When We Were Young and Brave

Finished February 11

When We Were Young and Brave by Hazel Gaynor

This historical fiction novel was inspired by real events. The story is framed by one of the narrators, Nancy, looking back at this time from 1975. Near the end of the book, the framing is completed with a more full explanation of what happened to the various characters after their time in China ended. 

The main story begins in December 1941, with Elspeth Kent, one of the teachers at the Chefoo Mission School considering resigning and returning to her home in England. She came to China after her fiancé was killed in a mining accident and she couldn't see how to move on there without him. But her plans are thwarted with Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor and their declaration of war against the United States, the United Kingdom, and other Allied countries. 

Among the students at the school is Nancy Plummer, along with her older brother, and Nancy's friends who include an American girl named Dorothy (nicknamed Sprout as she is tall and thin) and Joan (nicknamed Mouse because she is small and quiet). The girls are part of a Brownie troop and studying to move up to Girl Guides. Elspeth and another teacher, Minnie, lead the girls in this endeavour. 

When the Japanese arrive to occupy the school, the headmaster is taken away, the Chinese servants are sent away, and the soldiers label everything the property of the Japanese emperor. When Minnie tries to make a stand, she is beaten with a pole by one of the soldiers, and Elspeth tries to intervene drawing attention to herself. We watch as the situation evolves over the years. 

Without the servants, the teachers and students must cook and clean and the teachers try to manage morale. Elspeth and Minnie use the Girl Guide teachings and badge earning to get the girls to work and treat the situation optimistically. After a year, the group is moved across town to another school, which has been abandoned for some time. There, they have to make the spaces they are billeted in liveable, and consider safety and continue teaching. The headmaster is back by now and is a great leader in this and the future situations. 

When they are moved again, it is farther away, to an internment camp near Weihsien, where they are the most recent additions. They find support from some of the other prisoners, who have organized a library, and a system of work responsibilities. 

With two narrators, Elspeth and Nancy, we get different viewpoints from different levels of understanding the situation. The author did a lot of research, trying to talk to survivors from Japanese prisoners and using real examples, such as the presence of the Olympic runner Eric Liddell in the camp. 

I found the story interesting and believable and liked the nuances of the people, with both bad and good people among their Japanese captors. I also enjoyed the use of the Girl Guide training and expectations to motivate the young girls and keep up their morale.  

The Fiercest Joy

Finished February 9

The Fiercest Joy by Shana Abé

This is the third novel in The Sweetest Dark, a historical fantasy series. I also noted that it tied in with the Drákon series by the same author, in an interesting way. 

Eleanore (Lora) Jones is in her final year as a scholarship student at the prestigious Iverson School for girls, and torn between two drákon men she loves, brothers Aubrey and Armand. This year there is also another scholarship girl at the school, and it would appear that she is a drákon as well, going under the name Smith. She cannot apparently turn into a dragon, but she has other skills. The three can't help wonder what she is doing there and whether she is putting them at risk. 

When Lora gives into her intuition one night and engages in a coastal battle, she encounters another dragon, and feels threatened by his presence. 

Soon after that two drakon people, brother and sister, arrive at the school, claiming to have been searching for Eleanore for years. They intend to take her to join her family. But Eleanore is still unsure and since she is now engaged, she insists that her fiancé come as well. 

Meanwhile Aubrey is researching Lora's past with a clue from a memory of hers, by searching for ship passenger lists near the time of her birth. He and Armand have also shared historical letters regarding their family with both her and Miss Smith. 

This tale has lots of dramatic moments and suspense as well as moments of strong emotion. It wraps up this series nicely, while still offering possibilities for future books.  

Yellowhead Blues

Finished February 7

Yellowhead Blues by R.E. Donald

This is the fifth book in the Hunter Rayne Highway Mystery series, and is set along the B.C. portion of the Yellowhead highway. Hunter is a retired RCMP officer that now works as a long-haul truck driver. He is on his way to Edmonton with a load when a man who has stopped coming the other way flags him down and asks for help catching a loose horse. The man, Leon, is a horse trainer and breeder coming from a cattle penning competition at Teepee Creek. He stopped when he saw a loose horse and then stopped Hunter before trying to catch it. The horse was scared and had blood on it. 

They managed to catch it and used Leon's dog Blue to track the trail back to where the horse came from, finding a badly injured man sitting with his back against the tree. He was near death and the two men, with no cell reception, decided to carry him on one of the horses back to the highway. 

Bianca Morrison, a RCMP Constable, was the first officer on the scene, shortly after the ambulance arrived. Bianca is from Quebec, and has felt isolated as a female officer. She hopes that she will get a chance to participate in this case. 

A couple days later Hunter gets a call from Leon, who has been arrested for the murder of the man they found. Hunter is pretty sure Leon is innocent, but he'd had an interaction with the man before, so there is history. As Hunter digs deeper into the circumstances surrounding the crime, he asks Bianca for help and gets his dispatcher El to find some of the people he wants to talk to as well. 

I found this mystery quite interesting, with lots of possible suspects. I liked seeing Hunter's personal circumstances, as well as learning of Bianca's experiences with the RCMP. Leon's dog Blue was an active player, and an engaging dog as well. 

A Detective at Death's Door

Finished February 6

A Detective at Death's Door by H.R.F. Keating

This is the fifth book in the Harriet Martens mystery series, but the first in the series that I've read. Harriet is a Detective Superintendent for the Greater Birchester Police, and as the book begins, she awakens in a hospital with some memory loss, wondering how she got there. As she fades in and out of consciousness she overhears her husband John and a doctor discussing her close call with death. 

She learns that she has been poisoned with aconitine, a derivative of the wolfsbane plant, and part of her survival is due to the face that John Piddock had been reading an Agatha Christie novel with the same poisoning and forced her to vomit as soon as he returned to her side. The two were enjoying a hot day by the pool at the Majestic Insurance Company Sports and Social Club, with the insurance company being John's employer. She'd been drinking Campari and soda and fallen asleep as John went to the bathroom. When he returned she awoke and saw him coming toward her and picked up her drink and took a swallow, to find that it didn't taste right. 

One of her colleagues, DS Pat Murphy is in charge of her case and eager to speak to her as soon as she's well enough, which is days later. She becomes eager to get home and despite her still weak condition, John agrees as long as she follows the conditions he sets. She agrees, and she does try, but her instinct to solve the case gets her out of bed long before she should and sets back her recovery. When she hears that there have been more poisoning victims after her, and they didn't survive, she becomes determined to try to stop the killer. She reaches out to people who might help, grasping at straws as she trusts her instincts and as she goes against the new London-based police officer who has taken over the case. 

Harriet is a strong-willed woman, with a good marriage and a strong reputation at her workplace. She is not about to let her health set her back, but she isn't in control of that and finds that, if she doesn't want to suffer a fatal setback, she must take better care of herself. 

I enjoyed this mystery, both the skills that Harriet displayed as she followed the case and the plot overall. A very interesting read.

The Gingerbread Bakery

Finished February 2

The Gingerbread Bakery by Laurie Gilmore

This is the fifth book in the Dream Harbor series, but the first one I've read. The main characters here are Annie Andrews, who is the owner of Gingerbread Bakery, and Mac Sullivan, the owner of Sullivan's Pub, which he bought from his parents. 

The two have known each other most of their lives. Annie took a dislike to Mac from elementary school, when he bullied her best friend Logan. Her opinion of him hasn't improved. But when they finished high school, most of their contemporaries went on to college and in November they encountered each other at a local event. Mac bought some of Annie's cookies from her home-based business, and then arranged to meet her again. They found themselves spending time together and beginning a friendship. Something happened to change that, but we don't find out what until later in the book. Now, Mac has been back in Dream Harbor for three years, and Annie has been avoiding him every chance she gets. With Logan getting married to Jeanie, a more recent addition to the town, they find themselves both part of the wedding party and forced to spend time with each other. When a small crisis arises days before the wedding, and Annie determined to keep Logan from worrying, she finds Mac is the one who helps, and doesn't give up. Not only does he help with the crisis, but he also forces Annie to deal with the past and the events that drove them apart.

A Christmas season romance with a small town setting and even some kittens. 

Company Town

Finished January 31

Company Town by Madeline Ashby

This science fiction novel is set in the near future on a city-sized oil rig called New Arcadia located off Canada's east coast. New Arcadia has recently been bought by a family-owned corporation called Lynch Ltd. The rig consists of five towers, each built in a different time period, with the oldest housing some of the poorest of the city's citizens. The main character Go Jung-hwa (Hwa) is one of these. She was born to a Korean-Canadian mother who didn't want her, and with Sturge-Weber, a rare disease that means she has a large birthmark and is more susceptible to certain conditions like seizures. Hwa is also on of the few people in New Arcadia that has no technological enhancements. She is an expert in tae kwon do, and works as security for the United Sex Workers of Canada, of which her mother Sunny is one. Hwa also had an older brother she was close to that died when the Old Rig exploded a few years ago. She is close to many of the sex workers and respects her union representative Séverine. She is given an assignment to watch over two union men who will be attending the official handover of the city to the new owners. 

When there is an incident at the handover, Hwa tries to get a better view of the situation and ends up meeting Daniel Siofra, a high level employee of the new owners who uses technology to affect the mood of groups of people. He is impressed with her skills and wants her to train Joel, the youngest son of the new owner and also act as his bodyguard during the day. Hwa doesn't want the job as she is loyal to her employer and the women she protects, but she is given now choice. As Daniel tells her when she protests "I'll find something you want and give it to you." She will be well-paid and she does set up her own apartment, but stays in Tower One. She also attends school with Joel, offering her a chance to further her education. 

When Joel is attacked and her friends start being murdered in violent ways, Hwa isn't sure who she can trust and who has ulterior motives, maybe for her, and maybe for the whole city. 

This is suspenseful and intriguing and I really cared about Hwa and what happened to her. Daniel appears to like her and support her, and she begins to feel something for him, but doesn't know if she can trust that feeling, or him.

Ashby has created characters with depth and personality, and I particularly liked her choice to give Hwa a Newfoundland accent. Great read. 

The Glitter Scene

Finished January 28

The Glitter Scene by Monika Fagerholm, translated from Swedish by Katarina E. Tucker

This literary mystery novel is told out of chronological order and from a variety of viewpoints. 

The story starts with the most recent time period, from 2004 to 2006. Johanna lives with her aunt Solveig in a house outside of town. When a girl a little older than her Ulla, tells her of a tragedy nearly forty years earlier, where an American girl died and then her boyfriend killed himself, she is intrigued and wonders where her parents, who were children at the time, fit into the story. She knows her father, Solveig's brother, is dead, but she doesn't know who her mother is. 

We then jump back in time to a story about a mask and some shoes, with the intriguing subtitle "an entirely different story, or maybe not?" and a second story about a girl who pretends she is a wild child from far away. We see Solveig and her twin sister Rita, girls who plan to become swimming stars; a brother and sister, Tom and Maj-Gun Maalamaa; Solveig and Rita's brother Bengt; their cousin Bjorn; and Doris, a girl looking for a more welcoming home than the one she was born into.

From there we move to 1989 when Maj-Gun and another local girl Suzette are in their late twenties and still unsure of their futures. When the two girls reconnect, a friendship of a sort is formed, but Suzette has secrets she doesn't want to share. 

This is a complex read, with interactions between locals and a wealthier group of people who move into a new, gated development that has repercussions.