Gabriel's Hope by Lizzy Ford

Finally, a romance novel that focuses on character development and conflict instead of constant, graphic sex and easy solutions to problems. The main female protagonist, Deidre, has a very literal fatal flaw-- an inoperable brain tumor-- that even immortal deities like Death can't heal, remove, or otherwise cure. It is refreshing to break from the pattern of "I have this horrible problem smut suddenly I find my mate and I'm cured and suddenly super-powered!" that a lot of romance novels espouse. Instead, Deidre turns down Gabriel's offers of a civil arrangement instead of whirling romance, she waffles between the hope of surviving cancer and ending it all. She and Gabriel have an actual adult conversation about making a relationship work and the steps to achieve it. Most romance novels don't have that, instead going from a night of steamy sex to immediate, deep love. I enjoyed the conflict between them, as well as the issues they were dealing with on their own time (hello, the Grim Reaper sucking at his job and not being able to usher souls to the underworld? That's a problem). The characters are dynamic, interesting, and multidimensional. And for once, a romance novel that does not end with a happy ending!-- but one hell of a cliffhanger all the same. I may just pony up the funds for the second book soon.



Rated 4 stars on Goodreads

The Millennium series by Stieg Larsson

Here is my first ever review of a whole series, instead of one book out of the series. I chose the Millennium series specifically because it lends itself best to being reviewed as a whole instead of by its individual parts. Often, books in a series can be reviewed individually because they stand alone well, which in this case is only true with The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. In fact, the book stands alone so well that American filmmakers didn't bother to make any more movies after the movie based on this book (it could be, however, due to poor revenue generation). It starts out with a very in-depth introduction to Mikael Blomkvist and his legal woes. Honestly, the book progresses a little slowly. Then Lisbeth Salander is introduced, and you start to wonder "what do these two characters have to do with each other?" The characters of Salander and Blomkvist become well-established and develop throughout the first book, which is only deepened through the following two. By the end of The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest the characters have changed and grown, which is a mark of a good writer.

Where The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo can easily stand alone as its own story, The Girl Who Played With Fire and The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet's Nest are dependent on each other. In fact, I felt the third book was merely an extension of the second, chopped into its own book. Throughout these two books, we follow Blomkvist and Salander as their paths cross again and intrigues in Sweden. The third book did drag on a bit and got a little political for my tastes, however.

Despite the obvious plot lines in the books (murder, social ruin, corporate corruption) there is an over-arching theme of feminism that I couldn't help but notice and appreciate. Topics of physical and sexual abuse toward women, sexual discrimination/harassment, and sex trafficking weave themselves throughout and become major topics in the main plot lines. Larsson also intersperses quotes and statistics about violence against women throughout the books. The focus on feminist topics lends itself to the development of Lisbeth Salander's character, changing the reader's perspective on a character that is first introduced as somewhat violent and antisocial.

Overall, the Millennium series is an engrossing read. Also, the original Swedish movies are incredibly well done, if lacking a lot of the incredible detail that Larsson packed into his novels (there is a lot of historical background and all of the characters have chapters developed to their own pasts).



Each book individually rated 5 stars on Goodreads

Reading for the New Year!

I haven't reviewed a book in ages, and I apologize! I am reading, but so many are series/books that have been out a while. I have a stack of books to start on for the New Year (Santa and Amazon were very kind to me) and a load of ebooks loaded into the Kindle app on my phone. I have been tossing around the idea of reviewing books as a series, so I may try that out with the Millenium series by Steig Larsson (we'll see). With my job, I haven't been able to read as much as I'd like to (aside from training materials that I teach, but I can't really review that). 

Happy New Year, and happy reading!