The Alice Network

Title: The Alice Network
Author: Kate Quinn
Published: June 6th 2017 by William Morrow Paperbacks
Format: Paperback, 503 pages
Genre: Historical Fiction

Usually, when you come across a novel like this, you find a single-story line and a character or two that appeals to you - it is a mark of a brilliant book when each page keeps the reader engaged. Not one plot point is any less mesmerizing than the next, or a single character appeals more than another. From start to finish, this book held me and would not let go until the last page.

Charlotte "Charlie" St. Clair, a 1947 Bennington college student with “a little problem” her French mother has decided will be best handled with a little vacation so she can return with a brighter future. Charlie has other plans - she wants to find Rose, her beloved cousin that went away and never returned. This is where Eve Gardiner and her story comes in and leads the reader down the rabbit hole that was once known as the Alice Network and the exploits of the courageous women of 1915 WWI takes the reader in an unexpected direction.

As the chapters unfold, you can see how Charlie and Eve begin to transform while intermeshing the past and what life was like under watchful eyes. Through hope and tragedy, the ghosts of the past resurface. Yet, they are stronger than their circumstances, and between the two of them, the wrongs will be righted, leaving the truths laid bare.

One Poison Pie

Title: One Poison Pie
Author: Lynn Cahoon
Published: Kensington Books January 26, 2021
Format: Kindle, 272 pages
Genre: Cozy Mystery
Source: My thanks to Netgalley and the Publisher for an opportunity to read an advanced copy of this book.
Series: Kitchen Witch Mysteries #1

The book was wasted on me. Chili Cauldron Curse, the prequel novella to jumpstart this series, was full of spells, covens, and a family legacy. One Poison Pie, on the other hand, has no magic, just a woman, Mia Malone, trying to start a cooking school in a town that has magic running through it, but a witch who doesn’t call on it to solve a murder or to keep herself safe. A disappointing book from start to finish.

Mia is a kitchen witch who has decided to start over in Magic Springs, Idaho. With her grandmother’s support and the sister of Mia’s ex-fiancé to help, she is determined to get her cooking school and food delivery business off the ground. What she didn’t plan for was the body of the town mimesis in the dining room of her first catering job.

There are a couple of plot confusions, but once you get past them and the lack of magic in the book that is supposed to have magic as the central theme the book lays flat. I can’t say there is any one character I could depend on to get me over the boring parts, so for me, this will be a miss.

The Broken Spine

Title: The Broken Spine
Author: Dorothy St. James
Published: January 19th 2021 by Berkley Books
Format: eBook, Hardcover, 320 pages
Genre: Cozy Mystery
Source: My thanks to Netgalley and the Publisher for an opportunity to read an advanced copy of this book.
Series: Beloved Bookroom Mystery #1

First in a new series, finds Assistant Librarian Trudell Beckett flummoxed when her beloved Cypress, S.C., library is transforming into a “bookless” library where patrons can download books or borrow tablets. For Tru and her faithful patrons, this won’t work, they want to feel a book. In a clandestine mission, she decides to start moving select books to a secret library in the basement. All is going well until town councilman Duggar Hargrove, who was behind the library change, is found dead.

Now with time running out before all the remaining books are moved to the town dump, Tru and her band of friends, including a high school nemesis turned police detective, must find out what is really behind the library’s transformation and as a rotating group of possible suspects floats to the top, she finds herself in a delicate balance.

The Broken Spine may be a new series, but the librarian saving the day, complete with a cranky Head Librarian, is redundant and too reminiscent of Jenn McKinley’s Library Lovers Mysteries. The small town with inhabitants as poor as church mice that can warrant their own detective never sits well with me, and the rest of the characters being single dimensional is leading me to think that this series will be a pass.

The Arctic Fury

Title: The Arctic Fury
Author: Greer Macallister
Published: December 1st 2020 by Sourcebooks Landmark
Format: eBook, Paperback, 300 pages
Genre: Historical Ficton

Told in a back-and-forth style, the reader is taken on a historical adventure based on real events surrounding the Franklin Expedition. Virginia Reeves, who had lead pioneers across the Sierra’s, has been asked to lead twelve women to discover what had happened to this group of missing men of the Erebus and the Terror. Lady Jane Franklin wants this expedition to be covert and her name not mentioned but has strong opinions regarding who is to be part of the enterprise, leaving Virginia with a group ill-prepared for what lay ahead.

As the women set out and the horrors revealed, Virginia must fight her internal demons while keeping the group focused. As each woman exposes their strengths and deficits, they slowly decrease in number until there is no other choice, and those remaining must turn back. Upon returning to Boston, the real horror begins, with a trial that will lay Virginia Reeves’ bare.

Those more knowledgeable in this part of history may have guessed “the very bad thing” sooner than I did, but once revealed, there was an ah-ha moment that may have felt anticlimactic to others but was eye-opening all the while. Readers will have questions regarding why things played out the way they did, but that is what historical fiction is all about. Take parts of the truth, mix them up with a good imagination, add some more, and what you end up with is a gripping story.