Mrs Hemingway by Naomi Wood

Rating: WARTY!

Narrated by someone with the highly-appropriate name of Kate Reading, but who ought to be named Kate Droning since she does an unfortunately monotonous job of it, this audiobook, which I had initially (and mistakenly) thought was a biography, turned out to be a tedious and pretentious fiction that tells us nothing whatsoever since it's the purest invention of the author. It turns out that Kate Reading is actually a fake name which I'm sure she thinks is hilarious.

Naturally it's rooted in the reality of Hemingway being unable to commit to a woman and holding the misogynistic and highly abusive idea that he ought to be entitled to a wife and a mistress at the same time and under the same roof, regardless of their wishes, but for me, this book did nothing to tell the real story of the women involved. It was far more about Hemingway and his four wives than ever it was about four women who happened at one point or another to be married to Ernest Hemingway.

The book felt like one of those where the title is along the lines of "The __________'s Daughter" or in this case, "The Iceberg Author's Wives" - it renders the women an appendage of someone else: a guy, rather than their own autonomous selves. I don't like that. I'm recently read such a work by Kate Moss and it was boring. It's going to be the last such book I read because the title is problematic for me from the off, before you even get to the story. The thing is though, that when I got to the story in this case, the author did precisely the same thing to these four women that such titles do to the female subjects of such novels. It's not appreciated and female writers in particular should be ashamed of writing things like that.

But I digress! So the first story is Hadley Hemingway going on about her competitive position with regard to Pauline Pfeiffer, but we really learn far less about these two women than we do about Hemingway, and it was disappointing. At that point I skipped to the one which interested me most, which was Martha Gellhorn, and after that, I quit listening altogether, because she wasn't in the story at all except as a story told by Hadley which even further removed her as a subject than Hadley had been! Go figure. I decided to go directly to the author's mouth and have reviewed - positively! - a couple of books that Martha Gellhorn actually wrote herself. Meanwhile I am done with this author. This book is bad writing, period.

If I Die Tonight by Alison Gaylin

Rating: WARTY!

This audiobook is supposedly about a hit and run in a stolen car, but it moved so slowly that I got the impression it was far more about a single mom detective policing two problematic kids than ever it would be about solving a crime, so I gave up on it. I think I'm going to quit even thinking of reading books with titles of this nature - the "If blah blah blah" kind of title.

This author also wrote a novel titled "What Remains of Me" which is a no-no and pretentious kind of a title for me. If I'd know about the previous title, I would never have picked this one up, and it would have been a wise decision. So it's a hackneyed story that the author evidently isn't interested in getting to, with a fake bad guy. On top of that, I later discovered that Kirkus loved this book, which is another reason to avoid it like the plague.

Dark Voyage by Alan Furst

Rating: WARTY!

There is no 'dark voyage', so that's the first problem with this book - or at least there wasn't in the first third of the book which was all I read before I gave up in disgust. There's more than one voyage, but the one I read about was hardly dark, and where I thought it was going to include some good action stuff: spying, infiltration, sabotage, adventure, instead it was largely a boring account of day-to-day activity on a boat, no adventure involved. Yawn. The author seems to somehow be missing the point of what a thriller is supposed to be.

It interested me because it was about this Danish boat captain who was helping the allies in World War Two, and his crew was diverse, including a couple of Germans who hated Hitler as much as the rest of the allies did, but the story-telling and the pacing was uninteresting and tedious respectively, and the story was more about the captain than ever it was about the voyage or the adventure such as it was. I felt completely misled by the book blurb, which I believe is on the publisher, not the author, but the author wrote the story I read and it wasn't up to par, so that's on him, and I can't commend this one based on what I could stand to read of it.

Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata

Rating: WORTHY!

This was an odd, but interesting and entertaining story. The author sells well in Japan apparently, and has several titles published there. This is her first English translation.

The novella is about a Japanese woman, Keiko Furukura, who is in her mid-thirties and who seems to the rest of the world to be stagnating. She is neither in a successful career, nor is she married with children which seem to be the only two viable options available to Japanese women, reading between the lines here.

in fact, Keiko has some sort of deficit disorder in that she doesn't see life like her peers do. For example, when she was in middle school and two boys were fighting, and other girls were urging them to stop it to no avail, Keiko's solution was to grab a nearby shovel and hit one of them on the head with it, which expediently stopped the fight at once. Problem solved.

She couldn't understand why she got into trouble for this any more than she can grasp why it's not acceptable to stick something sharp into a baby to shock it into stopping its endless wailing. Fortunately, she has learned that her solution would be socially unacceptable, and doesn't attempt it, even though the offending baby is her nephew, the son of her younger sister Mami. Keiko has learned that by watching how her peers deal with situations and then emulating them, even though the emulation itself makes no sense to her, she can get by. Mami, realizing Keiko has a problem, helps her with this.

This emulation even extends to copying their mannerisms, clothing choices, and speech inflections, although she's careful not to emulate her peers too precisely. Instead, she imbibes each of their essences, and regurgitates a meld of that as her own style. Keiko is like a robot who is given an AI learning program. In this way she's able to hold down a long-term job at a convenience store named Smile Mart which always seems to be pushing special offers.

The store is actually the perfect environment for Keiko, because it's highly-structured and the daily routine follows a specific set of simple rules. In such circumstances, she flourishes and becomes the store's most reliable and efficient employee. In this way she reminds me of Jeff Daniels's character Bill Johnson in the excellent movie Pleasantville, although she doesn't become anywhere near as lost as he does when routine changes. She feels completely at home in the Smile Mart, more so than anywhere else, and she volunteers for extra shifts because given a choice, that's where she'd rather be. Over the years she sees eight managers come and go, and many more of the staff. Those managers have all seemed to revere her as a stellar and exemplary employee.

This all starts to unravel with the arrival of a completely disaffected, rude, self-absorbed, and frankly gross employee by the name of Shiraha. He is fired, but when Keiko meets him lurking around the store because of his unrequited interest in another female employee, she starts to bond with him. He has no interest in her and she has never been interested in romance or sex, but he moves into her apartment and in that way she can assure her family that she has a boyfriend even though he is, in her own words, really like a stray pet that she took in, and feeds. This nevertheless brings big changes to her life.

I enjoyed this. It is a fast read: even though it's around 160 pages, the book is a very small format. Had it been a regularly-sized print book, it would have probably been less than ninety pages and looking quite skimpy, so it felt rather dishonest that the publisher had made an attempt to 'bulk it up' like this. Despite that, I commend it as a worthy read and may well come back to this author at some point in the future to sample more of her work (assuming more is translated because my Japanese is non-existent, sad to say!).

The Map Challenge by Tracy Packiam Alloway, Ana Sanfelippo

Rating: WORTHY!

This is from an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher.

This is a short, colorful, useful, and educational young children's book to open up discussion about dyslexic children.

Sammy is off to scout camp, but their first game when they get there is to follow a map and discover the flag, safely returning with it to the scout camp! Sammy, who is dyslexic, is chosen to be the map reader and he can't do it! After accidentally sending them in the wrong direction a couple of times, someone takes over the map chore, and Sammy is left to observe everything along the way. When the map is lost later, he is able to navigate back home by using the visual cues he absorbed on the journey out.

The book takes a sweet and simple approach, laying out playful issues and problems, with nothing too overwhelming. The children show a positive attitude and do not mock Sammy, and everything turns out well in the end because of Sammy's excellent visual memory which enables him to use his own personal set of 'signposts' to get them safely home. In the back of the book are tips for both parents (presumably including guardians and older family members) and teachers on dyslexia-related problems, along with discussion points about the story, and even tips for boosting memory skills - and when I say the first one is for the birds - I don't mean it's a bad tip!

As this book points out (and at least one study has confirmed: Enhanced Recognition Memory after Incidental Encoding in Children with Developmental Dyslexia Hedenius M, Ullman MT, Alm P, Jennische M, Persson J (2013) PLoS ONE) dyslexic children tend to have better memory for recalling things they have seen than do non-dyslexic children. Tracy Packiam Alloway is a psychologist with a PhD-level education, and Ana Sanfelippo is a talented Argentinian artist with a degree in graphic design. I congratulate them and commend this book as a worthy read.

The Big Book of Twisted Fairy Tales by Sue Nicholson

Rating: WORTHY!

This is from an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher.

Personally I think 'twisted' is a misnomer for a quartet of stories about honesty, kindness, responsibility, and teamwork, but it wasn't my choice! Rest assured that the stories are only twisted in the sense that they're changed and updated in relation to the originals.

Cinderella, whose original story revolved around a shoe fetish, loves dancing of course, but what's she to do when everyone except for her seems to be getting new shoes for the newly-opening dance school? Cindy puts her best foot forward however. This story is aimed at teaching about generosity and kindness. Unlike Cinderella, Beauty has her wish granted, and is given a pony which she names Flick, but (and here actually is a twist!), the beast isn't the animal, it's Beauty! She neglects her charge and the horse charges away! Will her parents have to pony-up for a new ride, or will beauty become more stable? This story aims to teach responsibility.

One of the fun things about these stories is how the characters each appear in the stories of the others. They not only exist in the same world, they live in the same town! One of those other characters is Jack who, like two beans in a pod, is just as irresponsible as Beauty, and who ends up destroying the family's crop. This story is about honesty, though. Will Jack fess up and will mommie bean him for his behavior? Last, but not least, is Snow White, who unaccountably isn't white in this story, so "yeay!" for diversity, but "huh?" for logic. Snow's problem doesn't exactly dwarf the others, but it is serious. She's one of the best soccer players, yet she's paradoxically not a team player! Will she also learn her lesson or will there be a penalty for her behavior?!

I liked these stories and commend them as a worthy read for young children, offering useful lessons.

The Time Machine by HG Wells

Rating: WARTY!

This is from an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher.

Published under the banner of "Classics Reimagined", this is a reproduction of the text of HG Wells 1895 novella. I requested this for review mistakenly thinking it was a graphic novel. It isn't; it's an illustrated novella. In it, a man who is never named in the story, but referred to simply as 'the Time Traveller' (note that this is in an era when characters in stories were often named "Mr B_____" or Mrs "M______", or whatever, builds himself a time machine and travels to the year 802,701.

Why that particular year, I have no idea, but by then London, his starting point, has long gone, as has every vestige of the society he knew. In its place is what appears to be a purely natural world in which dwell two peoples, the childlike androgynous Eloi, and the subterranean-dwelling predatory, and of course ugly, Morlocks, who groom the Eloi as their prey. The time traveller befriends one of the Eloi who is unfortunately named Weena, which sounds to me like some sort of sausage. Why Wells made the predators ugly was to me a bad piece of writing. If you looka t nature, the apex predators are enver ugly - theylre sleek and admirably-appointed - think of the lion, the tiger, the leopard, the jaguar, the cheetah. Often it's the prey who look stupid or behave, well, like cattle. But each writer to their own.

Much of the story is spent with the time traveller blundering-around trying to find his time machine which has been hidden by the Morlocks, but later they use it to lure him into their clutches, not grasping that he can escape in it. For some reason, he next travels some 30 million years into the future where the Earth is dying (this was a little premature by Wells, but he was writing in some scientific ignorance, let's not forget). In that future, the Sun is dying, and Earth is degenerating, exhibiting only lower life forms. After he has returned and told his story, he takes off again, promising to come back, but he never does.

The story is told in a frame set by the time traveller's return from this expedition, where he narrates this entire story, never once interrupted by his guest audience, and his eidetic recollection is miraculous given what he went through, so there's a certain falsity or lack of authenticity about it. It was never one of my personal favorites, and the sad thing for me is that the only difference between this 'updated' version and the original is that it has some artwork added, created by the studio team of 'Ale + Ale'. While the art is quite good in its own right, it really contributes nothing to the story, and the story itself is unchanged. Indeed, the art is false too in some regards, because the Eloi depicted in the art don't match Wells's description in the text, which I found strange. If you're going to leave the text totally unchanged, why add art which differs and detracts from it?

Another problem with it for me was the formatting. There was random block-cap text at various points in the middle of the narrative (a quote from the regular text), and which was larger than the regular text font. It was inserted into the main text like this was some cheap tabloid newspaper with sensationalist headlines. This interrupted the original text and I found it annoying, especially since it was in different font sizes which often stepped on the toes of the rest of the text in the same quote. I saw only the ebook version of this so I cannot comment on the print version (assuming there is one), but to me, the ebook looked messy and unappealing, and that along with the rambling story and mismatched artwork made for a disappointing experience. I cannot commend this as a worthy read.

Ella May Does It Her Way by Mick Jackson

Rating: WORTHY!

This is from an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher.

This young children's picture book was just wacky enough to appeal to my sense of the strangely amusing. Like me, she finds herself wondering from time to time why things happen in a certain way or why things are done this way instead of that way, and one day she decides to change it up by doing things backwards or opposite. It's not just a case of Ella May, but Ella does!

This comes to a head when she begins walking everywhere backwards, and her mother decides to join her, and soon the whole town is doing it. But does Ella May stop there? Nope! A well-written, colorful, and very entertaining exploration of one child's take on life. If your child is in a reading rut, this will get them out of it!

Hide and Seek, Little Chameleon by Anita Bijsterbosch

Rating: WORTHY!

This is from an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher.

This was a fun children's book which is short and colorful with simple images for the young. In most images, a chameleon hides and you and your kid have to figure out where it is. The book also talks colors and offers counting opportunities, so it's quite educational too.

Some of the chameleon finds were not so obvious, so this is good training. My one fear was that if a child had some sort of color deficiency in their vision, they might not see the chameleon at all, but when I took a little screenshot of some pages (the part of the book where the chameleon was hiding) and tinkered with them to change the colors, removing red, or green, or blue, and when I desaturated the image turning it to grayscale, the chameleon was still discernible, so I guess it's good to go! The only one where it pretty much disappeared altogether, was where it was hiding on a page featuring a lion, so I can't blame it for that! LOL! Besides, you could still see the eye even on that page. I'm happy to call this a worthy read for young children and a fun exercise in hide and seek!

Don't Let the Beasties Escape This Book! by Julie Berry

Rating: WORTHY!

This is from an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher.

This was a fun children's book which takes its inspiration from the fantastical creatures people believed existed back in the dark ages and earlier: unicorns, basilisks, griffins and the like, and pretends they really do exist in mischievous (but harmless!) forms that can come out and really disrupt your daily chores if you're not careful. They might even help in a purely accidental way! The drawings are amazing and detailed, and the colors wonderful. The book was a delight. I commend it as a worthy read for children - and even adults too. Why not?

The Mermaid Upstairs by Jami Lilo

Rating: WARTY!

A Lilo when I was younger, was the brand name of an inflatable raft for floating around in a swimming pool or at the beach - a cheap plastic thing full of air that inevitably disintegrated before summer was over. That's why this author's name seemed so à propos to me since this novel seemed to be of the same construction.

The weak premise is that this girl's mom suddenly decides, apparently out of the blue, that she's a mermaid and bemoans her missing tail, etc. rather than get her the medical attention and meds she needs, daughter and husband sit home with her bewailing their fate and her fate and their inability to fix the problem, like a sorry bunch of professional mourners at a cheap funeral.

I couldn't stand to read any further than the first couple of chapters. If it had seemed like it had some life in it or some humor, or had seemed like it was going somewhere, I might have given it a better chance to impress me, but it just floated there full of nothing, not even sound and fury, trying to look inviting and shiny, but the air was escaping and the water was cold and it really wasn't remotely appealing at all.

Jackie Chan Adventures by Duane Capizzi, David Slack, Tomás Montalvo-Lagos

Rating: WARTY!

This was a small format graphic novel featuring two stories, "The Mask of El Toro Fuerte" by Capizzi, and "Enter...The Viper" by Slack. The artist in both cases was Tomás Montalvo-Lagos. The artwork wasn't bad, but the stories were really not particularly inventive or interesting, and worse, featured clichéd villains and uninteresting story lines. Why they're Jackie Chan adventures I have no idea because there's no kung-fu involved at all, not even vicariously. They were more like Indiana Jones adventures, but I guess Harrison Ford wasn't interested - either that or they couldn't afford to pay for the use of his name?

I dunno. The adventures were not the great. The first was about a magical lucha libre mask which gave extra strength to the wearer, and the other about some female thief which seems to have borrowed from a Doctor Who episode if I recall, but I really am trying not to! Admittedly these were written for a much younger audience than me, but even so they were pretty limp and despite being a fan of Jackie Chan, I can't commend this as a worthy read.

The Taxidermist's Daughter by Kate Mosse

Rating: WARTY!

I think I'm done with Kate Mosse at this point! I liked the first one I read by her, but the next one and now this one, I did not like. I am not a fan of novels which have their title in the form: 'The ______'s Daughter' or ' The ______'s Wife' because it reduces the main character to an appendage of a man. I think that's an awful way to start a novel or to describe a person especially if she's female.

I barely got into this one because it was so filled with rambling and bouncing around between characters that I simply could not get with it at all. I decided to skip to the part where the body is found in the hope that it would pick up there, but it did not. The body is found in a creek, and it's found by the title character, whose actual name is Constantia Gifford, but rather than call for the police, the idiot gets someone to get the body out of the water. He's also an idiot because he doesn't call the police either. He drags the body out thereby destroying any evidence that might be connected with it as it lay in the water - face down and obviously a corpse.

I know that there are idiots out there, but I don't have to read about them! It wouldn't have been so bad had there been some sort of discussion about destroying evidence, and there arose some reason for why they acted as they did - like the body was in danger of being washed away, or despite being advised to leave it where it was for the police, some jackass went in there and fished it out anyway, but there never was any such thing. In short, it's bad writing. I don't do novels about stupid people, especially not about stupid female main characters, and I certainly am not interested in reading poorly-written one which is so larded with exposition you could fry dry bread in it, and no action, so that was it for me. Based on what I read, I cannot commend this and will not be reading anything more by this author - not when there are so many authors out there and so little time to find interesting new ones!

Genius by Marc Bernardin, Adam Freeman, Afua Richardson

Rating: WORTHY!

This was a graphic novel that took a trip into a reverse perspective after a fashion. Instead of black people being shot by the police, it was the other way around when a neighborhood in Los Angeles sets itself up as a no-go area for police, and fights violently back at any attempted incursions. The police are trying to figure out who is running this show and consider that it has to be a guy with a military background, when in fact it's just a teenage girl named Destiny Ajaye, who happens to have read a lot, including Sun Tzu's The Art of War. I haven't read that book (it is on my ebook reading list!), but I somehow doubt it has much to say about urban guerilla warfare.

However, I let that go because the story itself has much to say and it unpeels like an onion. It was engaging and had some interesting perspectives, although none that have not been raised before. The initial cops who were killed, it turns out were corrupt and into all kinds of shady things, and the girl who leads the insurrection has a bad episode of negative police interaction in her past. As the violence escalates and ever more force is brought to bear by the police, including calling in the National Guard, the reader has to wonder where all this is going to end up. Destiny has, through violent means, united several gangs and turned them into her own personal army, but are they up to taking on what's thrown against then or is this Destiny's Last Stand?

This comic series garnered some praise for itself and some attention having been released coincidentally during the time of the Ferguson, Missouri riots over the shooting death of Michael Brown which was stirred up by a combination of inaccurate reports of how he died and bloody-minded people. I consider it a worthy if disturbing read, but I can't get with it all the way because there was too much convenient happenstance in it for it to be realistic, and too much omitted, such as taking out several Nation Guard tanks by using sticky bombs as depicted in the movie Saving Private Ryan but without access to the anything like the comp B explosive they had.

The LAPD didn't use drones back in 2014, so I didn't expect that technology, but rooftop spotters? Taking out snipers from helicopters? None of this was explored and the police were made to look like complete idiots, which any police can do from time to time without any assistance, but they are not quite the reactive bunch of human 'drones' or ku klux klueless that they were depicted as here, which rather took away from Destiny's value as a master strategist.

That wasn't my biggest beef though. The biggest problem with it was once again the sexualization of female characters by comic book artists. Usually this lands at the feet of male artists, but in this case, we have another female artist who is selling her gender down this flood-stage river and I have no idea why. There was no sex in this story at all, so why is Destiny depicted as a this unnaturally posing, semi-topless Barbie-doll shaped bimbo? I would have complained - maybe even equally - had she been depicted as this bookish eyeglass-wearing nerd cliché too, or even as a Ian Fleming style 'flawed babe' with a scar or a limp or something, but surely there is a happy medium that could have been struck here? Why not simply depict her as a regular person?

Giving her an improbably narrow waist and pneumatic boobs does nothing to aid the story you're telling and in fact detracts from it badly. I live for the day when graphic novel illustrators don't have to be lectured about this and where male writers such as Bernardin and Freeman, and publishers such as Top Cow and Image automatically say no to such illustrations unless there's a really valid reason for using them.

That said, this is an interesting story so I decided to let that slide this time since it was only Destiny who was inexplicably depicted in this way. What this does mean however, is that I don't rate Afua Richardson as a valid comic book artist and I won't be inclined to read any graphic novel that she's had a hand in from this point onward, so no, I won't read the sequel to this: Genius: Cartel, not least of which is that I'm not a fan of retreading stories and selling them on as something new just to make a fast buck. It's bad enough that a $26 billion-earnings conglomerate like Disney is showing these days that all it can do is regurgitate without the rest of us jumping on its sadly derivative bandwagon.

Ironheart by Allan Boroughs

Rating: WORTHY!

This was a dystopian story which I normally avoid like the plague, but his one seemed like it might offer something different, and it did, so I was glad I gave it a chance.

India Bentley lives in what used to be London, on the north bank of the Thames, seeking a sad existence for her family by foraging and trying to avoid the evil people who live on the south bank, and who like to boat across there on occasion and kidnap people. Naturally for this kind of a story, her father went missing and her mother died, leaving her in the clutches of her evil stepmother who seems to be in process of being courted by a sleazy new guy in town who, it turns out, is angling to make young India his bride. So it's a bit of Indiana Jones meets Cinderella meets steampunk (kinda).

It turns out, as India learns during a visit from a female version of Indiana Jones named Verity Brown, who is a tech hunter like her father and who becomes a figure of inspiration fro India, that her dad wasn't prospecting for oil, but for old technology from the time before the fall of civilization. He was seeking the almost mythical Ironheart, a rumored stash of well-preserved old tech which would be worth a fortunate to anyone who found it and which could potentially revolutionize what this society had devolved into.

Verity is escorted by an old tech military android which has the absurd name of Calculus and which serves as her bodyguard. This led to the first example of poor writing I saw in this novel. India meets the android and hears it speak and shortly after she asks, "Can it talk?" What? Yes, you just heard it talk, moron! This evidently came about because the author didn't read back through what he'd written - or more likely added the earlier speech and never read on through to catch the continuity error.

Worse is: "He tensed a thin bicep and invited India to squeeze it." I read this before I decided in a later story that I was very likely going to quit reading novels where the author quite obviously has no clue as to the difference between biceps and bicep. They're not the same thing and while biceps is the plural of bicep, it's not the plural in the way these authors seem to think. I've started to expect this ignorance in YA novels, though, so it wasn't a complete surprise. Just annoying and depressing to think what we're doing to our mother tongue. Another example is: "It is possible," he said eventually, "that you are experiencing some sort of psychic phenomena." Well, it was just the one, so 'phenomenon' was the word required here.

This aside, the story, despite it becoming a bit trope-y and boring in parts, was overall a worthy read with some interesting adventure and action in it, and I enjoyed it, but it was not enjoyable enough to make me want to read any more about any of these characters. As it stands though I commend this one as a worthy read.

Fierce Winds and Fiery Dragons by Nan Sweet

Rating: WARTY!

This was a middle-grade novel and unfortunately part of a series, but I wasn't going to hold that against it until I came across too many tropes in a row: the bullied girl who is granted magical powers; the cute girl who thinks she's ugly, and worst of all, something I expect to read in a bad YA novel, but not in a middle grade one: the character who has gold flecks in her eyes! I am not lidding...er, kidding! You could make a fortune mining all that gold in YA characters' eyes. Anyway, based purely on that in the first few pages of the novel, I quit it and moved on. I cannot commend trope-laden, derivative, unoriginal nonsense as a worthy read, and this was all that and a bag of chips.

Unenchanted by Chanda Hahn

Rating: WARTY!

Rooted in the Grimm fairy tales, this story borrows a bit from the TV series named Grimm where this cop turns out to be a Grimm - that is not someone who is named Grimm, but someone who is hereditarily required to fight supernatural evil as it arises. Mina Grime is in a similar position. She's the rather nerdy unpopular girl at school, but of course in the way of YA trashy novels, she's gorgeous, yet only attracts the attention of the studLy trope school jock after she saves his life.

Mina has supposedly inherited the unfinished Grimm fairy tales whatever those are. This is so obviously the start of a series, which pretty much lets me out on the ground floor, not being much of a fan of series, in particular not of YA series which are far too often derivative and tedious. Predictably I grew tired of this very quickly, especially when I came across some clunkers in the writing, such as "just not one hypnotized Brody. His movements became slower, and he was transfixed by Claire's every movement" I think the 'one' should be 'on'. That was a relatively minor infraction.

Worse by far was "Mina watched as Claire's hand stroked Brody's bicep" - it's fricking biceps moron! I'm now dedicated to ditching dumb-ass books like this at the first mention of the singular bicep. That's probably what happened here although I really don't recall why exactly I quit this. It was probably because it was too dumb for words and the female supposed hero is really nothing without a guy to validate her as per usual in this kind of tripe.

So no - not a worthy read - a very warty one in fact.

Once Upon a Kiss by Various Authors

Rating: WARTY!

This was billed as seventeen romantic 'Faerie' tales. I detest those words: 'Fae' and 'Faerie', and I ought to take my own advice and refuse to read any more books that use it, since this one was rather less than satisfactory. Even 'Fairy Tales' doesn't technically cover these stories although some of them are.

My first problem with it was the content list. It was colored magenta. On a white background, this isn't a problem, but on a black background which I typically use to save power in my phone, which is where I read ebooks more often than not, it rendered the content list illegible. You could click from the list to go to the story but you could not click back to the content from a story, and if you're not careful, merely swiping to go to the second page of content would take you to a story instead of taking you to the next page, necessitating your having to pull up the slide bar at the bottom of the screen and slide all the way back if you accidentally hit the wrong story (something which is very easily done on a small screen where the list is very compact). So, too dark of a color and far too close together to tap accurately with a finger.

Clearly publishers still have a lot to learn about formatting ebooks. Some of these stories had a prologue, an epilogue, and chapter markers and all of these sub-headings were listed on the content page meaning it ran over three screens! This kind of crap is why I never put a content page in my own novels, but then those typically do not contain a variety of stories from an assortment of authors so I could see the point of one in this case. I just wish it had been better thought through; just a list of the author's names would have been quite sufficient and occupied much less space, meaning each name could have been bigger so it was easier to tap the name and go to the story on a small screen.

Anyway, here's the list below with my comments on each story:

• The Glass Mountain by Alethea Kontis
I didn't like this. It seemed pointless and went on far too long. It was a story of a woman being trapped in a glass mountain and working with a guy who was also trapped there to get out. It was supposed to be a love story but the guy was highly antagonistic and verbally abusive from the start, and the author failed to convince me that this relationship could possibly turn around, so a big no on this story. I have no better idea what it was based on than I do how a female author can write a story like this. Does she think she's Becca Fitzpatrick or something?! (No, that's not a compliment).
• The Bakers Grimm by Hailey Edwards
This was a story about two competing bakeries and the children of the bakers getting together, and it failed to move me at all. I barely even remember it.
• Galatea and Pygmalion by Kate Danley
This was about a sculptor named Galatea, who sculpted a guy named Pygmalion - in short, just the opposite of the myth. That really was the only twist and the story wasn't that good.
• Red by Sarra Cannon
This was about a witch, part of a coven, looking for a cure for her sister and meeting a guy held prisoner in a cottage in the woods, who in turn helps her. The coven isn't everything she thought it was. Again, it failed to move me. At one point I read, "The Order had expressly forbid me to go looking for any kind of cure for my sister." The author evidently doesn't understand the distinction between forbid and forbade.
• Princess Charming by Yasmine Galenorn
An epistolary story with the twist being that the 'Charming' is female. I have no time for tedious epistolary novels, and in my amateur opinion, I already wrote the definitive Princess Charming when I wrote Femarine, so this one fell on deaf ears. I read, "I think they were getting used to being in human form. I have no clue what, now that their gig is over." I have no idea whatsoever what that piece meant!
• Mad About You by Jennifer Blackstream
Based on Alice in Wonderland, this one was about Alice trying to repel the Mad Hatter (who was paying suit to her) by getting a charm from a witch, but then changing her mind (If I recall - which I may not). I wasn't interested in the story.
• The Sea King's Daughter by Anthea Sharp
Based on The Little Mermaid. I have a severe allergy to stories which are titled in this format - making the main female character an appendage of a guy instead of her own person: The So-And-So's Daughter, The So-and-So's Wife. You shouldn't have to tell female writers that words carry heft and weight, and remind them that diminishing women like this only prolongs a detestable historical precedent. I read "They would not provide cover any long, which meant she must seize her opportunity now." It should have read 'Any longer'. It's sad when you can't even grammer- and spell-check a short story properly, but I guess most of us have been there!
• Romeo and Juliet: The Afterlife by Julia Crane
This story carried Shakespeare's original over into the afterlife to see what happened there which is similar to an idea I had myself, but did nothing with. I wasn't impressed by this effort to explore that, os I guess the opportunity is still there if I wanted to pursue it!
• Soot and Stone: A Fae Tale of the Otherworld by Jenna Elizabeth Johnson
Any novel that uses 'fae' and 'faerie' instead of fairy is chickenshit as far as I'm concerned, and I have no time for that kind of cowardice and posy-footing around That's all I have to say about his one.
• The Huntsman's Snow by Mandy M Roth
This was a shifter story and I typically have no time for those, so no.
• RumpelIMPskin by Debra Dunbar
Based on Rumpelstiltskin of course, this was mildly entertaining, but nothing special. I read, "His smug looked changed to one of utter shock when he saw us" and it should have read, 'smug look'.
• The Glass Sky by Alexia Purdy
This was a short story and still it had a prologue and chapters - all of which were listed in the content page! Yuk! As soon as I saw it was first person and the main character's name was Star Rickton, I skipped it. No. Just no.
• Rush by C Gockel
This is a story about someone named Rush who, due to a transgression, is required to find true love in two weeks which is nonsensical, so no. I read, "...several octaves too loud" which is plain dumb. An octave isn't a measure of sonic volume!
• Perchance To Dream by Phaedra Weldon
This was about your usual female underdog in a magical world and it failed to leave an impression. I read, "The two waved as they approached and an matrons woman yelled at them from Rose's left." An matrons woman? Any grammar checker will find that, so this was a truly sloppy error in an unmemorable story. I can't even guess what she was trying to say with that nonsensical phrase.
• The Toad Prince by Nikki Jefford
So, I am tiring of going through each of these, especially when I really don't recall them. I think at some point I not only stopped reading each story before it was over, but I stopped even reading the next story because I honestly don't remember a thing about some of these. In this I read, "Isabel's best features were hidden beneath her bulky wool gown." So here we have a female writer, writing about a female character, and clearly stating that all she's worth is her body. Forget about her mind - forget about any qualities such as smarts, loyalty, integrity, grit, honesty, capability, or whatever. Her body is the only thing of utility. I'm sorry but writers who write like this are assholes, period. There's a difference between a character thinking something like that, and the author stating it in the narrative, and this one is a jerk for for doing so.
• Crafted With a Kiss by Shawntelle Madison
This one wasn't bad, and I do remember it, Pynnelope is a wooden warrior who seems invincible until in her last battle she's taken down by a guy who is more powerful. She's taken prisoner, but there is more to the story. I quite liked it. There was one mistake in it. At one point I read, "Either way, I had until dawn to force Pynnelope to do the unthinkable" and this came just two paragraphs before we're told he has only until midnight. Someone's not reading for continuity!
• A Small magic by Devon Monk
I've read at least one novel by Devon Monk and liked it, so I guess it wasn't surprising that I liked this one, based on Hans Andersen's The Princess and the Pea. It was an amusing and quirky story, but it's sad that there was only one really likable one in this whole collection.

So very little to engage me here, and overall I cannot recommend this as a worthy read, but at least it informed me of over a dozen authors I don't need to bother reading ever again from this point onward!

Cartwheeling in Thunderstorms by Katherine Rundell

Rating: WORTHY!

This is something of a Cinderella story and it was also another of those audiobooks I seem to have been listening to lately which gets off to a great start, falls flat in the middle, but picks up again towards the end, so overall I consider it a worthy listen, but it had an issue or two here and there along the way. It was read by Bianca Amato who did a good job.

Wilhelmina Silver has had an amazing childhood in Zimbabwe, despite losing her mother at an early age. Her father was still around and she was allowed to run wild, learning all she needed to from her daily adventures and from the extensive library her father had in their ranch. But when he dies unexpectedly and his nurse movies in on the family and starts taking over, Wil suddenly finds herself on the outs and is eventually and summarily packed-off alone to an English boarding school while her home is sold.

To Wil, the people in her school are as cold as the weather and her spirits as dampened as the climate. Wil runs away from school and lives on her own on the streets (and in a zoo!) for a while before finally returning to the school and finding a place there. The novel tells a good and interesting story when it finds its pace, but there are times when it rather drags and you're wanting something to happen which doesn't. I'm not a big fan of school bully and cruelty stories, so I disliked that part. It wasn't so bad, but it was a bit overdone and too black and white for my taste. I found it hard to believe that girls of breeding who attended this school would have been so relentlessly, uniformly, and openly cruel as depicted here. It didn't seem realistic to me.

The worst part about this story is that Wil is presented in the early chapters as fearless, feisty, and indomitable, but in England she seems completely the opposite. Yes, she has some grit and some inventiveness, but she seems like a different character from the one we'd been introduced to earlier, and while I get that being torn from a comfortable and happy home and dropped unkindly into a new life for which they're completely unprepared can knock the stuffing out of a person, it felt a bit like a betrayal of Wil that she was so consistently and so interminably presented as weak and lost. It felt wrong and inauthentic, and did the character a disservice.

That said, she took charge and bounced back and that's where the story improved for me, so while it has its faults, it's not too bad of a story for an age-appropriate audience.

Juana & Lucas by Juana Medina

Rating: WORTHY!

I used to know someone by the last name of Medina with an amusingly rhyming first name! Marriage will sometimes do that to you but you gotta go with your heart, right?! This audiobook was read by someone with the feisty name of Almarie Guerra, and she read it well. It's a very simple and very short story for younger children that's in English, but which teaches some Spanish along the way by inserting the occasional Spanish word in place of an English one. Usually, but not always, you can guess what the word means by the context. I'm a big advocate of that in writing, so I approved of this teaching method. If you're going to use a foreign word, don't pedantically add the English translation right after it because it sounds stupid and it's both tedious to read and listen to. Instead, simply put it wisely in context and your reader should have little trouble if any, in understanding it.

The story simply tells of Juana and her friends during a school day, and the adventures and problems they have, and it was quite charming even for me who is way beyond the age at which this is aimed! I liked it, and I enjoyed the reading of it, so I commend it for age-appropriate audiences.