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A Caribbean Mystery, Part 1: Compare and contrast, setup and payoff
The Summer of Scandal continues with perhaps one of my favorite Miss Marple stories: A Caribbean Mystery. This one has it all – an exotic resort setting, a unique Marple challenge, and so many rich people behaving so, so badly. Affairs? Got ‘em (multiple!). Gossip? Got it. And it wouldn’t be a Miss Marple book…
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TCO Reviews: Thief Liar Lady by D. L. Soria
The Summer of Scandal continues, and in this review we’re taking the downstairs to the top of the house. I love a good fairy tale retelling, and I love a good con, so I was extremely excited to get a gift copy of Thief Liar Lady to read. (Thanks to NetGalley and Ballantine!) The story…
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TCO Reviews: A Most Agreeable Murder
I was lucky enough to find not just books but ARCS for my Summer of Scandal! For this week’s edition of “rich people behaving badly”, we’re rewinding to the Regency era with A Most Agreeable Murder by Julia Seales. (Thanks to Netgalley and Random House for the gift copy!) I was so excited to sit…
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Exploring voice and tension in Murder Your Employer
Growing up, A Series of Unfortunate Events was probably my second-favorite series. Every time a new entry came out, I’d try to get my hands on a copy at our Costco run, racing through the pages to see if I could finish even before we made it through the store. It was great to find…
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TCO Reviews: The Wishing Game by Meg Shaffer
Between my epistolary reading challenge and my love for books, I’ve been reading a lot of “books about books” lately. (So much so that I’ve added a new tag just to track all my metafictional adventures.) It should come as no surprise, then, that I’ve been excited to read Meg Shaffer’s The Wishing Game since…
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The Three Dahlias: an adventure for Golden Age mystery-lovers
I have this hypothesis that many modern “mystery” novels are actually adventures with a mystery skin on top. It may just be that I have a stricter definition of “mystery” than others, but in my opinion, a true mystery must be clued up by the author. An adventure, on the other hand, can involve as…
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TCO Reviews: The Book that Wouldn’t Burn by Mark Lawrence
There is nothing more tantalizing to a reader than a book about a library. The setting – shelves on shelves of endless books, towering to the ceiling – is like a dream come true. If you throw a little adventure and fantasy to the mix, as Mark Lawrence promises in The Book that Wouldn’t Burn,…
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Interior Chinatown as a dreamy introspective epistolary
This epistolary challenge has led me to really push my reading boundaries, even within a genre I love. I kicked the year off with Piranesi, a haunting and creative story told through journal entries – and a long-overdue read. And this month, I’ve had the pleasure to read Interior Chinatown, a novel written as a…
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TCO Reviews: Perilous Times by Thomas D. Lee
It feels like the Knights of the Round Table are having a bit of a moment. I can think of at least five Arthurian fantasy revivals published in the last few years. And as a mythology retelling nerd, I’m loving the resurgence – and all the modern takes. Whether exploring a smaller part of the…
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The Mirror Crack’d from Side to Side, Part 2: balancing texture, theme, and plot
And so we come to the adaptation of The Mirror Crack’d from Side to Side. Having watched two in quick succession, I now understand why I had underestimated the value of the novel. Neither the BBC nor iTV was able to capture the magic of the original well. Both focus almost exclusively on the plot,…