Rachel Kovaciny's Blog, page 19

"Murder at Half Moon Gate" by Andrea Penrose

Another winner!  I liked this one even better than the first book in the series, Murder on Black Swan Lane .  I really, really am enjoying these books. 
In this one, Charlotte Sloane is in the process of moving to a house in a better part of London.  Not a great part, but a bit safer and more respectable, which she wants not for her own sake, but for Raven and Hawk, the two street urchins she has taken in as her wards.  The Earl of Wrexford stumbles across another dead body, and before they know i...

"The Bell Family" by Noel Streatfeild

This was such a charming book to read aloud to my kids!  The Bell family live in London.  In the shabby but respectable part.  Alex Bell is an optimistic, kind, firm clergyman.  His wife Cathy is sensible, practical, but also joyful and sweet.  Their oldest son Paul wants to be a doctor but worries he should choose a more profitable career path so he could help his family financially before long.  Jane is a talented dancer who yearns for good dancing lessons.  Ginnie is a free spirit who gets in...

"Ride the River" by Louis L'Amour

This Sackett book is mostly from the point of view of Echo Sackett, a sixteen-year-old girl on a mission: she needs to collect a sizable inheritance left her by the descendants of a friend of her forebear Kin Sackett.  She has to go to Philadelphia to get it, and on the way home to the mountains of Tennessee, she's waylaid repeatedly by rogues cutthroats, and thugs determined to steal her money.  But Echo is a Sackett, and she has a handy guy named Dorian Chantry and another called Archie along ...

"Tolkien and C. S. Lewis: The Gift of Friendship" by Colin Duriez

Although it took me several months to finish reading this book, that is not because it was boring.  Rather, other books kept shoving their way in front of it.  Library books coming due, ARCs needing to be read before release day, and so on.  Now that my kids are done with school, I have had a lot more time for reading, and I finally finished this!
Duriez begins the book with biographical accounts of J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis from childhood until they met.  He then shows how their personali...

Top Ten Tuesday: Gimme, Gimme, Gimme

This week's Top Ten Tuesday prompt from That Artsy Reader Girl is "things that make me instantly want to read a book."

I thought it was going to be hard to come up with ten things that I gravitate toward, but it turned out to be really easy!  I discovered I'm actually quite predictable when it comes to what will draw me to a book.  
1. It's a mystery.  Amateur detectives, police detectives, private investigators -- I love them all.  I want to know what happened and whodunnit, and I would prefer no...

"A Deed of Dreadful Note" by Patricia Meredith

Not only is this a rousingly good mystery in its own right, but this book has made me aware of a classic mystery author I can't wait to try:  Anna Katharine Green.  I've done a bit of looking into her and her books, thanks to this one, and I expect to try her mysteries soon!
A Deed of Dreadful Note is a fictional account of how Anna Katharine Green could possibly have gotten her ideas for the first mystery she ever wrote, The Leavenworth Case.  Anna's father is a lawyer who represents a young wom...

"Hummingbird" by Natalie Lloyd

Natalie Lloyd's books continue to enchant and delight me.  And make me cry.  This one definitely made me cry multiple times toward the end -- but not over sad things!  Like with most books (and movies), what made me cry was some really, really good stuff happening against the odds that it wouldn't.
Like, not to spoil the ending or anything, but man, it is GOOD.  
Olive has "brittle bone disease," or osteogenesis imperfecta.  Because she's had so many broken bones all through her childhood, she's a...

"A Midsummer Night's Dream: Modern English Edition" (Manga Classics) by William Shakespeare (original story), Crystal S. Chan (story adaptation), Michael Barltrop (modern English adaptation), and Po Tse (art)

You know what?  I am just going to have to accept the fact that I really don't enjoy the story of A Midsummer Night's Dream.  I get very frustrated with every single character at various points, except Helena.  I actively dislike most of them, actually.  And I don't like Helena enough to want to suffer through the rest of the story just for her.  Unless it's the 1935 movie version, which I enjoy enough for the cast to watch it once in a great while.
However, the artwork is really fun and cute in ...

"Murder on Black Swan Lane" by Andrea Penrose

These days, I almost never read a book without having read someone's review of it that made me go, "I want to read that!" Or without it being by an author I enjoy.  So this was kind of a treat, in that way, because I really knew nothing about it except that an Instagram friend thought I would like it.  When I ordered a book box from her Etsy shop, this is the book she chose for me, knowing I love mysteries and historical fiction.  And she was right!  I really, really enjoyed this book!  In fact,...

"Yours, Constance" by Emily Hayse

Set in the Roaring Twenties and tinged with magic, Your, Constance is an atmospheric treat.  Constance Hanover seeks solace at dazzling, deafening parties for the pain of having lost her sister in a tragic accident.  There, she meets Ella Whittington, sixteen-year-old heiress with her own sad past to haunt her.  Ella befriends Constance despite the latter's tendency to try to mentor, mother, reprimand, counsel, and boss her... all in nice ways, but I did wonder once in a while if Ella wasn't goi...