging up a lot of questions that had been buried.

The Dry is an excellent, solid mystery. I loved the setting of a rural community struggling through a drought that sets everyone on edge and amplifies tensions. I loved how the cold case (Ellie’s death) tied into the mystery surrounding the murder of Luke’s family.

Trigger warning–this book does discuss the murder of children (obviously) and also deals with the sexual assault of a child. It’s not the book to read if you get the heebie-jeebies easily, but if you love a good whodunit and have girdy loins, then I totally recommend it.

Elyse

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Goodnight from London

author: Jennifer Robson

Goodnight From London tells the story of Ruby Sutton, a journalist who is sent to London at the dawn of World War II to cover the war from the perspective of a young American woman. Once there, she endures the deprivations of war on the home front, the Blitz, sees the changes and horrors that the war causes in Britain, meets a man, falls in love, and all that good stuff.

Honestly, while this was a good read while I was reading it, in the end I found it curiously unsatisfying, and I spent about four days thinking about why.  First is that Ruby Sutton is a boring heroine. She has one big secret in her background, and a bunch of adversity she needed to fight through to get to her place in the world as a journalist. But once she got that job, everyone falls over themselves to help her, except for one and a half people. There  is very little that even mildly complicates her life.

Hell, she gets bombed out of her flat during the Blitz, and ends up safe and sound with rich friends, so other than, “well, my passport got blown up, that kinda sucks,” it barely causes a hiccup. Even when her Big Secret comes out, the complications get quietly washed away. And these are MAJOR complications! They should have had actual repercussions, and not have been neatly disposed of in half a chapter.

The romance is mostly conflictless: he’s got a weird job during the war so he’s in and out of London, but there’s barely any tension. The whole book is “Ruby wants to do something, people help her in doing that thing, Ruby worries that she’s not worthy of their help, people fall over themselves to assure her that she’s adored, rinse, repeat.”

The best parts of this book where the stories that Ruby went out to report on, like a field hospital in France, or the aftermath of the bombing of Coventry. Those parts were great. But all the interpersonal non-drama was a HUGE drag.

Redheadedgirl

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Six Impossible Things

author: Elizabeth Boyle

I mentioned this in a previous “Whatcha Reading” and I totally admit that the title and the cover got me interested. I like Boyle’s writing, and I enjoy her books, but it was the gorgeousness of the cover moved this one up the TBR pile. Marketing: it works!

Rosalie Stratton’s father worked in the Home Office as a spymaster and diplomat. Of all his children, she is the one who inherited all his skills and his brains. Of course, since she’s a girl, it’s simply impossible that she put those skills to good use…until she just does anyway, with the support of her uncle and a few other people.

Brody, Baron Rimswell, also works for the Home Office, and he’s had a number of run-ins with a mysterious masked woman, Asteria, who might work with the Home Office (or maybe the Russians?) and those run-ins seem to always end with a passionate make-out session. As so often happens.

Rosalie and Brody have known each other since they were children, and she’s both annoyed and amused that he doesn’t recognize her when she’s in her guise as Asteria. When they’re caught in a compromising position, they must do the responsible thing and get married, and then figure out how to sort out their lives as spies and spouses. The romance is based on figuring out how a partnership works- Rosalie is NOT going to be a quiet wife, and Brody needs to rethink his ideas of what being a husband means. His parents didn’t give him a good template for a successful, happy marriage, so he needs to figure it out for himself.

What I liked best about Six Impossible Things was Rosalie and her determination that she would use her talents to help King and Country, whether King and Country liked it or not. She’s a patriot in the purest sense, and she’s got a brilliant mind that’s working two steps ahead of everyone else. Once Brody figures that out – that she’s as smart and talented and brave as anyone he’s ever met – he’s on her team. I love terrifyingly competent heroines and the heroes that adore them.

This is the sixth book in a series, and I have not read all of them. While I think you can read this as a stand-alone, I have a feeling there are some through-lines that might have more of a payoff if I had read all of the other books. I had a conversation with someone who has read all of this series, and she said that it’s not at that clear how all of these couples intersect (“How is that a SERIES?”). So maybe I didn’t miss a through line.

Redheadedgirl

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Comments are Closed

  1. Donna Marie says:

    @RHG, I totally agree with you about the Robson book. I’ve enjoyed her previous books, but found this one a little flat. I think the parts about her interviews works so well because those are the stories the author really wants to tell. Also, the storytelling was some what journalistic in style. Sparse prose that tells the story without emotional content. I suppose that fits when telling the story of a journalist, but it doesn’t really work to connect us with Ruby.

  2. Barb in Maryland says:

    Oh look–my library has ‘The Dry’. And, click, I now have it on hold. Gotta love libraries.

  3. MClaudia says:

    I think I would like the E Boyle book if I could get over Rimswell…

  4. Shiera says:

    I loved The Dry too and had the same thoughts on Goodnight From London. All of it was way too easy, especially the revelation of her secret. I thought it was wildly unbelievable that she wouldn’t have been in more trouble.

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