Fiery Mary & the Dog Days of Summer
Valerie Willis
A vagabond backpacker has to contend with having been robbed and coming adrift amid language challenges and superstition so serious it stops work in the middle of harvest season in Yugoslavia. Religion is a serious business in a country where belonging to the wrong ethnic group can get you killed. And the Devil is very real.
In fact superstition seems very real in this strange tale.
The World Inside my Plastic Mirror
Christopher Francis
My first reaction is that over 300 pages is rather long and intimidating even if Harry Potters ran to 700. No .mobi, or .pdf file behaves properly in Kindle on my Android Tablet. A .pdf reader does work. Nook does read e-Pub format.
Understanding women is an eternal mystery to males and pre-adolescent girls are a particular annoyance. Of course their male counterparts are acne-ridden, smelly, giggly, insecure.
I associate Aubrey with names for boys. Can't believe she was desperate enough to fit in with those girls to climb into the cramped trunk of a car. Car tires have sidewalls, the fenders define the sides of a trunk. Page 32
heard not head pg 62
past not passed pg 96
The author sets his story in Burlington Ontario. Macys is in Burlington Mall. Smartphones are one thing and children have been known to run up massive charges on social media and gaming sites. Thirteen-year-olds with credit cards seems a recipe for disaster. Acquaintances gave their daughter a credit card for emergencies when she went off to university and she put them massively in credit card debt in short order. I didn't buy my own clothes or have money that was mine to spend until I went off to university.
Thirteen-yr-olds using make-up? Bad enough my fellow worker seemed to bathe in a 45 gallon drums of aqua velva. Do schools have scent-free policies?
And worlds collide in Aubrey's locker. Truent is from another planet but he's human and speaks English. Otherwise his thought processes and mental abilities are completely different. He wills doors to unlock. But the bigger issue is what can Aubrey do with a boy or boys. She can't take them home to her parents, and how to explain matters to the wider world or civil authorities.
The story ends abruptly leaving the fate of Truent and his buddies unresolved.
Rise to the Horizon
Hyunah Kim
The story of a damaged thoroughbred and the horse whisperer Axel who tries to save him. The author seems obsessed with the man's beauty.
The author inserts herself into her tale as Axel's girlfriend.
This is the story of a boy and his horse, nothing else matters.
DreadfulWater #8
Black Ice: A DreadfulWater Mystery
Thomas King
And once more we enter the world of Tom King which has a turn of phrase and logic, or lack thereof, of its own. King loves to play on cliches and turn them on their heads. Cops and donuts being a favourite.
In this outing Thumps has assumed sheriff duties while Duke mourns the death of his wife. A large slobbery dog enters the picture. Golf becomes Wuty's latest craze. And Thumps becomes involved in a case that involves money laundering and secret government wrongdoing. Thumps is in over his head. Freeway's kitten has grown into massive male tiger. Somehow he keeps them fed.
