many series notes

Supervillainess; subtitle(s) could be either or both of Part one and/or "It's not easy being evil", by Lizzie Ford.  One more review to clean up my NetGalley completion percentage.  This is novella-length, and it does a huge disservice to the story.  Had the author taken more time to set up the story and the world, it would be a much better story.  Instead, world-building details are dumped in wherever there's room, the characters lack depth and clear motivation, and the story is in a hurry.  There's a second book, and the ending of the first sort of sets it up, but the reader isn't much motivated to work hard to find it.  Like 2 stars.

Jeeves and the feudal spirit by P.G. Wodehouse; read by Jonathan Cecil.  I was at a bit of a loss for audiobooks to my husband and me to listen to, so I checked this out not sure we'd listen to the whole thing.  I was surprised how much my husband liked it.  He's now flirting with season one of Jeeves and Wooster.

If not for you by Debbie Macomber.  I've never read a Debbie Macomber novel before, so seeing this ARC and noticing it wasn't part of a series, I thought it a perfect place to jump in.  (Actually a note at the front indicates it does follow some others in a short series, but I couldn't guess at what comes before.)

I am extremely disappointed.  If an author's works round to the nearest hundred, I would expect a certain level of quality to the writing.  This book leaves quite a bit to be desired.  It isn't bad, it's just not very good.  The romance is predictable, the characters lack depth and their "growth" is staid and anticipated, and there isn't much to help the reader attach to them, no real reason to care.  This definitely qualifies as a romance, as in, the romantic relationship itself is the main character in the book and the thing readers are supposed to attach to.  If this is how all her books are, I can't really see why she has such a following. 

Practical Mischief by D.D. Scott.  I really, really wanted to like this book.  I met this author years ago-- she was a local, living in the county where I was librarianing, and she did a program with us and was lovely and sweet and wasn't upset when there wasn't a great turnout.  I tried and tried to read her first book [cannot find review right now but tried several times to read it] and it was bad.  Like, baaaad.  When I saw this, I had hopes that, with a dozen titles under her belt, she had maybe mellowed a bit, found a groove, and had a good book.  

It's... better.  Still did not finish, because it's not that much better.  Before I got through chapter 2, I'd checked two different places to make sure this wasn't part of a series, or maybe first in a spin-off series: the author makes constant references to past events.  She must explain all later, maybe she's trying to set up tension to draw in the reader and establish the characters' histories, but it's too much and the reader just feels lost.  Furthermore, the characters and the book itself are like parodies: the bad constantly smirky and snappish, the good always wounded and selfless, the entire format and story structure what you'd get if you took a regular romance novel and exaggerated all the proportions.  

The Queen's accomplice by Susan Elia MacNeal.  This is back on track after the last one, so good on the author there.  The characters referred several times to events that happened several installments ago, and which I admit to being pretty vague on years later.  I was annoyed I couldn't remember, but it didn't take away from the current story.  The story is set up for at least one more. 

Zootopia with Ginnifer Goodwin.  I watched this by myself, since no one else in my house wanted to watch it.  Super cute.  :D  I wish just a tiny bit that the mystery part of the story was more important; it was mostly just the background for getting to know the characters (which is fine.  They're cute).  Four stars, would watch again.