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The Way We Play (The Bradford Boys #2), by Tia Louise

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My rating: 1 of 5 stars “The Way We Play” is a miserable reading experience, not because its tropes are inherently objectionable, but because they replace characterisation, logic, and genuine chemistry. The premise has workable ingredients: a cautious thirty-year-old caring for her younger brother, and an injured former kicker with a repairman’s trade. Yet the novel turns every element into a contrivance designed to prove that Rachel and Zane are destined for each other. The book practically announces this problem itself: » Zane Bradford appeared at the perfect time. « That is not foreshadowing. It is the author waving a large sign labelled “plot convenience”. Nothing feels credible. Rachel’s responsibilities exist mainly to make Zane indispensable, while Zane alternates between wounded alpha hero, miraculous rescuer, and muscular plot device. Their supposed conflict never develops into convincing friction. They announce attraction, trauma, and eternal devotion at one another, and the ...
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Bretonischer Glanz (Kommissar Dupin #15), von Jean-Luc Bannalec

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Meine Bewertung: 3 von 5 Sternen Ein Krimifestival in Roscoff, eine ermordete Zwiebelbäuerin, Konflikte bei Celtic Ferries, Drohparolen an Hauswänden und eine obskure Zwiebel-Bruderschaft: „Bretonischer Glanz“ bringt zunächst alles mit, was einen Dupin-Krimi ausmacht. Roscoff ist stimmungsvoll, die bretonische Küste leuchtet, Kaffee und regionale Spezialitäten werden mit der gewohnten Hingabe serviert. Dupin bleibt als grantiger, eigenwilliger, zugleich menschlicher Ermittler erfreulich stabil; auch Riwal und Kadeg sorgen für vertraute Komik. Dann aber beginnt der Roman, sich auf eine Weise mit Autor_innen und Autorentum zu beschäftigen, die nicht ironisch, sondern vor allem selbstgefällig wirkt. Bannalec lässt eine Autorin sagen: » Was viel heißt, die große Mehrheit der Autoren leidet an schwerem Narzissmus, nicht selten in pathologischem Ausmaß. « Der Satz wäre ein hübscher Seitenhieb, wenn der Roman nicht umgehend selbst den Beweis antreten würde. Robert Rouxel schreibt über einen K...
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Something Wilder, by Christina Lauren

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Something Wilder by Christina Lauren My rating: 2 of 5 stars “Something Wilder” wants to be a second-chance romance, a treasure-hunt caper, and a desert survival thriller. Lily Wilder stages fake treasure hunts through Utah using the hand-drawn map she has from her father. Leo, her first love, returns with friends, and Lily’s map pulls them towards a real treasure hunt. The route back to the ranch and to each other soon becomes a violent scramble involving guns, knives, death, greed, and a suspiciously reusable set of villains. Attractive premise, poor execution. » An explosion detonated in his blood. « That sentence appears twice, in Chapters Thirteen and Fifteen; Chapter Twenty-One repeats the same blood-and-fire image twice more. The pattern feels less like a developing motif than a shortcut: whenever desire peaks, the prose reaches for combustion instead of letting the characters carry the scene. Romantic-adventure capers need momentum, danger, and protagonists whose choices becom...
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The Ex Vows, by Jessica Joyce

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The Ex Vows by Jessica Joyce My rating: 3 of 5 stars I did not hate "The Ex Vows", but I found Georgia and Eli so persistently irritating that the novel never became more than a frustrating, middling read. Jessica Joyce still knows how to write atmosphere, banter, and emotional history, and the wedding-disaster setup gives the book enough momentum to stay readable. But the romance itself kept getting in its own way, and after a while I was less invested than exasperated. Georgia is frustrating in a very specific manner. She is so afraid of her own feelings, and so terrified that another attempt at this relationship might fail, that her caution gradually hardens into monotony. I understood where that fear came from, but understanding it did not make it any less irritating to watch her retreat from feeling over and over again. The novel clearly wants that fear to read as emotionally rich, yet for me it mostly read as repetitive. Eli annoyed me even more, because the book insis...
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Down Among the Sticks and Bones (Wayward Children #2), by Seanan McGuire

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Down Among the Sticks and Bones by Seanan McGuire My rating: 3 of 5 stars Not the heartbreak of coming back, but the origin story I did not really need I opened my review of the first instalment, “ Every Heart a Doorway ”, with the line “Not the fantasy of going through the door, but the heartbreak of coming back.” “Down Among the Sticks and Bones” turns that idea inside out. This time, Seanan McGuire gives us the fantasy of going through the door, tracing the origins of Jack and Jill in a story that reaches for the shape, logic, and menace of a fairy tale. For me, though, that shift is precisely where the novella loses some of what made its predecessor so affecting. » On the day our story truly starts « That line captures one of my main frustrations with the book. By the time the story “truly” starts, more than a fifth of the novella has already passed, and I felt that delay. I understood what McGuire was trying to do by showing the damage inflicted on the sisters before they ever ...
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The Fiancée Farce, by Alexandria Bellefleur

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The Fiancée Farce by Alexandria Bellefleur My rating: 4 of 5 stars After the disaster that the latest “Bruno” turned out to be, “The Fiancée Farce” was exactly the palate cleanser I needed: warm, funny, queer, and far more wholehearted than its knowingly ridiculous premise might suggest. On paper, a marriage of convenience is one of the oldest romance contraptions in the book. In practice, Alexandria Bellefleur makes it feel fresh because the romance is built not on trope, but on trust. What charmed me most was not simply that Gemma and Tansy want each other. It was that they begin, almost instinctively, to tell each other the truth. » these days, she was nothing if not brutally honest with herself « That matters. A lot of contemporary romances, including very good ones, still run on people withholding the one thing that would make the relationship real. “The Fiancée Farce” takes the more generous route. Tansy begins from a lie, yes, but the emotional shape of the novel comes from t...
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A Murder in Springtime (Bruno, Chief of Police #19), by Martin Walker

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A Murder in Springtime by Martin Walker My rating: 2 of 5 stars Less murder mystery than background noise in St. Denis. “A Murder in Springtime” ought to have been a return to what these Bruno novels used to do well: a local crime, a lived-in village, familiar people, and a mystery that actually matters more than the garnish around it. Instead, I found myself trudging through a novel that seemed oddly embarrassed by its own murder plot, forever wandering off into side-business, social clutter, stale emotional nonsense, and the usual namedropping of recurring figures who barely justify their presence. The international spy absurdity may be gone, and that is a mercy, but Walker has not replaced it with focus. » It might not have been quite like the old days « No kidding. That line lands almost like an accidental confession. The book keeps gesturing towards the older, better Bruno formula, but it never really recovers it. The murder feels secondary for far too long, and by the time the ...
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