Marissa Parlette is celebrating her engagement and has invited to the party a childhood friend whom she hasn’t been in touch with since they had a falling out back in college. The engagement party turns out to be a disaster, since veiled insults and cryptic remarks are flying across the dinner table all evening, and Marissa’s friend appears to be flirting heavily with all the men at their table. The next morning, the friend shows up dead at the bottom of a cliff, and Marissa investigates the circumstances around the death.

I love Agatha Christie type mysteries in remote locations. I enjoy tense family and friend gatherings where the most casual comments are dripping with venom. And I especially adore mysteries where a murder turns out to be linked to some deep dark secret from the past that has been simmering for years and has finally exploded into violence. So A.J. Banner’s After Nightfall seemed like catnip for my reading tastes, and I was very excited to dive in.

The story was interesting, and the characters compelling, but the book overall didn’t keep me enthralled as much as I wanted it to. The last few chapters felt choppy, and while the big reveal wasn’t wholly unexpected, the pacing felt a bit rushed. There was also a last-minute revelation that just felt tacked on and unnecessary.

Overall, it’s a solid thriller, and a good quick read. I just wish it had a stronger grip.

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Thank you to Thomas Allen & Son for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

The Other Wife is the 9th book in the Joe O’Loughlin mystery series, and the first one I read. Joe O’Loughlin is a psychologist who works with police to solve murders, and he also has Parkinson’s disease. I love psychological thrillers — Jonathan Kellerman’s Alex Delaware series is a long-time favourite — and I can’t believe I haven’t tried Michael Robotham till now.

In The Other Wife, the mystery hits close to home as Joe’s father is rushed to the hospital after being brutally attacked. Joe has always believed his parents have had a happy marriage for the past 60 years, so he’s taken aback to find another woman at his father’s side in the hospital room. This woman claims to be his father’s other wife, and was living with his father at the time of the attack.

Despite this being my first Joe O’Loughlin mystery, I found myself immediately hooked by the character and all the family drama he has to deal with. It’s traumatic enough to discover that your parents’ marriage isn’t as solid as you’d always believed, much less to make such a discovery at your father’s deathbed. When investigating the attack and considering suspects, how impartial can Joe really be when he studies the possible role his father’s mistress may have played in the attack? The mystery here somewhat takes a backseat to the intense family drama, but at the same time, the mystery is so intertwined with the drama that one can’t really separate them.

I also really like how Joe’s Parkinson’s is integrated into the story, such that it feels real — we see how Joe adapts to living with this condition, and we also see how it can sometimes affect his life despite all his efforts to keep it under control. There’s a really striking scene where Joe tries to say something to the cops, and because Parkinson’s is making him slur his words, they think he’s drunk and are dismissive of what he’s trying to say. It’s something that I can imagine does happen to some people with Parkinson’s, or possibly other types of neurological conditions or speech impediments, and I like that Robotham included such doses of realism about Joe’s condition.

As I said, I love psychological thrillers, and I really enjoyed this book. I’ll definitely have to check out more of this series.

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Thank you to Hachette Book Group Canada for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Girls of Paper and Fire is an Asian-inspired fantasy about a world where your social standing is determined by how much demon blood you have. At the top is the Moon caste — fully demon beings like the king. At the bottom is the Paper caste — fully human beings like the novel’s heroine Lei. Every year, a handful of girls from the Paper caste are selected to serve the king as his concubines. Except this year, Lei and another Paper girl fall in love, and Lei gets drawn into her lover’s plot to rise up against the caste system and overthrow the king.

I absolutely loved this novel. Mostly, I admit, because of all the Asian influences. The East Asian influences are immediately obvious — characters wear traditional Chinese clothing like cheongsams and ruquns, ‘Lei’ is an East Asian name (Chinese, according to Google, but I also know a Japanese woman named Lei), and the descriptions of the demon king’s Imperial court reminds me of Chinese history. But some of the character names also sound South Asian, and some of the food seems to have Southeast Asian and Malay influences. So I love all the little touches that feel like this fantasy world borrows details from various parts of Asia.

The world building is fantastic, and the descriptions wonderfully vivid. The way the palace’s designers creates dresses for the Paper girls that reflect their personalities reminds me of how Cinna in The Hunger Games designs Katniss’s outfits. And just as Cinna’s scenes were among my favourites in that trilogy, the descriptions of the outfits here are absolutely breathtaking. Take for example this cheongsam Lei wears early in the book:

I pull aside the folds of silk. There’s the wink of metallic silver… Cut long and slender, sleeveless, with a high collar, silver threads woven through flicker like running water when they catch the light. The delicate silk fabric is almost sheer. A scattering of moonstones, opals, and diamonds wind along the hips and chest. …It fits perfectly, clinging to my frame like a second skin. Despite the jewels, the material is light, mere brushings of gossamer across my skin. The warmth of magic thrums in the fabric. Whatever enchantment has been placed on the dress also makes it glow. Every moment I make sends of scatters of silvery light, as pale as moonbeams. [p. 88-89]

How much do you want to see that dress?! Or more importantly, feel that fabric against your skin?

The food as well sounds absolutely delicious. Even the food in a prison scene — pandan-wrapped rice balls — is mouthwatering.

That being said, this book isn’t all as light-hearted and pleasurable as I may have made it sound. Ngan never lets us forget that these Paper girls are, ultimately, sexual objects for the king’s pleasure. I believe the book merits trigger warnings for rape, sexual assault, and gender-based violence, and Ngan doesn’t flinch from portraying the reality that Lei and the other girls have to face. So this book is intense, but in a good way. At its heart, it’s a story of female empowerment, women reclaiming agency and independence within a social system that tries to render them mere objects. It’s somewhat like Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale but for a YA audience, in a fantasy setting with Asian characters.

As Lei says on the back cover of my ARC:

In my land, we’re known as Paper Girls… easily torn, existing only for others to use and discard.

But there’s something they’ve all forgotten about paper. It can light the world on fire…and make it burn.

And indeed, as the story progresses, we see Lei develop from being a frightened girl wanting only to survive to becoming a powerful young woman ready and able to make her world burn. I loved this story and can’t wait to see where Ngan takes this next.

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Thank you to Hachette Book Group Canada for an advance reading copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.