strange bedfellows

The earl meets his match, TJ Alexander
But not too bold, Hache Pueyo
I’m thinking of ending things, Iain Reid
Everything but the medicine: a doctor’s tale, Lucy O’Hagan
Crash test, Amy James
Brat Farrar, Josephine Tey
The Detective, Matthew Reilly


The earl meets his match, TJ Alexander. I picked this up after abandoning a terrible historical m/m romance that lacked both historical setting and believable romance, and while this was better it’s still not great. T4T soft romance in which an Earl (Christopher) reluctantly leaves the comfort and privacy of his estate due to an provision in his father’s will that requires him to be married by 25 to keep his inheritance; he hires the distractingly handsome James as a valet to help keep up appearances, but events ensue, etc. I had issues with the will in the first place and also with Christopher as an Earl (does he run the estate? Where are all his tenants and staff etc?) and the lack of genuine conflict as well as finding both characters a bit underdeveloped. I did think the bit where Christopher becomes Christopher (after his twin brother is washed overboard in a storm) hinted at something darker and more complicated - he is literally stealing his brother’s clothes before anyone’s even tried to retrieve the brother, but this didn’t play out.

But not too bold, Hache Pueyo. The eldritch spider-goddess Anatema who rules over Capricious House has eaten the Keeper of the Keys, and Dália, her protegée, must take on the role - and also investigate the crime the Keeper died for. But Anatema is constantly searching for a new bride, and Dália is both beautiful and intelligent - sapphic monster gothic, heavy on the vibes. I liked it and it works at novella-length but could have done with a bit more plot and a relationship that didn't lean so heavily on Dália's looks.

I’m thinking of ending things, Iain Reid. A het couple are driving through the gathering darkness to the isolated rural farm of the guy’s (Jake’s) parents; the book is from the pov of Jake’s unnamed girlfriend, who is no longer committed to the relationship, intrigued by this glimpse into a past Jake doesn’t talk about, and hiding the fact that she is receiving mysterious and inexplicable phone calls from her own number. .I liked the writing and I liked the unnerving, atmospheric feel of the book - it’s very much dreamlike, intensely vivid and increasingly incohesive - but the characters are difficult to like, and while there is a story reason for the overbearing intellectual bullying Jake inflicts on his girlfriend, you still have to read it before you know that.

Everything but the medicine: a doctor’s tale, Lucy O’Hagan. Memoir of a NZ GP, her life and career, focusing on how she develops her own personal values (through hardship, through mistakes, through burnout) and brings them into the consulting room to meet and understand her patients. Thoughtful and interesting, a bit bitsy at times but a solid read.

Crash test, Amy James. F1 driver Travis Keeping is secretly in a relationship with an up-and-coming F2 driver, Jacob, but when Jacob is seriously injured in a crash, and Travis is unable to keep away and ends up outing both of them to Jacob’s homophobic family, everything starts to fall apart. I did like Travis while wishing we got more racing and less (paraphrased) “I felt terrible. I went out and won another race.” but Jacob is a fairly terrible boyfriend, internalised homophobia or not, and although he does do a lot of work on himself it’s all stuff that Travis doesn’t see before taking him back (to a chorus of swelling violins etc). I do think it’s an interesting failure though and I have put the sequel on hold.

Brat Farrar, Josephine Tey. I was reading an extract of Kate Camp’s (NZ writer) memoir and realised way, way, too belatedly, that her mum was my favourite English teacher (in my defence she did use her maiden name). Elaine Lynskey was a fantastic English teacher even if she never really understood my fondness for genre, and among many other things she lent me her copy of Brat Farrar, which she herself had borrowed permanently from the school library (the library card has a date well before I ever started at that school and a totally different name), and it was helpfully sticking out of the shelf at me so I re-read it (I realise “lent” may not be the appropriate word here given that I obviously still have her copy many years later but I could always give it back). I do love the book and I would say it’s despite its really appallingly snobbery, but I can't because the snobbery is so inherent in every part of the story, plot and character and tone. It wouldn’t be a story if Brat didn’t have a familial fondness for horses and for a specific English estate, nor would it be a story if his murderous not-actual twin wasn’t equally a creation of that society. But I do love it anyway, and the bit where Brat wrestles with his knowledge and what to do with it, redeems a lot.

The Detective, Matthew Reilly. Sam Speedman is a private detective with autism who despite being short, slight, and wearing glasses, manages to pull off a daring rescue of a kidnapped scientist in the opening pages, and then finally gets a lead on the one case he has never solved, a case which saw his mentor disappear without trace (although his eyes were later sent to his family) a case that will lead him into the dark heart of American racism etc etc. Sam teams up with Audrey, an African-American FBI agent investigating the mysterious disappearance of her partner, after an infant’s body is found stashed inside an old doll, and DNA analysis shows that the baby’s mother is one of the women whose disappearance his mentor was investigating, and then there are a number of set pieces (with diagrams; I would read fewer Reilly books if I weren't fond of these, but these ones are sadly lacking in the bizarre inventiveness of those of the Seven Ancient Wonders series) across the American South (alligators, flooded cemeteries, mine shafts, creepy estates etc) as the two of them discover a secret conspiracy of slave-keeping families. It is not a great book, I’m not sure it’s occurred to Reilly that if he’s appalled at the state of race relations in the US (he puts in a number of real references) that making up stuff isn’t terribly helpful, and it’s worse on female characters than Reilly usually is (Sam is a virgin who eats lunch at Hooters everyday because it’s predictable and the women there are nice to him; he ends up sleeping with a grateful Audrey after he rescues her from an attempted gang rape by various slave-keeping henchmen), and maybe I should finally get around to reading his historical young Queen Elizabeth novel The Tournament, which gets significantly better reviews and might leave me feeling less irked.