not many stars

Noble destiny  by Katie MacAlister.  Ugh.  This quickly became unbearably silly.  What a ninny.  2 stars, and that's only because the author can actually construct a full sentence and properly use commas.  Standards are low.

Mrs. Sherlock Holmes: The true story of New York City's greatest female detective and the 1917 missing girl case that captivated a nation by Brad Ricca.  The style doesn't work for me.  In the first few chapters, we jump around a wide span of years, visiting causes and effects.  It also feels highly novelized-- who said what and how everyone was feeling, largely made up out of whole cloth.  Maybe for true-crime fans?  I'm not one.

Deja who by MaryJanice Davidson.  This book is not for everyone.  First, the setting isn't really explored.  Is it a parallel earth; a near, enlightened future; an alternate reality?  This leaves the reader a little unmoored.  Secondly, this book would only make sense to readers familiar with the author's previous works.  I'm having a hard time quite describing this: the author makes some jumps that will be only followed or only easily followed by people who, through experience, know how this author develops her stories.  Finally, there are some legitimate concerns to how the paranormal-reincarnation world rules were set up that were ignored in the story.  That feels lazy.

In Farleigh Field by Rhys Bowen.  I like that the author tried something different-- not a huge difference in setting, but a different-feeling storyline and different types of characters.  Unfortunately, she didn't quite make the jump.  The love triangle felt ham-handed from the beginning, and the spy story was equally clumsy, with thin characters popping up as obvious herrings right and left.  A tighter story with fewer characters would have allowed for more examination of motivations and been more satisfying than having the bad guy pop up Jack-in-the-box style in the last half-dozen pages.