The casino was lit up with neon, chandeliers, and the sparkle of the slot machines. Jule walked past men in sports jerseys, pensioners, party girls, and a large group of librarians wearing conference badges.
When you love the first book of a trilogy, but by the last you're meh.
(Aside: How much of this book--nay, my life--have I spent "trying not to cry"? When I think of the wasted effort!)
In the follow up to Unraveling, teenager Janelle Tenner is once again called upon to race a clock to prevent deaths. I was less into this version and annoyed by the romance angle, which felt thin and inorganic. Upside: Janelle is a powerful badass, taking out adult men with her weapons and even her bare hands.
Thank goodness this was a compelling read because I had only a few days to finish it before it was due back at NYPL. I came home from the Zine Librarians unConference to five books ready to be picked up, three of them two-week loans. Now I have just over a week to finish the other two. Never mind, they were both renewable. Phew!
So yeah, Orphan Train shares parallel stories of two quasi-orphans making their way through harsh adoption/foster conditions about eighty years apart. The elder, an Irish immigrant at a time when the Irish were viewed with open hostility in the US, is taken to the Midwest via orphan train in the 1920s after a fire claims her family. In the name of Christian goodness, children were given away, often to be used as servants. Flash forward to the early 21st century and you get foster parents paid to "care" for a child they seem to hate.
This first installment in the Soup Lover's Mystery series introduces us to Lucky Jamieson, who has just returned to Vermont in the wake of her parents' death in a car accident. She has just taken charge of their restaurant and is already in danger of losing it, due to her cook being charged with murder and a subsequent falling off of business, and also some money woes that go unresolved, presumably to be revisited later in the series.
