Category Archives: Lilypad-Library

Books, blurbs, and bullrushes

The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton (2018) – BR00189 (2020) – 🐸🐸🐸🐸🐸

The PolyBlog
March 22 2020

Plot or Premise

A woman dies at a party at a country resort, the solution obvious. But she was actually murdered, and a guest must solve the crime or never leave. Because the same day repeats each day, and each day the guest is in the body of someone else. He has seven chances to get it right.

** Note that when I bought the e-book, all the promotional material including the cover said “The 7 Deaths of…”. Now, a few months later, as I go to review it, the title has changed to the 7.5 deaths. I’m keeping the title I had initially. **

What I Liked

The Groundhog Day / time loop is rarely handled well in any genre (TV, movie, books), but Turton not only handles it expertly, he adds in a body jumping element that is brilliant. Each day he learns just a little bit more about the culminating murder, and about the reality he is trapped in, playing detective in a country resort. Some days he is completely new, other days he is locked into exchanges he witnessed the day before and must tweak them to ensure they end the same or differently. Can he prevent the murder? Can he solve the crime? And why does another guest seem to know he’s not himself? And who — or what — is stalking the guests?

What I Didn’t Like

It is a bit confusing at times, given the sheer complexity of the story. 

The Bottom Line

Expertly done — time jumps, loops, and body-hopping, oh my!

Murder at Hawthorn Cottage by Betty Rowlands (2018) – BR00188 (2020) – 🐸🐸🐸🐸⚪

The PolyBlog
March 21 2020

Plot or Premise

A mystery writer moves to the country to find some peace and quiet in her life to do some writing.

What I Liked

The feel is very much like an Agatha Christie-style small village with priests, neighbours and a local mystery, with a body dropping shortly after things get settled.

What I Didn’t Like

The romance side doesn’t work, as it’s hard to get a feel for the lead character’s age…one minute she seems like a woman in her late 50s and the next she seems like a girl in her early 20s. Worldly, calm, centred and then naïve, unsure, flighty. The ex and her son seem superfluous, and some of the other characters are a bit superficial with their secrets which are wildly apparent long before they are “revealed”. She isn’t as bumbling as, say, Stephanie Plum, but she’s hardly Miss Marple either, or even Jessica Fletcher. But these are minor complaints for a rich world and sense of Christie-like mystery.

The Bottom Line

Not quite Christie but I’ll read more in the series.

Note that the book was originally published as A Little Gentle Sleuthing (1990).

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald (1925) – BR00187 (2020) – 🐸🐸🐸⚪⚪

The PolyBlog
March 20 2020

Plot or Premise

A man observes the comings and goings of a 1920s party host who is both his neighbour and a paramour of his cousin. 

What I Liked

It is weird to go back and read this book some 35 years after high school. I remember thinking it was this glamourous world of parties and high society, where people really did act differently from the common folk. As an adult, I see it for what it is — a portrayal of a shallow summer, without substance or value, leading to an inevitable tragedy of people over-estimating their self-importance and narcissism. Beautifully written, harshly portrayed as Nick Carroway observes the desires of Jay Gatsby for a married Daisy Buchanan, the woman he loved but lost years before. All of the summer reads like life without consequences, an embracing of hedonism and simple pleasures, but without anyone asking if it is really what they want or just what they think they want.

What I Didn’t Like

I find it intriguing that my young self saw it as a tragedy, but without particular indictment of the lifestyle of the secondary characters. They seemed more cliché or farce than real at the time, but now it just seems simply depressing across the board. I didn’t care about any character anywhere in the book, not even Nick, who is mostly a blank slate.

The Bottom Line

Over-rated as a classic.

The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck by Mark Manson (2016) – BR00186 (2020) – 🐸🐸⚪⚪⚪

The PolyBlog
March 20 2020

Plot or Premise

This is a self-help guide to reducing your stress levels by choosing to care only about those things that are important to you.

What I Liked

I found this a very odd book to read. In almost every chapter, I found myself disagreeing with his evidence and examples, often thinking they proved the opposite of what he was trying to use them to prove, yet at the same time agreeing with some of the premises. It felt more like he had some solid ideas throughout, just not very well developed. Like, for instance, that we have limited bandwidth to care about things and therefore we should not care about a lot of unimportant stuff (hence the title), finding problems you like to solve (i.e., what you love), prioritizing better values for ourselves in line with what we love, and certainty being an enemy of growth (so you should risk failure more).

What I Didn’t Like

Most of his examples are Millenial-style rants, not actual evidence to support his arguments, and it is a lot of work to come to the familiar conclusion “don’t sweat the small stuff and it is all small stuff”, except with swearing.

The Bottom Line

Not worth reading but at least I got a reading badge for it.

Keys to the Demon Prison by Brandon Mull (2010) – BR00185 (2020) – 🐸🐸🐸🐸⚪

The PolyBlog
March 14 2020

Plot or Premise

Almost three separate stories together — an opening reset of who is on which team, separate adventures for Kendra and Seth, and then a merged final battle.

What I Liked

Seth’s story is almost readable now, although I still feel most of the time it could have simply been one kid’s story, not separate ones for Kendra and Seth. I like his adventure to retrieve a magical sword, and the final magical battle is decent.

What I Didn’t Like

The final battle seems less intense than the previous one at Fablehaven with the dark plague. Almost “battle-lite” rather than the final battle. The final “solution” is a bit simplistic, more trick than strategic, and a bit of a let-down. And some of the threads of the story, particularly with Seth, are left unresolved.

The Bottom Line

The final battle isn’t as big as expected.