Hello everyone. Welcome back to Bibliophilia Book Reviews. In this post, I will be doing a wrap up of all the books I read in November 2021. These reviews have minor spoilers.
1. Augustus by Anthony Everitt
This book is a biography of Augustus, the first Emperor of Rome. Forced to take center stage in Roman politics at a young age, Augustus’s rise to power culminated when he defeated Marc Anthony and Cleopatra at the Battle of Actium. Later, he consolidated his power by transforming Rome into the greatest empire of the world. I enjoy reading about the lives of Roman emperors and I Really Liked this book. As a sidenote, another book that also chronicles the life of Augustus that I think is worth reading is Augustus by John Williams.
2. War of the Wolf by Bernard Cornwell
This is the eleventh installment of The Saxon Stories by Bernard Cornwell, and it is one of the best books of the entire series yet. Trigger warning: Major character death. Uhtred, now over 60 years old, has recovered Bebbanburg but is mourning Aethelflaed. Two major side characters die “off-page”, while the death of a third is retold as a flashback. Aethelflaed is one of these major side characters, and though it is hard to accept her loss, her death was foretold at the end of the previous book. The death of the other two characters I did not see coming. But I understand why they died. In this book, Uhtred has two enemies: an old one and a new one, and, true to fashion, Uhtred defeats them and saves the day. Again. As has been happening since the first book of the series wherein Uhtred fights the enemy in an all-or-nothing battle at the end of the book and wins, thus saving what one day will become England. Though tedious at times, this formulaic structure in the books of this series was nonetheless brilliantly executed in this book. I gave this an I Really Liked It rating.
3. The Sweeney Sisters by Lila Dolan
This book is definitely out of my comfort zone, and it took me a bit to get into it. I started it because I was getting a little burned out on fantasy and historical fiction after having read a lot of books in these two genres for most of the year, and I needed something different to get out of the reading slump I could feel myself falling into. So I picked up a contemporary, a book completely out of my comfort zone. And after reading this, I can say I have yet to find a good contemporary fiction novel. But I’m getting a little ahead of myself.
This book is about family and the grief of children after they lose a parent. But drama ensues and the three Sweeney Sisters soon discover that there is a fourth Sweeney Sister; that their recently deceased father had a child out of wedlock, and they start questioning everything they knew about him. To make matters worse, Bill Sweeney was a famous writer and the three Sweeney sisters—Maggie, Eliza, and Tricia—can’t help but wonder why Serena shows up now, at his funeral. Is she after their father’s money and inheritance? Like I said, drama. The problem is the book didn’t really hook me all that much and at times it was boring. And I didn’t really like the characters. Maggie was obnoxious, Trisha was too uptight and Eliza too much of a martyr for my liking. Serena was rather forgettable if you ask me, and all the romantic relationships in the book felt forced. Bill Sweeney and Maeve loomed large in this book, but I wasn’t a big fan of them either. I admit, this was not a good book to get out of a slump with and I almost DNF’d it several times, but the ending made it a little better. This book also gave me Montana Sky by Nora Roberts vibes. I gave it an I Didn’t Like It rating.
4. Lost Among The Living by Simone St. James
This book is a historical fiction thriller, and it too is a book out of my comfort zone. Even though I read a lot of historical fiction, this is out of my comfort zone because I’m not real big on thrillers and I don’t usually read books set in either one of the world wars, or the years immediately after them. But this was a surprising read for me, and I enjoyed it very much. The main character, Jo Manders (the name reminds me of Manderley House in Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier, and the entire book gave me vibes from this classic because it too has a house with a name, Wych Elm House, and there has been a mysterious death in this house as well) is now working as a paid companion to her husband’s, Alex, wealthy aunt, Dottie Forsyth. Alex Manders disappeared three years ago (the book is set in 1921) after being shot down over Germany, and Jo is still mourning his loss. Now she is traveling to his family’s estate in the Sussex countryside, and the revelation of a mysterious death in the Forsyths’ past makes Jo realize that there is much she did not know about her husband.
Unlike the previous book that I read where I didn’t like any of the characters, I did like the characters in this one. I liked Jo, I liked Alex, and I loved Jo and Alex together. I loved their relationship and their banter. I also liked Doris even though the best word to describe her is condescending. This book was a fresh breath of air, and I enjoyed it very much. I gave it an I Really Liked It rating.
5. The Women In The Castle by Jessica Shattuck
Unfortunately this book was a bit of a disappointment for me. It’s not bad, but it was definitely not what I was expecting. The premise is interesting but in my opinion the execution was very poorly done. At the beginning, in the prologue, we are introduced to the main characters, among them Burg Ligenfels, a remote and decrepit Bavarian castle located in Germany where Countess von Ligenfels hosts the annual harvest party in 1938. And it is here where Albrecht Ligenfels and his conspirators decide it is finally time to kill Hitler and where Marianne von Ligenfels vows to protect the wives and children of the conspirators if anything happens to them.
It does. The conspiracy fails and the conspirators put to death, among them Marianne’s husband Albrecht and Martin Constantine Fledermann, aka Connie, Marianne’s closest friend, and now Marianne is forced to fulfill her promise to find and protect both his wife, Benita, who is now the concubine of a Russian general, and son, Martin, who was taken away from his mother and put in a Children’s Home . The problem I had with this is that Marianne’s appointment as the commander of wives and children felt rather like a slap in the face to her (this is almost a direct quote from the book) when Connie forces the job on her, even though she does fulfill her promise to her friend after his death. I just thought that this was a poor beginning and it affected my overall enjoyment of the book to be honest. This was supposed to be the whole point of the book, and Marianne was rather insulted when this appointment was given to her. Also, I didn’t think Marianne was a nice person. I understand she is a World War survivor, but she was particularly mean to Benita, who killed herself as a result, and she abandoned Ania when she learned that her friend wasn’t who she’d said she was. I don’t particularly fault Ania for this, after all she was trying to survive. But I think that Marianne was too harsh when she learned the truth. And then, there’s Martin. I think Marianne loved Connie more than she loved her husband, because Connie’s son was the only one that really mattered to her. Her daughters by Albrecht are barely mentioned throughout the book, only at the beginning in the prologue and at the end as an afterthought.
I know that the intent in this book was to focus on the women who survived the war, their grief at losing their husbands and children, their fear at being alone in a world ruled by men and at their mercy while at the same time being powerless to defend themselves, at having to survive in a world ravaged by war, but I was not particularly fond of the protagonist and that affected my experience reading this book. I wasn’t fond of Benita all that much either and while Ania had the most interesting backstory of all three of them, it was still not enough to change my opinion of this book. I gave it a mixed rating between Okay and I Did Not Like It. I do not think I will keep this.
These are all the books I read in November. Thank you for stopping by.
