The Friday Harbor Series, or Watching an Author Experiment

I read Lisa Kleypas's Christmas Eve at Friday Harbor over the holidays and enjoyed it. It was a fairly typical contemporary romance, and the male protagonist had two brothers who were just as cynical about love as he was, a dead giveaway for a trilogy, and since I thought the youngest brother was especially interesting, I sought out the other books.

Rainshadow Road is the second in the series, about the middle brother and a glass artist he falls in love with. Kleypas veered away from the contemporary romance category to add touches of magic realism: Lucy's glass creations come to life when she feels a strong emotion, and Sam, a vintner, could talk to plants. It was fine, and I liked the complicated relationship Lucy had with her family (although problems were resolved too quickly), but I would have appreciated more of a commitment to the magic realism, one of my favorite genres.

Maybe the third book, Dream Lake, would do more? Nope -- this one was a straight-up ghost story. Alex, the brother that intrigued me, is haunted by a ghost who needs to resolve a mistake from his past involving the love of his live, conveniently a relative of the chef Alex falls in love with (who can manipulate emotions somewhat with her cooking, like a lesser Tita from Como agua para chocolate). Unfortunately, the ghost's story (har) took away from the character development I wanted to see with Alex.

Not content to stop with a trilogy around the three brothers, Kleypas wrote a fourth novel, this one a paranormal romance. Justine, Zoe's employer, is a witch who learns she was long ago cursed to never find love; Jason is a tech bro (ugh) with no soul ( ... ) looking for a way to solve his predicament. This was the weakest of the lot, because the two fell in love way too quickly (although I appreciated the way they communicated straighforwardly) and because the central conflict didn't make a whole lot of sense. The curse and its attendant reversal and correction was needlessly complicated, and Jason lacking a soul didn't seem to matter too much in the end. For one thing, he could live without a soul, and make moral (or not) decisions; we were told there would be no afterlife for him without one, but no one seemed too concerned about that.

Kleypas has said she is contemplating a fifth novel in the series, presumably about Jason's assistant Priscilla who comes from a family of witches whose husbands all die early deaths. I look forward to seeing what sub-genre she tackles next!

Book Round-Up

Letter Perfect: the Marvelous History of our Alphabet from A-Z by David Sacks: A fascinating book that traces the evolution of the alphabet from the earliest carvings by Semitic soldiers or workers in Egypt to the latest uses in 21st century culture, going letter by letter. Full of lots of fun trivia.

Grange House by Sarah Blake: A critically-acclaimed gothic novel that left me cold, mainly because the protagonist was annoying. She claimed to want to discover the tragic secrets of the titular House, but every time someone tried to talk to her, she'd interrupt him, cut her off, or literally turn her back; in fact, I half expected her to stick her fingers in her ears and go "la la la I can't hear you."

A Fatal Grace by Louise Penny: The second novel in the highly regarded Inspector Gamache series, and the second one I read (the first one being the 3rd; oops). I can see why readers and critics love her novels, at least the first few; they are smarter and more complex than most mystery series, but there is a secondary plotline that runs through the whole series that I find alternately boring and depressing, which might keep me from reading the rest.

Spring Earrings

Long delicate chains of Swarovski crystals:

A stretch bracelet made of pastel glass spacer beads:

(It reminds me of those candy necklaces from my childhood.)

A few free beads and charm I got with a purchase:

I'm not actually Irish, though, nor do I have a particular attachment to St. Patrick. Perhaps I'll give it to someone who is/does.