Darcia Helle's Blog, page 6
November 6, 2022
Review — THE PUMA YEARS: A Memoir by Laura Coleman
In this rapturous memoir, writer and activist Laura Coleman shares the story of her liberating journey in the Amazon jungle, where she fell in love with a magnificent cat who changed her life.
Laura was in her early twenties and directionless when she quit her job to backpack in Bolivia. Fate landed her at a wildlife sanctuary on the edge of the Amazon jungle where she was assigned to a beautiful and complex puma named Wayra. Wide-eyed, inexperienced, and comically terrified, Laura made the scrappy, make-do camp her home. And in Wayra, she made a friend for life.
They weren’t alone, not with over a hundred quirky animals to care for, each lost and hurt in their own way: a pair of suicidal, bra-stealing monkeys, a frustrated parrot desperate to fly, and a pig with a wicked sense of humor. The humans, too, were cause for laughter and tears. There were animal whisperers, committed staff, wildly devoted volunteers, handsome heartbreakers, and a machete-wielding prom queen who carried Laura through. Most of all, there was the jungle—lyrical and alive—and there was Wayra, who would ultimately teach Laura so much about love, healing, and the person she was capable of becoming.
Set against a turbulent and poignant backdrop of deforestation, the illegal pet trade, and forest fires, The Puma Years explores what happens when two desperate creatures in need of rescue find one another.
I have mixed feelings about The Puma Years.
The writing is engaging, and I love what this book stands for. We humans have spent way too many years destroying the environment, and consequently, wildlife’s habitat, on a whim. Our thoughtlessness, hubris, and disrespect has consequences, and Laura Coleman shows us some of them with her memoir.
Here are the “buts.” 
The middle gets muddled with too much repetition, giving me a sort of Groundhog Day experience. The book felt much longer than it is.
Coleman seems to glorify her and her fellow volunteers’ ability to wallow in mud, deal with spiders laying eggs under their skin, lice, rotting food, and generally living like wild things out of a Tarzan movie, all for the sake of a relatively small number of animals. While I have great respect for the work they were doing, this type of activism isn’t sustainable for a number of reasons.
Also, the middle section is mostly about one woman’s intense attachment to one puma, and the lengths she went to in order to stay with that wild cat. Coleman finds herself through a relationship with a puma, which is fine for her, but it doesn’t have much impact on the broader cause. We’re not there out of desperation for a dying planet, or even a general love of wildlife; we’re there for a cat called Wayra.
The last section is where we get to the heart of things such as deforestation, and the need for united organizations with a wider reach. Here, Coleman finally branches out, using what she learned about herself, wildlife, and the environment to do the kind of work we desperately need if we have any hope of saving ourselves.
*I bought the ebook, but wound up mostly listening to this on audio via Scribd. The author narrates herself, which adds a personal touch.*
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November 3, 2022
Review — GROWING UP BIDEN: A Memoir by Valerie Biden Owens
A memoir from Valerie Biden Owens, Joe Biden’s younger sister, trusted confidante and lifelong campaign manager. Valerie, one of the first female campaign managers in United States history, writes of the role of family, faith, and fate in shaping her life, and the power of empathy and kindness in the face of turmoil and division.
Growing Up Biden details Valerie’s decades-long professional career in politics, and the central role she played in her brother’s life as an insightful adviser, an ever-loyal advocate and best friend.
This memoir, full of candor and warmth, brings readers into the Biden home and shares stories from growing up in Delaware as the only daughter of the close-knit Irish Catholic family. Valerie writes in a compelling, relatable way about the challenges she faced breaking through gender barriers, the elusive nature of confidence, and navigating professional responsibilities while raising children.
Reviewing memoirs is always a precarious position, since the story told is personal to the teller, and who am I to judge?
But here we are.
For the most part, I enjoyed this book. I didn’t know much of anything about Valerie Biden at the start. I don’t know a whole lot more now, but the journey was fun nonetheless.
Valerie’s love for family, particularly her love for her brother Joe, comes across with such tenderness and joy that I couldn’t help but smile. And, yes, I felt a little envy. I mean, seriously, this family just oozes love and support.
We don’t get a lot of depth on the more intense and difficult topics, such as Joe’s brain surgery or the loss of his wife and daughter. Of course, those are his stories, not hers, but much of this book feels like it’s “their” story.
We also don’t get a lot of depth on Valerie’s own emotional and personal life. She tends to stick to the surface, giving us lots of information on campaigns and such, while glossing over her relationship with her parents, college, her first marriage, and her difficult pregnancies.
As I read, I couldn’t help but wonder how the two other Biden brothers who aren’t Joe felt about this book. Clearly, Valerie and Joe have a very different, much closer bond. Or, at least, that’s how this book makes it seem.
Overall, a short, easy, feel-good read that offers insight into a strong brother-sister bond.
*I received a free copy from Celadon Books.*
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November 2, 2022
BLACKWATER FALLS: A Detective Anaya Rahman Novel by Ausma Zehanat Khan
Girls from immigrant communities have been disappearing for months in the Colorado town of Blackwater Falls, but the local sheriff is slow to act and the fates of the missing girls largely ignored. At last, the calls for justice become too loud to ignore when the body of a star student and refugee–the Syrian teenager Razan Elkader–is positioned deliberately in a mosque.
Detective Inaya Rahman and Lieutenant Waqas Seif of the Denver Police are recruited to solve Razan’s murder, and quickly uncover a link to other missing and murdered girls. But as Inaya gets closer to the truth, Seif finds ways to obstruct the investigation. Inaya may be drawn to him, but she is wary of his motives: he may be covering up the crimes of their boss, whose connections in Blackwater run deep.
Inaya turns to her female colleagues, attorney Areesha Adams and Detective Catalina Hernandez, for help in finding the truth. The three have bonded through their experiences as members of vulnerable groups and now they must work together to expose the conspiracy behind the murders before another girl disappears.
Delving deep into racial tensions, and police corruption and violence, Blackwater Falls examines a series of crimes within the context of contemporary American politics with compassion and searing insight.
Release Date: November 8, 2022
My ThoughtsBlackwater Falls is the first book in the Detective Inaya Raham series. I think it’ll hold tremendous appeal to readers looking for culturally diverse, complex police procedurals.
While I did enjoy this one, I had some issues with the story’s execution.
We have a large cast of characters and a lot of detail. Much of the detail is the various characters’ backstories, as well as repetitive inner monologues regarding religion and a sort of forbidden instalove thing. The relationship doesn’t actually go anywhere, but we spend a whole lot of time in the two characters’ heads obsessing about it. All this dramatically slowed the pace, muddling the story quite a bit at times.
The cultural theme fascinated me, but I also felt the author’s heavy hand throughout. The information became a little too much in your face, even though I agreed and empathized with the issues. The dialogue and such often felt forced to make a point, rather than the natural flow of conversation.
You need to pay attention because the plot is like an intricate jigsaw puzzle. In the end, the pieces come together in a perfect fit.
*I received an eARC from Minotaur Books, via NetGalley.*
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Review — THE SHADOW HOUSE by Anna Downes
Extraordinarily tense and deliciously mysterious, Anna Downes’s The Shadow House follows one woman’s desperate journey to protect her children at any cost, in a remote place where not everything is as it seems.
A HOUSE WITH DEADLY SECRETS.
A MOTHER WHO’LL RISK EVERYTHING TO BRING THEM TO LIGHT.
Alex, a single mother-of-two, is determined to make a fresh start for her and her children. In an effort to escape her troubled past, she seeks refuge in a rural community. Pine Ridge is idyllic; the surrounding forests are beautiful and the locals welcoming. Mostly.
But Alex finds that she may have disturbed barely hidden secrets in her new home. As a chain of bizarre events is set off, events eerily familiar to those who have lived there for years, Alex realizes that she and her family might be in greater danger than ever before. And that the only way to protect them all is to confront the shadows lurking in Pine Ridge.
I probably need to give up on the whole domestic suspense genre.
This book isn’t terrible. The writing is good. I’m simply sick of—or, more accurately, never connect with—the formulaic themes of this genre.
Yet again, we have two female narrators who are both incapable of handling their lives, both quick to fall apart, both allowing awful men to continue treating them like crap. And this would be okay, if the point of the story was breaking the cycle of abuse. But it’s not.
We have a whole lot of melodrama, within the families, relationships, and neighborhood. It’s Drama Central.
We have a weird kind of instalove connection that makes absolutely no sense, especially given the situation the woman had only recently left.
Pacing drags through most of the book, until the sudden explosion of action at the end.
And the ending is… well, I just couldn’t buy into the way it all played out.
Clearly this isn’t the kind of book for me. But you’re not me, and you might love it.
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Scandal, Murder, Madness — THE RED WIDOW by Sarah Horowitz
Sex, corruption, and power: the rise and fall of the Red Widow of Paris
Paris, 1889: Margeurite Steinheil is a woman with ambition. But having been born into a middle-class family and trapped in a marriage to a failed artist twenty years her senior, she knows her options are limited.
Determined to fashion herself into a new woman, Meg orchestrates a scandalous plan with her most powerful resource: her body. Amid the dazzling glamor, art, and romance of bourgeois Paris, she takes elite men as her lovers, charming her way into the good graces of the rich and powerful. Her ambitions, though, go far beyond becoming the most desirable woman in Paris; at her core, she is a woman determined to conquer French high society. But the game she plays is a perilous one: navigating misogynistic double-standards, public scrutiny, and political intrigue, she is soon vaulted into infamy in the most dangerous way possible.
A real-life femme fatale, Meg influences government positions and resorts to blackmail—and maybe even poisoning—to get her way. Leaving a trail of death and disaster in her wake, she earns the name the “Red Widow” for mysteriously surviving a home invasion that leaves both her husband and mother dead. With the police baffled and the public enraged, Meg breaks every rule in the bourgeois handbook and becomes the most notorious woman in Paris.
An unforgettable true account of sex, scandal, and murder, The Red Widow is the story of a woman determined to rise—at any cost.
I really enjoyed this scandalous story.
Marguerite Steinheil was The Red Widow, a woman whose entire life ambition was to live among the glitz and glamor of late 1800s Parisian society. When her marriage to an artist didn’t quite work out as intended, she used a kind of sexual extortion to make her way up the social ladder.
Then there was murder and, maybe, madness.
The writing is engaging and the content clearly well researched.
*I received a free copy from Sourcebooks.*
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October 31, 2022
Darkly Seductive — A DOWRY OF BLOOD by S. T. Gibson
S.T. Gibson’s sensational novel is the darkly seductive tale of Dracula’s first bride, Constanta.
This is my last love letter to you, though some would call it a confession. . .
Saved from the brink of death by a mysterious stranger, Constanta is transformed from a medieval peasant into a bride fit for an undying king. But when Dracula draws a cunning aristocrat and a starving artist into his web of passion and deceit, Constanta realizes that her beloved is capable of terrible things.
Finding comfort in the arms of her rival consorts, she begins to unravel their husband’s dark secrets. With the lives of everyone she loves on the line, Constanta will have to choose between her own freedom and her love for her husband. But bonds forged by blood can only be broken by death.
Released: October 2022
My ThoughtsWhere to begin?
I LOVED this book. The concept, writing style, plot execution—all of it. I was thoroughly immersed, start to finish.
A Dowry of Blood is written as a love letter / confession to Dracula, by Constanta, his first bride, after she kills him. Through her writing, she recounts the highlights and low points of their life together over the centuries.
S.T. Gibson is a master storyteller. I felt the intensity of the emotions, and I saw the various cities and villages through Constanta’s eyes. The historical aspect is incredibly well done.
This book is described as “darkly seductive,” and it is exactly that. It’s also claustrophobic, uncomfortable, riveting, and in a strange way, relatable. Constanta is a woman with few choices, saved by a man who is her everything, until that love becomes a strangling vice. It’s a story of desire, fear, abuse, solitude, survival, and courage.
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October 30, 2022
Atmospheric Suspense at its Best! THIEF RIVER FALLS by Brian Freeman
Harrowing loss, psychological trauma, and a deadly mystery test the human will to survive in this electrifying novel from award-winning author Brian Freeman.
Lisa Power is a tortured ghost of her former self. The author of a bestselling thriller called Thief River Falls, named after her rural Minnesota hometown, Lisa is secluded in her remote house as she struggles with the loss of her entire family: a series of tragedies she calls the “Dark Star.”
Then a nameless runaway boy shows up at her door with a terrifying story: he’s just escaped death after witnessing a brutal murder – a crime the police want to cover up. Obsessed with the boy’s safety, Lisa resolves to expose this crime, but powerful men in Thief River Falls are desperate to get the boy back, and now they want her too.
Lisa and her young visitor have nowhere to go as the trap closes around them. Still under the strange, unforgiving threat of the Dark Star, Lisa must find a way to save them both, or they’ll become the victims of another shocking tragedy she can’t foresee.
Thief River Falls is dark, moody, atmospheric suspense at its best.
I love the way Brian Freeman so easily places me in a setting with just a few words. His writing is never overly descriptive, but I see it all clearly, and I feel every shift in the atmosphere.
This is a story of murder, conspiracy, loss, grief, and a woman walking on the edge of it all. And that twist! Even if you see it coming, it’s still a gut-punch.
I bought the ebook quite a while back, and since I’m terrible about keeping up with ebooks, I listened to the audiobook via Scribd. The narrator does a brilliant job of capturing the essence of Lisa, our POV character, and the mood of the story.
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October 27, 2022
Atmospheric Gothic Horror — House of Hunger by Alexis Henderson
WANTED – Bloodmaid of exceptional taste. Must have a keen proclivity for life’s finer pleasures. Girls of weak will need not apply.
A young woman is drawn into the upper echelons of a society where blood is power in this dark and enthralling Gothic novel from the author of The Year of the Witching.
Marion Shaw has been raised in the slums, where want and deprivation are all she know. Despite longing to leave the city and its miseries, she has no real hope of escape until the day she spots a peculiar listing in the newspaper seeking a bloodmaid.
Though she knows little about the far north—where wealthy nobles live in luxury and drink the blood of those in their service—Marion applies to the position. In a matter of days, she finds herself the newest bloodmaid at the notorious House of Hunger. There, Marion is swept into a world of dark debauchery. At the center of it all is Countess Lisavet.
The countess, who presides over this hedonistic court, is loved and feared in equal measure. She takes a special interest in Marion. Lisavet is magnetic, and Marion is eager to please her new mistress. But when she discovers that the ancient walls of the House of Hunger hide even older secrets, Marion is thrust into a vicious game of cat and mouse. She’ll need to learn the rules of her new home—and fast—or its halls will soon become her grave.
Published: September 2022
My ThoughtsHouse of Hunger is slow burn, atmospheric, gothic horror that crept under my skin and left scratching, burning scars in its wake.
The content is dark and sensual, filled with decadence and deception, but also a beautiful ache and a need to belong somewhere, to feel wanted and loved and accepted.
This is not a happily-ever-after fairy tale. Despite the fantasy element, the realism is shattering, with the kind of endemic classism and sexism that follows us from one generation to the next.
I love the way Alexis Henderson writes. She pulls me slowly toward the madness, letting me settle into the story, until suddenly I’m surrounded by brutality. This isn’t the kind of horror that slaps you in the face with gore, but the kind that eases you into the darkness, gently asking, What if?
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October 23, 2022
An Explosive Read! THE NEIGHBORHOOD by Matthew Betley
It’s not such a beautiful day in the neighborhood …
From the critically acclaimed author of the Logan West thrillers comes a can’t-miss, brand-new novel that proves Matthew Betley is the modern master of the unputdownable page-turner.
It was supposed to be just another ordinary night…
What happens when your neighborhood harbors a secret so destructive that dangerous men are willing to kill for it?
Welcome to Hidden Refuge, a normal American subdivision full of normal American suburbanites. At least that’s what the citizens thought before men impersonating police officers show up on their doorsteps in the middle of the night. Once the entire community is under siege, so begins a long, dark night that will prove to be anything but ordinary.
But Zack Chambers, suburban family man and programmer by trade, has his own secret. One he had dearly hoped that he’d never need to use again. The deadly ex–CIA agent and trained operative plots to take back the night, doing whatever it takes to protect his neighborhood.
In the face of a small army of trained killers, he’s got his wits, his babysitter, his equally lethal brother, and a ragtag group of neighbors willing to help.
Action-packed and relentless with twists and turns and old scores to be settled, this propulsive and brilliantly plotted can’t-miss thriller brings a shocking end you won’t see coming. Fans of Matthew Betley’s trademark blend of gritty realism and edge-of-your-seat action will be delighted.
Released: August 2022
My ThoughtsThe Neighborhood is an explosive, wild, tense, and intense read!
From the opening pages, we know things in the idyllic neighborhood of Hidden Refuge are about to go horribly wrong. The action is breathless, taking us through the tangled lives of a few residents and someone on the outside whose sociopathic narcissism is about to shatter their world.
Interspersed we have a second timeline, which is our hero’s backstory. Here we gradually put the pieces together, leading us to where the stories collide.
If you like thrillers loaded with action, a complex plot, and lovable characters, this is the book for you.
*I received a free copy from Blackstone Publishing.*
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October 22, 2022
Book Review — THE HACIENDA by Isabel Canas
Mexican Gothic meets Rebecca in this debut supernatural suspense novel, set in the aftermath of the Mexican War of Independence, about a remote house, a sinister haunting, and the woman pulled into their clutches…
During the overthrow of the Mexican government, Beatriz’s father was executed and her home destroyed. When handsome Don Rodolfo Solórzano proposes, Beatriz ignores the rumors surrounding his first wife’s sudden demise, choosing instead to seize the security that his estate in the countryside provides. She will have her own home again, no matter the cost.
But Hacienda San Isidro is not the sanctuary she imagined.
When Rodolfo returns to work in the capital, visions and voices invade Beatriz’s sleep. The weight of invisible eyes follows her every move. Rodolfo’s sister, Juana, scoffs at Beatriz’s fears—but why does she refuse to enter the house at night? Why does the cook burn copal incense at the edge of the kitchen and mark the doorway with strange symbols? What really happened to the first Doña Solórzano?
Beatriz only knows two things for certain: Something is wrong with the hacienda. And no one there will save her.
Desperate for help, she clings to the young priest, Padre Andrés, as an ally. No ordinary priest, Andrés will have to rely on his skills as a witch to fight off the malevolent presence haunting the hacienda and protect the woman for whom he feels a powerful, forbidden attraction. But even he might not be enough to battle the darkness.
Far from a refuge, San Isidro may be Beatriz’s doom.
I’m not sure The Hacienda knows what type of book it wants to be. Or maybe I expected something different from what I got.
The first half of the book is sluggish. We’re given lots of information on the Mexican government and women’s struggles in the aftermath of their country’s War of Independence. While interesting, I didn’t feel emotionally connected to the content, and after a while it became repetitious.
This was a societal commentary exploring the Mexican women’s plight and old customs pitted against Christianity, but definitely not supernatural suspense, and there was nothing gothic about the setting.
Pacing picks up in the second half, where setting shifts to the gothic feel, and we get the promised supernatural aspect and shades of Rebecca. I enjoyed the way this played out. The house almost comes alive and the reasons behind what happens fascinated me.
Still, pacing was problematic, with lengthy inner monologues and enough foreshadowing that not much came as a surprise.
But this is just my cynical opinion. Lots of readers have loved this one, and you might too.
*I received an eARC from the publisher, via NetGalley.*
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