Best Review Contest (for Spring 2024)

[SRC Moderator, Moderator]

This is the thread where you can submit reviews for the Best Review contest. The thread is open for submissions and will close at Midnight EST on February 15, 2024. Voting will start the next day and run until the end of the GR day on February 29th. The person whose review gets the most votes will have the opportunity to design a 20 point task for the Fall Challenge.

To be eligible for this task opportunity you must have achieved at least 100 points on the Winter 2023 Challenge Readerboard by midnight Eastern Time on February 14, 2024. Only one task per person per challenge.

Just a reminder that each person can only submit one review - but you can make edits to your review up until the end. The review does not have to be any particular length and doesn't have to be a positive one (i.e. you can choose to review a book you didn't like).
Please include your Readerboard Name.

PLEASE DO NOT comment on people's reviews in this thread - this is for submissions only. You will be able to comment when voting begins.

SPOILER ALERT! These reviews may include spoilers.

[Lucy-Bookworm, Moderator]

I'd like to submit my review for: The Sinister Booksellers of Bath:
Review Here

The book is set in a slightly alternative version of Bath (& a bit of London) in 1983, just before the Winter Solstice. It follows on a few months after the end of the first book in the series, which really needs to be read in order to appreciate the nuances of this one.

18 year old Susan Arkshaw is the unique offspring of a mortal and an ancient King/God. She knows that she has some magical abilities but is not interested in that side of her life and is trying to keep her human life as “normal” as possible. She has moved to London to attend art school and limits the amount of time that she spends with her cousins in the bookseller community. (The booksellers are an extended family of magical beings who police the mythic and legendary Old World when it intrudes on the modern world, in addition to running several bookshops.)

When she returns home to visit her mother who lives near Bath, she once again becomes entangled in the world of the booksellers. The story begins with a scrap of a magical map which draws Merlin into another place, one that exists outside of our time. Susan is brought in to develop an alternative map to provide a second entrance into that place in order to retrieve Merlin – it works, but that is just the start as it soon becomes clear that Vivien, Merlin and Susan must work together again to fight against some magical world beings who are fixated on Susan – they must figure out why Susan is the target of this attack and how to save her.

The story was interesting, fast-paced and believable, Susan, Vivian & Merlin work well together, and all of the characters are well depicted and developed appropriately as the story progresses. Susan is developing her magical skills so fast that she scares herself, and she is still strangely naïve, but I do like her as a protagonist. It will be interesting to see what happens next …

I enjoyed the alternative world created – it was vividly described & very imaginable. Having lived through the 1980’s, it’s easy to picture the time and place, and the magic is layered over this, just slightly offset from “normal” and drawing on a mixture of British history and mythology.
I also liked the way that the author uses existing places and objects as gateways into the “old world” – the Golden Boy of Pye Corner (including the detail that it is wood covered in gold); the “Great Fire” (an entity whose power is described as being ignited in London in 1666 and resurrected again in the Blitz in 1941/41 but has laid dormant ever since);

The historical/architectural detail is excellent. We have a sword that once belonged to King Arthur – but not Excalibur, the lesser known sword of Peace known as Clarent - alongside statues made of Purbeck marble which is a unique stone only available in Dorset & which contains the fossilised remains of a freshwater snail. The entity of Sulis Minerva is the deity that really was once worshipped at the thermal spring in Bath, her name appearing in inscriptions discovered in the vicinity of Bath.

Fantasy is not my usual genre but I thoroughly enjoyed this (and the previous one). I listened to the audiobook read by Marisa Calin and the narrator did an excellent job of bringing the story to life with her voice creating atmosphere remarkably well and I think my experience of the book was enhanced by her.

[Heather(Gibby)]

My Review for Keeping the House

I had picked this book up years ago, but had put off reading it because I had read some bad reviews.

However after finally picking it up and reading it I found I quite enjoyed it.

The story alternates between the Mikelson family starting in the late 1800's and Dolly a newly married housewife in 1950. The story proceeds through the ages with the Mikelson family until Dolly meets up with their grandson JJ.

At the center of the all the family drama is the great Mikelson Manor which is rumored to have been built on cursed land. The Mikelson family is by far the wealthiest family in town, but their secrets and secret longings ultimately bring them down.

Dolly is finding that marriage and her role of homemaker are not as fulfilling as she had dreamed of, and is pulled towards the abandoned old Mikelson manor, dreaming of the romance and adventure that it could bring to her life.

Each chapter has an amusing quote from old magazines and home economics texts which make me really glad I was not a housewife in the 1950"s.