Six Degrees of Freedom is about three characters: Lisa, a young woman who wants to be rich; Eric, her best friend who is agoraphobic, a tech genius, and determined to be a millionaire by 18; and Jay, a woman in her 30s who is serving out a sentence for identity fraud by working for the RCMP tech department. The story begins with Lisa and Eric building a hot air balloon that will take a digital camera up almost into space, and take pictures of its journey.

Fast forward several years into the future. Eric is now a young shipping magnate millionaire, Lisa has a job she doesn’t enjoy, and Jay is on the RCMP team investigating a mysterious shipping container with a potential link to terrorism. The camera Lisa and Eric sent in a hot air balloon as children will play a significant part in how their stories intersect, and it’s pretty cool to see how an act of such childlike enthusiasm could have such far-reaching effects.

There are things I enjoyed about this book. I loved the beginning, with Lisa and Eric’s tinkering, and the way the camera was traced back to them years later. I also liked the character of Jay, and her detective work around the shipping container.

But the pacing was slow and I found my attention lagging at times. There were also times when I wasn’t quite sure where the story was heading or what the point of the characters actions was. The language was also cumbersome at times, although I don’t know if that’s because of Dickner or his translator Lazer Lederhendler. For example, one character is described as spending a flight “in the depths of a bituminous slumber” (page 17), which according to Google, refers to a type of coal or asphalt, and doesn’t help make the description any clearer.

I also didn’t quite understand the point of Lisa’s scheme with Eric’s invention. He builds an intelligent, responsive technology that can deliver consumer goods more efficiently, and Lisa tells him that’s a waste of its potential, so they should instead use his invention for a brilliant idea she had. I understand what she did with the invention and I can see how what she did links thematically to Jay’s story with Jay having “a problem with geography,” but I don’t quite understand Lisa’s larger vision. I can see how it’s beneficial for both of them on a personal level, but in the grander scheme of things, I don’t quite get the wow factor. Likely as a result of this, the ending fell flat for me. There was a flurry of activity towards the end, but I didn’t quite understand what the point was.

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Thank you to Penguin Random House Canada for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I’m a huge fan of Agatha Christie and English village whodunnits, so I expected to like this a lot more than I did. Murder in Little Shendon had all the usual elements of the genre: a murder victim who was widely disliked, a village full of suspects, and a likeable team of detectives both professional and amateur. One of the mystery-solving team is even an actor, and I’m a sucker for any theatre-related story. Even the manner of death is pretty good — the victim was killed by a candlestick in his own shop, and I thought the choice of weapon and the way characters referred to it were a nice shoutout to the classic whodunnit game Clue.

Richardson also avoids a lot of the usual problems that annoy me in contemporary Christie-type cozies. None of the characters are too cutesy for words, none of the leads are Mary Sue-level perfect, and none of the jokes were cringe-worthy. At one point, I even felt like I was watching an episode of Midsomer Murders, which I love.

Despite the promising beginning, I ended up getting bored about halfway through. The characters were all quirky without being particularly memorable. I found myself getting confused by the large cast, and found that while each had a strong personality trait, none particularly stood out for me. The pacing as well was slow, which is expected in this type of mystery, but it lacked a clear sense of the movement towards the big reveal.

Richardson is a good writer, so I’m hard-pressed to pinpoint exactly what went wrong for me with this book. I’m afraid it just didn’t work for me, despite its genre being right up my alley.

Murder in Little Shendon is the first in a series featuring Sir Victor Hazlitt and Shakespearean actor Beresford Brandon. Below are the other books in the series.

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Thank you to the author for a copy of the book in exchange for an honest review.

A flock of starlings falling from the sky kicks off this novel about a juicy scandal in a small Pennsylvania town. Beloved math teacher Nate Winters is accused of raping a troubled student, Lucia Hamm. An unpopular goth and perceived witch, Lucia disappears shortly after someone sees Nate with her, and the investigation uncovers uncomfortable truths about the town’s residents. Lucia’s prickliness may hint at bullying and abuse on multiple fronts. Nate’s friend and fellow teacher, Bridget Harris, becomes his sole supporter, using Lucia’s class journal and tracking down her friends and family to prove Nate’s innocence.

I didn’t quite find it a novel of “nerve-shattering suspense” that the blurb promised, nor did I think that the twists and turns were all that surprising, but I don’t think that’s a bad thing. Rather, I think Moretti has crafted a really good character study that delves deep into the psyches of its characters. The ultimate twist was a big reveal not because it was difficult to identify the villain, but because it cast a harsh light on some troubling situations that are likely happening in real world high schools.

Many of us can probably remember having a teacher like Nate. He’s like Robin Williams’ character in Dead Poets Society — charismatic, passionate, and with a finger firmly on the pulse of his teenage students. Part of me finds his interest in his students’ lives a bit creepy, e.g. setting up social media accounts just so he can follow all of his students on social media and keep tabs on their lives. But I can also imagine myself back in high school, and how flattering I may have found that kind of attention from a handsome, young male teacher. So I can see why Lucia would have been drawn to him, and why Bridget would have carried a secret torch for him for so long. He’s probably the most thinly drawn of the characters, and possibly deliberately so. We’re not quite sure what lies beyond his charisma and overall nice-ness, but there is no undercurrent of darkness that makes us believe he could commit the crimes of which he’s charged. He probably becomes most interesting when stress gradually peels off his veneer of perfection, and reveals his resentment at the lack of support from his wife and the town in general and at his lack of agency in determining his son’s care.

I can also understand the frustration of his wife Alecia, who I found the most compelling and nuanced character in this book. Alecia’s a Type A personality, who takes the lead on caring for their autistic son. Unlike Nate, who advocates to let their son simply be himself, Alecia takes him to one therapy session after another, and refuses to heed the therapist’s warning that her son may not be ready for kindergarten yet. When a reporter confronts her about Nate’s affair with a student, her carefully constructed world crumbles, and her fear over the outcome is palpable. While Bridgette was clearly the heroine of this novel, genuinely supportive of Nate and caring about Lucia’s fate, I thought Alecia was the most relatable character.

Despite being the linchpin on which the entire plot turns, Lucia probably was the least interesting of the characters for me. Rebellious goth, emo girl fascinated by death and poetry and blackbirds, a bully who may also be being bullied herself… we’ve seen this character before and multiple times. While she does go through some horrible experiences in this book, she’s still ends up being pretty flat as a character, and I cared about what happened to her only in a general way I would care about any teenage girl who goes through what she did.

Overall, Blackbird Season is a pretty good read, and a glimpse into how a small town deals with a scandal.

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Thank you to Simon and Schuster Canada for an advance reading copy in exchange for an honest review.