You'll be caught in the undertow of 'The Cure for Drowning' by Loghan Payton

 Lyrical and haunting; 'Girl of the Limberlost' meets 'Aimee and Jaguar' in this beautiful and doom-shadowed historical: a romantic triangle between a Canadian doctor's half-French, half-German daughter and the neighbour's two oldest children. 

ETA: it's one of the CANADA READS picks for 2026!

Double ETA: It WON!!!! Congratulations, Loghan!

 

It starts in southern Ontario on the cusp of WW2, when war is looming in Europe and anyone with a German name in Canada is becoming increasingly suspect. After her father's medical practice in MontreaI was diminished by growing anti-German sentiment, Rebekah, only daughter of the expat German doctor and his French-Canadian wife, is slowly adapting to life in a small town near the shores of Lake Huron. The first friends she makes are the neighbouring farm's oldest son, Landon, and his conflicted, misgendered sister Kit, whose parents think she is a changeling.

I identified with all the major characters in some way or other, from the beset doctor to his melancholic, lonely wife, and the bisexual daughter struggling with her conflicting desires for love and for stability in a world where there isn't a language to express her yearnings, let alone support for her in dealing with them. Kit, coming out as transsexual in a society even less able to cope with 'women who don't keep their place'. Maybe not so much with Landon, who represents the patriarchal status quo, the ideal to which Rebekah is expected to aspire by virtually everyone in her world... except Kit. 

Fascinated as I was by the well-drawn historical backdrop, the ways in which the characters interacted with their era of societal upheaval, what the novel really stands out for is the growing sense of dread, the undercurrents beneath that sun-dappled stream's surface, the inescapable emotional destruction that I felt sure was coming, even though the author did not overtly foreshadow it.

Apart from the initial near-drowning scene, this novel starts off deceptively gentle, like a placid stream struck by dappled sunshine as it winds amid meadows rippling with wildflowers. The early, tentative steps towards love are delicately crafted, a real treat to read although the looming sense of the three young people on a romantic and sexual collision course soon overshadows even the most sunlit idyll.

This is well worth the read for historical fiction fans, for anyone who wants a step back in time to a period of upheaval in Canadian and World history, and for peeling back the delicate processes of coming out as your true self when surrounded by a society that will do anything to put you back in the box you were assigned at birth.

CW: LGBTQ+, bigotry,  post-combat trauma, immigrant struggles

 

 

The Cure for Drowing

Loghan Payton

Penguin Random House

The Mystery Guest is a cracking good mystery!

 Move over, Detective Monk. Molly the Maid is dusting your doors on her way past.

Set at the fabulous Art Deco Regency Grand Hotel, a five star boutique establishment, this is an early-body mystery, in which a award-winning and famously irascible mystery author drops dead during his  special appearance in the hotel's tea room. The maid-in-training who prepared his tea is the chief suspect.

But our new head maid, Molly, is not having it. She was once accused of murder in this very hotel and rose above to clear her name with the help of Charlotte, the brilliant daughter of the hotel’s doorman. She's determined to protect her underling by finding the real killer.

It’ll be an uphill struggle. All she has to go on is the unfinished/rudely interrupted statement by the famous deceased that he was about to reveal a long-held secret to his dedicated fans. And the odd behavior of one unpleasant maid with designs on Molly's job, yet who lacks the cleaning skills or dedication that Molly learned over many years of observing and assisting her now-deceased Gran,  whose advice still whispers in her head at opportune times.

Molly’s voice is crisp and engaging. She’s a collector of the lonely, a comforter of the lovelorn, and supremely competent, relied upon by Mr Snow, the manager. He’s not the only supporting character who comes to life with a few well-chosen phrases, but Molly is the deftly created and wholly supportable star of the whole shebang. She's coded convincingly autistic, which adds a few layers of both good and bad to her investigative process.

Good: she is highly observant and remembers a lot of what she sees.

Bad: she frequently alienate police officers and other people who should not be antagonized.
 
Does she overcome all that, and her own dubious family history, to solve the crime?

Well, this isn't her first swing on the roundabout of murder. But for that history you'll need to read the widely acclaimed 'The Maid' where we first make her acquaintance.

Go for it. It's a strong mystery, well crafted and written, with a bonus of solid representation for autistic and neurodivergent people in the workforce.

#netgalley #TheMaid #hotel #murder #CrimeFiction #authors #autism #neurodivergence

The Pantomime Murders

 by Fiona Veitch Smith

It’s December 1929. The fairy godmother from the pantomime vanishes into the night after her last performance in York, still wearing her sparkly dress and carrying her sparkly wand. When the show picks up a week later in Newcasttle, she’s been replaced and it turns out she resigned by telegram. Nobody has seen her and the request to send her effects from her theatrical boarding house also came by telegram. A concerned cast-mate hires Clara, a determined distance swimmer and private inquiry agent to find the missing actress.

Two books ago, Clara inherited the detective agency belonging to her late Uncle Bob, and is still learning the ropes. Her mother, Lady Vanessa, hates that she's running the detective agency instead of getting married to someone suitable (read noble), and that she also inherited a Georgian townhouse (complete with a forensic laboratory and a file collection of her uncle’s most bizarre cases). She's functionally independent and in no rush to give up her financial freedom. With plenty to prove to the various police inspectors and potential clients she encounters, Clara works long hours and tackles her new challenges with verve and ingenuity. A side plot about a shoplifting ring brings her a useful new assistant.

This complicated case is embedded in the now-vanished world of constantly touring theatrical companies, their rivalries and alliances, their succession of temporary boarding houses. The quotes from an extant 1929 play script of Cinderella are sure to please theatre historians. There are plenty of tourist touchstones around historical Newcastle as well as a few day trips to York by train. The mystery is a curious one, the science and detection tools are approximately appropriate to the state of knowledge at the time.

The Pantomime Murders has all the elements of an enjoyable 1920s Christmas crime albeit with fewer flappers and less gin, with a strong undercurrent early feminism. However, the first half is weighed down by Clara's repetitive thinking through her next steps, then discussing the same next steps, then doing one or two next steps, then thinking through them again in between every step. Once you get past that, the mystery clips along believably with some nice touches of menacing atmosphere and a nice twist at the end.

Overall this is a satisfying historical Christmas crime novel, well rooted in the social, cultural, and financial history of 1929.

 

#Netgalley #Newcastle #York #BlackTuesday #Pantomime #theatre #Suffragist #WomenHelpingWomen #EmblaPress #Christmas

Zoey Is Too Drunk for This Dystopia

 Zoey Is Too Drunk for This Dystopia

by Jason Pargin

Pub Date: 31 Oct 2023

The creative gore here is perfect for Halloween reading. And it’s kind of a killer crime novel too.

You might not think from the opening pages that Zoey is going to become one of your favourite characters. But soon you will be rooting for her, and snickering at the snarky observations and quirky turns of phrase. You don’t have to read far before you realize that the author, being the former executive editor of cracked.com, has a wry and slightly demented sense of humor.

This futuristic supermall-slash-Vegas version of Utah has hypercharged crooked capitalism at its core, and thanks to her dead father, Zoey owns a large chunk of it. Anytime there’s wealth derived from shady/crooked origins, there are enemies. And Zoey's are a special breed of determined/crazy.

This book is a sequel to Zoey Punches the Future in the Dick (2020), which followed Futuristic Violence and Fancy Suits. Those two were written by the same author under the name David Wong.

Apart from a tendency of the various characters to digress into brief polemics about the inevitability of corruption and predictably existentialist views of modern society, the book is entertaining for anyone who loves wordplay and unexpected situational comedy. It will appeal to mystery lovers who like their humour zany, and to many people who loved Mad Magazine and Cracked in their youth. And possibly to anyone who enjoys The Murderbot Diaries.

 

You don’t need to have read the previous two books in order to enjoy this one, but you will probably want to go back after you’ve lived in Zoe‘s world for this extremely eccentric adventure. 

 

#NetGalley #Zoey #gangsters #politics #futuristic #zany #election #stunts #socialmedia

Shark Teeth: she's not really a biter

Shark Teeth

by Sherri Winston 

Pub Date: 16 Jan 2024 

Bloomsbury Children's Books

 

Kita is a really identifiable character, a girl going into grade 7 whose mission is to look after her younger siblings, keep their home life on track amid her mother's partying and absenteeism and cruelty, and most of all keep the family from being split up into different foster homes AGAIN.

She’s also got hyperdontia, two rows of teeth. The kids at school call her Sharkita or Shark Teeth. She's heard all the hurtful phrases that everyone who is physically different faces, and by now expects them. Which new person would ask her what’s wrong with her teeth? Which would say no offense before saying something that could only seen as offensive? Or, what hurt the most: which would pretend she wasn’t there at all?

Kita wants to join after school activities like her friends do. She wants to be a kid. And that seems to be what the new assistant principal is encouraging. Even when she’s trying out for the dance and twirl team at school, with her mother's blessing, Kita’s stressed about whether Mama is actually looking after the younger siblings or has gone off again. She has episodes of severe muscle spasms, but her mother just tells her they’re a sign of being crazy. If she tells anyone about them, she could get locked up. Mama's really an expert at cutting off Kita from anyone who might help her. 

 

This is a touching story of Kita's struggle to become a kid again: to learn to trust others to look after her siblings better than she can, to accept help and support and even love from people who truly have her best interests at heart. Foster kids will see their own struggles here, and other kids will relate to Kita's insecurities as well as learning empathy for classmates who too often are mocked for their poverty, their enforced maturity, their visible differences.  

Five Stars.

#NetGalley #FosterCare #FosterHome #Family #FoundFamily #Family Dysfunction #MiddleGrade #Twirl #DanceTeam #School #Friendship #Bloomsbury

Imprisoned Like a Lady

 Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Lord

 by Celeste Connally 

This novel has all that most readers expect from a Regency: carriages, horses, a ball scene, sparks and snarks between the heroine and her love interest. There are few clues in the opening chapter to this novel’s Regency-Gothic plot, but get past that and it’s a socially relevant, intriguing tale of women successfully challenging of one of England’s longstanding, deeply inhumane ways of exercising patriarchal power and greed.

Several feisty female secondary characters band together with Our Heroine to rescue their downtrodden compatriots from controlling spouses and fathers, at similar risk to their own limited freedoms. It’s inspiring and refreshing, part of the new wave of Regencies that tackle wider societal problems rather than strictly a het romance.

Those flaws in this opening: dialogue and inner monologues are slightly over-flowery (as is common with neo-Regency novels), setting is generically ‘carriages and balls’ rather than definably Regency-era, and far too many paragraphs are lost interspersing Our Heroine changing her clothes with clumsily introducing (through inane dialogue with her faithful ladies’ maid) characters we’ll meet later. There’s no way to guess from this opening that you’re entering a tale of human frailty, madhouses, and morals that would not be out of place in a Bronte novel. 

Available for pre-order to Nov 14, 2023

#Netgalley #Regency #Women

 

The Observer: grim foreboding in a small town

The Observer, quasi-fictional recounting of a small rural town's seasonal doings through the eyes of a Mountie's young wife, proceeds with all the inexorable fatality of a comet as seen by those innocent of the scientific explanations. 

In this pre-cellphone, pre-internet proto-memoir our narrator is, by her own admission, a out-of-her-depth outsider in Medway (a fictional standin for Meyerthorpe, Alberta). She struggles to grasp the local rhythms of life, the inexplicable codes governing what dish to bring to which potluck. A recurring temporary job at the local paper, The Observer, gives her more insight into the denizens of town and surrounding farms, and hands her secret after secret that can't be spoken of directly, let alone printed in the paper. Mysteries come and go, adding menace but rarely resolved.

Mostly alone with her young child while her spouse Hardy is on patrol (sometimes for days on end) or at home sleeping between shifts, Julia fears her own emotions almost as much as she worries about Hardy's growing bleakness. She's a composite of thousands of law enforcement spouses: pitched without information or recourse into being the main emotional prop and outlet for a man under tremendous work strain, himself with no external support beyond that provided by equally stressed-out co-workers.

The characters are mostly sympathetic, the prose often beautiful, the moments of joy in nature sublime... and yet the darker undercurrents multiply, expanding like the comet's tail in the night sky. The sense of impending doom thickens page by page, chapter by chapter, recreating the nigh-breathless tension of life in an RCMP household, of an RCMP career, and in a town where too many assholes have been tolerated, too many secrets swept under for far too long. 

Something has to snap. You're just not sure what, or who, or how bad it's going to go.

At the novel's end, something does. By then Julia and Hardy are long gone, their reactions both sharpened by familiarity and muted by time & distance. Their subsequent life briefly touches on several changes forced onto the RCMP in the past twenty years, including Critical Incident Debriefing and other psychological supports. Spouses, though, remain outside the precinct, responsible for their own mental health and supporting each other without quite admitting just how much strain they're all under.

There's no emotional catharsis here for the reader, just as there was not for the very real townspeople who lived through, and still live with, not only the Mayerthorpe tragedy but the myriad dark currents that swirl beneath the idyllic surface of small rural towns.

The Observer

View Marina Endicott's book launch of The Observer

#NetGalley #Mayerthorpe #RCMP #MarinaEndicott #novel #prairies #smalltown #ruralliving #tragedy #policing #trauma #CriticalIncidentDebrief #journalism #dramaturge #horses #hate