Thief's Mark by Carla Neggers, 2017

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on Goodreads 

As a young boy, Oliver York witnessed the murder of his wealthy parents in their London apartment. The killers kidnapped him and held him in an isolated Scottish ruin, but he escaped, thwarting their plans for ransom. Now, after thirty years on the run, one of the two men Oliver identified as his tormentors may have surfaced.

Emma Sharpe and Colin Donovan are enjoying the final day of their Irish honeymoon when a break-in at the home of Emma's grandfather, private art detective Wendell Sharpe, points to Oliver. The Sharpes have a complicated relationship with the likable, reclusive Englishman, an expert in Celtic mythology and international art thief who taunted Wendell for years. Emma and Colin postpone meetings in London with their elite FBI team and head straight to Oliver. But when they arrive at York's country home, a man is dead and Oliver has vanished.

As the danger mounts, new questions arise about Oliver's account of his boyhood trauma. Do Emma and Colin dare trust him? With the trail leading beyond Oliver's small village to Ireland, Scotland and their own turf in the US, the stakes are high, and Emma and Colin must unravel the decades-old tangle of secrets and lies before a killer strikes again.

(336 pages)

I know I've said this before, but I'm a huge murder mystery fan. Agatha Christie is my gold standard, but I'm always open to trying out new murder writers. That's why I jumped at the offer to participate in a TLC tour for Carla Neggers's Thief's Mark.

The one downside to starting my exploration of Neggers's books with Thief's Mark, however, is that it's actually the seventh book in the "Sharpe and Donovan" series. For you the review reader, this means that I need to warn you now: there are definitely going to be some spoilers for the earlier books in the series. For me as the reviewer, it means that my experience of the book was a little more . . . well, muddled than it was probably intended to be.

Because there are a huge amount of characters in Thief's Mark, not all of whom seem strictly necessary. I can tell that a lot of groundwork was laid in this story universe in the previous books, and that the author and readers have become indoctrinated and invested into all these different people/agencies, but as an outsider to the series I mainly just found them confusing. There were several times when I had to pause and do some calculations to figure out who a minor character was. Also, it's a very international book–set primarily in England and Ireland with characters from both of those countries as well as from America–but I didn't feel like Neggers did a good job separating out the different dialects. I kept forgetting which characters were supposed to have which accents, because they all just sounded American in my head. The author's American-ness probably didn't help with this.

As for the actual mystery, it's a very intriguing one (though I still don't quite understand the motive as it was explained in the end). And I did like the main characters who were investigating it. Two of them are on their honeymoon, which could have resulted in some icky scenes but was handled very tastefully. The third main investigator/suspect, Henrietta, actually provides the most sensual material in the book: she has one or two fairly-explicit daydreams about being in bed with one of the male main characters. I personally did not feel the need to read that.

As murder mysteries go, Thief's Mark is a very good one. It's definitely much more plot- and mystery-focused than most of the Christian murder mysteries I usually find myself reading (which often devolve into long character studies), so I may well pick up more of Neggers's books in the future. But I have to say that Agatha Christie is still, forever and always, my favorite crime writer.

Disclaimer: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher in order to participate in a TLC tour.

1,001 Ways to Slow Down by Barbara Ann Kipfer, 2017

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on National Geographic 

This irresistible list book from National Geographic provides lighthearted quick hits of inspiration for those of us who feel overwhelmed--which is to say, all of us. Musings, activity suggestions, and illuminating quotes are paired with whimsical art on themes such as living in the moment, achieving balance, relieving stress, developing patience, and appreciating the world around us. "Slow living" sidebars, such as "Foods to Cook Slowly" and "Things to Do the Old-Fashioned Way," are interspersed throughout the book.

(320 pages)

What a nice book this is.

It's not a novel, but instead a collection of 1,001 gentle tips for slowing down and enjoying life.

1,001 Ways to Slow Down is a gorgeous book in and of itself, a thick hard-bound square book with a luxuriously textured dust jacket. Every two-page layout of the book is bordered by a different pretty design (usually either flowers or loops), and the color of the numbers above each tip correlates with the color of the border. This creates a very nice effect, though a slightly confusing one at first: I thought there was some organizational reason for the different colored numbers, but it turned out they were just decorative.

As for the tips themselves, I thought most of them were wonderful. There were a few that didn't apply to me, about doing things with your kids or having relations with your partner, but most of them were directly applicable to my life. Flipping through them again, here are a few favorites that stick out:

#405: Read long, slow, calming, class books.

#481: Ask yourself, "What bad thing will happen if I don't keep moving and doing? Can I just be for a while?"

#768: Read gravestones. Stories are there to be discovered.

Scattered between the 1,001 entries are also beautifully-illustrated quotes about slowing down/finding peace, and a handful of helpful lists (foods that need to be cooked slowly, ways to spend time outside, ways to productively slow down at work, etc.). The entire vibe of the book makes me think it's geared toward millenials, with all its description of "me time," adult coloring books and yoga, but I think its messages are still good and not just catering to the hip crowd. For me, reading 1,001 Ways to Slow Down was a much-needed reminder to slow down and appreciate the present without agitating about my future. I will definitely keep my copy of the book, and will flip through it for inspiration when I start to feel overwhelmed by the stressors in my life.

Disclaimer: This is an Amazon affiliate link, and I received a complimentary copy of this novel for the purpose of participating in a TLC Book Tour.

On the Sickle's Edge by Neville D. Frankel, 2017

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on publisher's site  

What we cannot keep. What we cannot lose.
A sweeping masterwork of love and loss, secrets and survival, On the Sickle's Edge is told through the voices of three characters who lay bare their family's saga: the endearing, scrappy South-African born Lena, transported to Latvia and later trapped in the USSR; her granddaughter Darya, a true Communist whose growing disillusionment with Soviet ideology places her family at mortal risk; and Steven, a painter from Boston who inadvertently stumbles into the tangled web of his family's past. Against the roiling backdrop of twentieth-century Russia and Eastern Europe, the novel delivers equal parts historical drama, political thriller and poignant love story.
(432 pages)

Okay, first, full disclosure: there is no way on earth that I would have finished reading On the Sickle's Edge if it weren't for the fact that I hadn't promised to review it for a TLC book tour. As it is, I wound up skipping in the second half. It's not that the book is poorly written, because it actually grabs the attention very well for an over 400-page historical novel. I've always been fascinated by the horrors of life under the USSR regime (in part because they're given far too little attention in literature due to WWII), and the actual story of this increasingly-growing Jewish family hiding in plain sight in Moscow is gripping and very meaningful for me to read. My favorite point-of-view was Lena's, because she had the most dramatic and fascinating life of all three of the main characters. Also, most of the drama Darya and Steven faced was self-inflicted; Lena was the true innocent of the story, the girl whose life was ripped away from her by the cruelty of the USSR dictatorship.

So . . . what happened? Why did I almost put On the Sickle's Edge down, and why did I finish it with a sour taste in my mouth? I think a lot of my distaste for the book boils down to the fact that it's an adult novel, and I very much prefer middle-grade and young-adult books. I forgot, in my excitement about this book's topic, that so many fictional adult books have way more graphic content than I'm used to. And I'm not talking about violence–there was that too, of course, but that was to be expected. No, I'm talking about sex. For one thing, all three characters are way to easy about it; Steven is particularly promiscuous. I could still mostly forgive the book for its characters' loose morals, excusing them away as accurate depictions of the way people in their situations behaved, but what I can't be okay with are the graphic sex scenes (including ones between distant cousins–still kind of ew!) that are sprinkled into the text. I have no desire to read content like that, so I did my best to skip over them and plow through in honor of my pledge to review the book. When the author started throwing important dialogue pieces into the middle of those scenes, though, that's when I got really frustrated and started skipping pages to just get through the book already. There's some horrible stuff in there, including several times where Darya's husband clearly rapes her, and I just don't want to read that!

Call me a baby if you want, but that's how I feel. I don't have much more to say about the book, besides the fact that it's so complex and historically significant that more liberal readers than I will probably love it. Oh, and also that Darya's husband was so evil I actually found him very unrealistic. Were there men like him in the USSR? Maybe, but it seems strange that he never showed even the slightest sign of humanity or weakness–ever.

Maybe I'm just not the right audience for this book, so maybe you will like it more than I did. If you've read the description, and what I've described doesn't turn you off, then try On the Sickle's Edge for yourself. Be sure to comment below with your thoughts once you've finished it!

Disclaimer: I received a complimentary copy of this novel for the purpose of participating in a TLC Book Tour.