Arden's Act, Elizabeth Thomas

 

Arden's Act by Elizabeth Thomas

Started: August 11, 2025
Completed: October 7, 2025
Recommendation: Mild recommendation
Recommended By: The Author

Review:

I am trying to enjoy the romance genre.  SPOILERS AHEAD.

This book looks at romance through the lens of rape.  Arden is almost gang raped at the outset of the book.  A flashback tells you she was abused.  As the book progresses, she is living with "kept women" most of the time.  She, herself, becomes a kept woman (and has sex with a lord in exchange for safety from her childhood abuser).  Later, she marries (in order to keep her child) a man with whom she is friends, but not a romantic interest.  She comes to love this man who faces an untimely death and she returns to her lord where she is more of a girl toy.  Eventually, she prostitutes herself to save her child and nurse maid (who, meanwhile, is raped).  Finally, she ends up marrying the lord who gives up his title to be with her.

As a result of the focus on rape, I found the sex scenes (even when conceptually mutually agreed) to be mildly unattractive.  The concept of the book as a whole put me off.  I will grant that at least the lord comes to realize he has effectively raped Arden though by the end she freely loves him.  I just didn't find this book romantic and, with the overtones of rape rife throughout, I did not find it pleasant.  I offer a mild recommendation because this book did not feel formulaic and some of the characters do change over the course of the book.  The plot was fairly straight forward with the exception of the step father who, of course, is raped in jail and comes to understand what he had done to his step daughter (I did not expect that nuance).

Rosarita, Anita Desai

 

Rosarita by Anita Desai

Started: October 2, 2025
Completed: October 4, 2025
Recommendation: Mildly recommended
Recommended By: Nobody

Review:

The omnipotent narrator has an odd habit of addressing the protagonist as, "you."  It is an odd third person personal (?) form of story telling.  It was so incredibly distracting to be so directly addressed by the narrator in the persona of the protagonist as to constantly distract me from the story which unfolds from a series of descriptions and vignettes which feature people who are not present (most notably the protagonist's mother who has died). 

Desai is celebrated for her turn of phrase.  In this book I was captured by, "The bells ring unexpectedly at irregular times."  I like this sentence because it suggests that if there are bells, they should be ringing expectedly at regular times.  In the following paragraph there is a discussion, effectively, of unexpected memories intruding.  It is a nice link and something that I can appreciate.  I liked that the metaphor was implied by proximity.

How To Be A Saint, Kate Sidley

 

How To Be A Saint:  An extremely weird and mildly sacrilegious history of the Catholic Church's biggest names by Kate Sidley

Started: October 1, 2025
Completed: October 2, 2025
Recommendation: Recommended
Recommended By: Nobody

Review:

I am not a Catholic.  I did enjoy this book (it isn't the first time that I've found the stories of saints interesting).  This one is fun because author is funny.  So the turns of phrase had good timing and this tongue in cheek book was a quick and enjoyable read.

Dominion, Addie E. Citchens

 

Dominion by Addie E. Citchens

Started: September 28, 2025
Completed: October 1, 2025
Recommendation: Recommended
Recommended By: Nobody

Review:

This was an interesting book.  The characters are rich for their ages and the story benefits from multiple perspectives.  While several of the characters are children, they are old beyond their years.  This was not a happy story, it was really a slow demise of a family and, with it, part of a community.  Sadness, heaped on sorrow, heaped on pain is the way that the Joker describes this Mississippi community and this exploration of that experience describes the effect of that environment more eloquently than spelling out the details of each piece.