WWW Wednesday – October 6, 2021

WWW Wednesday is hosted by Taking on a World of Words.  She has a brand new baby so I cannot imagine how she finds time to read and blog!

The Three Ws are:

What are you currently reading?

What did you recently finish reading?

What do you think you’ll read next?

I just started Anthem by Deborah Wiles, a YA novel set during the Vietnam War which I am reading for the de Grummond Book Group.  The heroine is searching for her missing brother whose draft card just arrived.

I recently finished The Long Way Home by Robin Pilcher, the fifth book by Rosamunde Pilcher’s eldest son who began writing in his late 40s. I liked one earlier book set during the Edinburgh Fringe festival and read another about a widower but found this disappointing. It follows Claire Barclay from childhood when her mother remarries, providing Clare with a beloved stepfather, Leo, and two unpleasant stepsiblings. Luckily, there is Jonas, who lives on the estate and fills the role of best friend, until he unexpectedly turns on Claire when she is 18. Instead of attending university at St. Andrew’s, Clare travels to escape, ending up in New York, where she marries and works with her husband in the restaurant industry.

Time passes and Claire’s mother dies. When Leo becomes ill, Claire, her husband, and daughter return to Scotland to make sure he can cope. Everything in this book is so signposted that the reader already knows that Jonas has prospered, that he and Claire have unfinished business, and that the evil stepsiblings are anticipating spending their father’s money and were responsible for Jonas’ estrangement from Claire. However, the reunion between Claire and Jonas is unsatisfying and the convoluted transactions involving Leo’s estate are hard to follow, so the book’s resolution (or lack thereof) is frustrating to the reader, although the bad guys do get punished. This was one of my 20 Books of Summer.

I also just finished How to Fail at Flirting by Denise Williams. It is a contemporary romance about an attractive, accomplished multicultural heroine who is an education professor at a university.

Her friends persuade her that she needs a no-commitment one-night stand to forget that her department might get axed by consultants, so Naya heads to a bar and meets Jake who is in town for a wedding. Jake is attractive and kind, which Naya needs after an abusive relationship with a former coworker who wrecked her confidence.

Naya: You are something else.
Jake: Something good?
Naya: Something very good.
Jake: Something you can’t get enough of?
Naya: Something who ends sentences with prepositions.

Of course, there are complications, and the suspense ramps up near the end. It’s the kind of book where the reader starts telling the heroine what to do – sensible things – but she’s not listening! What I liked about this book was that while Naya was dealing with Jake and her evil ex appears and starts threatening her, she is still coping with her stressful job situation, which is more like real life than one usually experiences in this genre. Naya also has to get out of her comfort zone in order to gain stand up for herself.   This was pleasant enough but could have been better.

Next, I plan to read (or listen to) The Night Fire, third in Michael Connelly’s series about Renee Ballard, a detective ostracized by her LAPD peers because she wouldn’t put up with sexual harassment. Luckily, she has unofficially teamed up with Harry Bosch to solve cold cases.  It is smart of Connelly to start developing a new character because Bosch must be over 70 by now!  He fought in Vietnam, after all.  It is a relief to turn to Connelly after some indifferent books as he never disappoints.

I’m also contemplating a book that someone must have recommended: The Young Mrs. Meigs by Elizabeth Corbett, which turned up Monday from a distant library.  I am guessing it was Scott from Furrowed Middlebrow so I expect I will enjoy it.

Big win for the Red Sox over the Yankees in the Wild Card game tonight! Fun to attend with my sister Andrea, who took the train from NYC, my brother; and our friend Cynthia, but then you get home at 1 am and you're too wide awake to go to bed but have an early morning meeting . . .