Eat, Read, and Be Mommy

Seriously.  Every time I look at my Goodreads account, it reminds me that I’m 2 books behind schedule in my 2017 reading challenge.  Come on!  I have four kids, it’s almost the end of the school year, and The Readers of Broken Wheel Recommend is almost 400 pages!  (I’m loving it, but still.  That review’s going to be a while.)  Today, however, I at least finished my treadmill book, and I have to say–it cracked me up.  My friend Britt loves Lisa Shearin’s Raine Benares series; it’s less my thing, and so I’ve taken longer to get thoroughly into it, but The Trouble With Demons (Book 3) pretty much kept me riveted.  The action develops quickly and really never stops, the quips and witty rejoinders made me laugh out loud more than once, and Raine is an entertaining character to follow through a story. To be fair, there are flaws; Shearin’s character descriptions can be a bit repetitive, and the “all men adore and are fascinated by Raine except for the ones trying to kill her” gets a bit old (technically, some of the men trying to kill her are still fascinated by her), but it’s such a romp of a book that I really didn’t care.  So what if the plot–in the most general sense–is fairly predictable by the third book in the series?  “House” was quite a bit more predictable, and it ran for 8 seasons on the strength of its mysterious medical conditions and Hugh Laurie’s ability to be both sarcastic and outrageous in a fake accent.  If you want action, a strong female lead, and books chock full of wise-cracking characters, this series is for you.  Start with Magic Lost, Trouble Found–and enjoy!