A clever con woman must convince a skeptical, sexy farmer of his property’s resident real-life ghost if she’s to save them all from a fate worse than death, in this delightful new novel from the author of Mrs. Nash’s Ashes.

Fake spirit medium Gretchen Acorn is happy to help when her best (read: wealthiest) client hires her to investigate the unexplained phenomena preventing the sale of her bridge partner’s struggling goat farm. Gretchen may be a fraud, but she’d like to think she’s a beneficentone. So if “cleansing” the property will help a nice old man finally retire and put some much-needed cash in her pockets at the same time, who’s she to say no?

Of course, it turns out said bridge partner isn’t the kindly AARP member Gretchen imagined—Charlie Waybill is young, hot as hell, and extremely unconvinced that Gretchen can communicate with the dead. (Which, fair.) Except, to her surprise, Gretchen finds herself face-to-face with Everett: the very real, very chatty ghost that’s been wreaking havoc during every open house. And he wants her to help ensure Charlie avoids the same family curse that’s had Everett haunting Gilded Creek since the 1920s.

Now, Gretchen has one month to convince Charlie he can’t sell the property. Unfortunately, hard work and honesty seem to be the way to win over the stubborn farmer—not exactly Gretchen’s strengths. But trust isn’t the only thing growing between them, and the risk of losing Charlie to the spirit realm looms over Gretchen almost as annoyingly as Everett himself. To save the goat farm, its friendly phantom, and the man she’s beginning to love, Gretchen will need to pull off the greatest con of her life: being fully, genuinely herself.

Dear Ms. Adler, 

Last year I adored “Mrs. Nash’s Ashes.” I was hoping for a repeat experience with “Happy Medium.” Let me just rip the review Band-Aid off and say, I didn’t get one. 

Gretchen Acorn is a con artist. She was raised to be a good one by her con artist father who cut her loose when she wouldn’t finish a long con with him. After building a reputation as a spirit medium among the ultra wealthy women of DC, she’s doing alright. Her best client asks a favor which lands her on a goat farm in Maryland with a man who believes she’s a fraud. Then she sees an actual ghost. A ghost with a life or death message for the farm owner. Can she get Charlie to believe her?

Okay, let’s get down to brass tacks. For the most part, Everett the ghost is a pervy asshole. He does have some good moments when he pops up to give Gretchen some words of wisdom but they’re few and far between. Although if I were stuck in the same place for 100 years, unable to talk to anyone, maybe I’d begin to get my entertainment by watching people regardless of whether those people were in the bathroom or bedroom. I think he’s supposed to add most of the “quirk” to the book but I just wanted to punch him. Even Gretchen gets to the point where she tunes out his non-stop chatter. Then at the end, he tells Gretchen something – and proceeds to blow off her valid criticism – that made me want to kick him in his balls if he still had corporeal ones. 

Gretchen, who in order to justify her actions has changed her con-artistry to only work with clients who she feels she can leave better off than when they first came to her, is so hesitant while at the farm. Yeah, she doesn’t want to be there, has never farmed, is unsure of herself but SO many times Charlie would ask her to do something that needed to be done RIGHT NOW and Gretchen would dither for half a page or more trying to work herself up to it. I would mentally yell “Just do it! The baby goat needs you!” at her. She does, I will admit, have great ideas for ways for Charlie to increase the income the farm makes and does something really nice for Charlie’s grandfather. That was sweet. 

Grumpy hero Charlie is barely in the book for the first third. And when he is, he’s simmeringly angry at Gretchen. Like that’s pretty much his only emotion. He does eventually show his good side and after that, I agree with Everett (and it pains me to agree with that asshole about anything) that Charlie is a good egg with a runny yolk. Hmmm, that description sounds better in the book. 

Miscommunication is a big part of this story. We’re told that everyone around Gretchen and Charlie can see that they’re falling for each other (even if I didn’t see much chemistry for a long time) but these two won’t give in because Gretchen won’t allow anyone close to her in her life and Charlie thinks she’s a fraud. Then this progresses to martyrish tendencies from them both. Ugh. 

The worst thing though is the endless telling instead of showing. We never do get any POV from Charlie but do get endless rounds of everything going on in Gretchen’s head. Plus descriptions. Cut those down and the book could have easily lost 75 pages of nothing. There also wasn’t much tension. Honestly, I was more underwhelmed with it than anything else. I did expect one plot point to be expanded on but that never happened, which is a good thing because I was dreading it, so yay for that. Also the baby goats are cute. 

Looking at other reviews, I am definitely an outlier. This book seems to be pleasing a lot of people but most of it just rubbed me the wrong way. Sadly I’ll have to hope that the next book wins me back because this one didn’t do much for me. C-/D

~Jayne      

AmazonBNKoboBook DepositoryGoogle

For fans of Verity and A Flicker in the Dark, Midnight is the Darkest Hour is a twisted tale of murder, obsessive love, and the beastly urges that lie dormant within us all…even the God-fearing folk of Bottom Springs, Louisiana. In her small hometown, librarian Ruth Cornier has always felt like an outsider, even as her beloved father rains fire-and-brimstone warnings from the pulpit at Holy Fire Baptist. Unfortunately for Ruth, the only things the townspeople fear more than the God and the Devil are the myths that haunt the area, like the story of the Low Man, a vampiric figure said to steal into sinners’ bedrooms and kill them on moonless nights. When a skull is found deep in the swamp next to mysterious carved symbols, Bottom Springs is thrown into uproar—and Ruth realizes only she and Everett, an old friend with a dark past, have the power to comb the town’s secret underbelly in search of true evil.

A dark and powerful novel like fans have come to expect from Ashley Winstead, Midnight is the Darkest Hour is an examination of the ways we’ve come to expect love, religion, and stories to save us, the lengths we have to go to in order to take back power, and the monstrous work of being a girl in this world.

Given how much I enjoy sturm und drang and good old melodrama, I am always surprised that I don’t like gothic novels more, and that Southern gothic novels, specifically, often irritate me. Gothics can feel so self-conscious and self-referential, and adding the Southern atmosphere amps up those qualities. It’s all just too much for me, usually from the start. (It doesn’t help that the typical gothic heroine is relentlessly insipid.)

This novel layers the Southern gothic atmosphere on from the first scene: our protagonist, Ruth, is part of a group of townspeople gathered to hear the sheriff declare the discovery of a human skull that shows signs of violence. There are murmurings about the Low Man (a local mythical boogeyman) and dark happenings, and attention turns to Ruth’s father, the town preacher, who seems to hold more power over the residents of Bottom Springs than any of the other men of standing in the community. He manages to whip everyone up with a rousing speech about demons walking amongst them and Christ’s deliverance.

The story is told in alternating timelines: the present, when Ruth is about 23 and the past, starting when Ruth is 17. I usually enjoy alternating timelines, but this one got confusing for me – Ruth has Dark Secrets that she keeps from her best friend Everett and I found it hard to keep track of just what secrets Ruth was keeping and when she started keeping them.

Teenaged Ruth is extremely shy and quiet, the only child of ultra-strict parents who are central casting archetypes: Preacher and Preacher’s Wife. She has a rebellious streak (well, duh) but it’s pretty well hidden. When she begins to receive attention from an older itinerant worker, Renard, Ruth’s romantic dreams (fueled by her reading of forbidden books, such as Twilight) take flight. But a secret meeting with Renard (in the swamp, the most romantic of rendezvous locations) ends very badly. Which leads to present-day Ruth thinking she knows who that skull might belong to.

The bad date with Renard also leads Ruth to a fast and intense friendship with Everett, who she previously knew simply as the town weirdo. Everett is the son of an alcoholic father; they are poor and Ever is what passes for a goth outcast in Bottom Springs. Ever teaches Ruth about the natural world around her and the wonders of the swamp (!) and on one memorable occasion sucks snake venom out of her inner thigh, which both turns Ruth on and maybe saves her life? I don’t know. Ruth’s terrible parents are disapproving of the relationship but don’t forbid it outright (not believably, given the control they have over Ruth).

From there the book gets kind of crazy with drug-dealing motorcycle gangs, secret occult groups and some vigilante shit that made me uncomfortable. Both Ruth and Ever have secrets, and also neither seem to realize or at least acknowledge the sexual tension between them for YEARS, for reasons that were unclear.

Ruth gets a condescending boyfriend in the form of a sheriff’s deputy. She continues to kowtow to her parents and doesn’t just skip Bottom Springs like she wants to at 18. This made no sense to me and honestly kind of infuriated me, though it was finally explained as being related to her Dark Secret.

As mentioned, the Southern atmosphere is ladled on heavily, with references to colorful local characters: “…Hardy Tullis-you know, that crazy fella that tries to wrestle gators?” and “Old Man Jonas” and a lower-class cadre of actual fishwives, whose husbands are employed by the major business in the area. None of it feels realistic. Nor do the main characters – while the protagonists of the author’s previous books In My Dreams I Hold a Knife and The Last Housewife where flawed but sympathetic, Ruth and Ever feel too much like a collection of cliches to ever come alive. To the degree that Ruth felt real to me, I found myself irritated with her for her unwillingness to just cut her parents off, already. When she finally does, it’s a overcorrection that leads to tragedy.

Speaking of which, the denouement features an actual lynch mob, Ruth doing very stupid things that somehow work out as planned, and an ending I really wasn’t thrilled with.

BIG SPOILER

I rarely give actual bad grades to suspense books, mostly because they tend to hold my attention and I value that highly when grading. Maybe I’ve just read enough of them now that that doesn’t count for as much, or maybe I was just too annoyed with the aspects of Midnight is the Darkest Hour that annoyed me. I’m giving it a D.

Best,
Jennie

AmazonBNKoboBook DepositoryGoogle

The Scattered Pearls Belt is a string of habitats on the edge of a huge galactic empire—a glittering, decadent society rife with corruption. Now, one of its victims—Quynh, a scholar betrayed and left for dead—has come back for her revenge, under the guise of the glamorous and enigmatic Alchemist of Streams and Hills.

Quynh’s path intersects that of Minh, the daughter of one of her oldest enemies, who chafes at her own lack of freedom; and of Hoà, a near-destitute engineer who poses a threat to all Quynh’s careful plans. Quynh finds herself inexorably attracted to Hoà, even as her plans upend the fragile political equilibrium of the Belt.

Falling in love wasn’t part of Quynh’s plans; but will she be able to grasp this second chance at happiness, or will she cling on to a revenge that may well consume her whole?

A poignant, heartwarming romantic space opera about love, revenge and the weight of the past.

CW – Use of State sanctioned torture is mentioned. One character is emotionally abused by a parent.

Dear Aliette de Bodard, 

I’m going to admit that I will think twice about reading another full length novel in the Xuya Universe you’ve invented. It’s magnificently invented, richly described, and it also gives me a headache trying to understand the background parts of it which are not filled in. Each and every book I’ve read set in it drops the reader straight into the action with little worldbuilding to ground us. I feel as if by this point I should be past all that but no, I’m not. It’s as if I’m being lead through a detailed tour of the luxurious cabins and rooms of the Titanic, introduced to a ton of characters – some of whom have more than one name or title, had the details of their clothes described, been told about the rich food and entertainment provided but nothing is mentioned about the icebergs ahead in the ocean and the fact that there aren’t enough lifeboats on board. You know, the important stuff.

As this is a revenge plot story, I also feel I need to understand and connect with the reason for it. But I never got emotionally involved. Everything felt at arm’s length from me. So many of the things that drove Quynh’s and mindship Guts of Sea’s thirst for revenge happened off page and in the past. Other characters think about these events in brief remembrances or tell them dispassionately and this just didn’t get me invested as much as it should have. Yes, this is a space opera about revenge but it’s still about revenge. I needed blood-pumping emotion but got sketchy clinical details.     

There are a ton of characters. Many have interconnecting relationships. Most apparently have extensive past histories. Since I really didn’t come to care about – well, basically any of the characters, I wasn’t on the edge of my seat seeing the revenge plot carried out. Wait, it goes deeper than not caring about them. I actually disliked most of them. The one I didn’t dislike came across as a saintly drip. I know she was supposed to be the “light in the dark” but she came off one note. The children were just plot moppets. The villains were just evil. When they weren’t sulking, the teens were mouthpieces for high flung orations on the future, loyalty, family, personal growth. The main character seeking revenge started strong and mysterious but as she was fleshed out and “redeemed,” she weakened until by the end she seemed as confused about things as I was. Yes, this is a space opera but I need to care about at least some of the people in it.

At last we get to the culmination of the plot. But the denouement of the payoff of revenge dragged on. The characters trying to bring down the baddies kept letting events slip out of their control. They would let the villain monologue or they would appeal to the villain’s better self one last time and – yep, here it is again – get caught, imprisoned, poisoned, taken down, held captive … whatever. Then to rub salt in the wound, the finale fizzled out. I wouldn’t have minded a few explosions or fist fights or something dramatic. And in the end, what do we get? Things swept under the carpet and promises of change that even the characters don’t truly believe in. 

As for the romance, it didn’t work for me either. It’s insta-love and the relationship never felt real to me. Instead it’s merely a means to manipulate Hoa’s and Quynh’s actions. 

So although I got to be immersed in the intricacies of the social hierarchy of this world (yay, loved this bit!) and read endless details about what characters wore, the tea served, the overlay backgrounds, how well each woman’s top knot was smoothed, and about each character’s bots, I felt emotionally cut off about the reason for the revenge, dissatisfied in the romance, disliked most of the characters, and was disappointed in the satisfaction I should have felt when the book ended. Not a good experience. D 

~Jayne

AmazonBNKoboBook DepositoryGoogle