A Most Extraordinary Pursuit by Juliana Gray

This book started off sadly (death of character from the prequel) but with the introduction of a new character, Emmeline Truelove, who is snappy and a female secretary. Ooooooo.
Her love interest, Lord Silverton, reminds me of no one so much as Lord Peter Wimsey. Seemingly blithe and a little stupid, his thin veneer hides a deeper pain and intelligence. Silverton is to be Emmeline's chaperone on a trip to discover where the new Duke of Olympia (Max Haywood) is since he seems to have disappeared from his latest archaeological dig. A trip that the ghost of Victoria (yes, the former Queen of England) expressly forbade her from going on. So. We've got snappy dialogue, an intelligent female, light paranormal with the heroine seeing (maybe- she keeps telling herself they're figments of her imagination) ghosts, and a quest. Great start.
I was getting excited about this book and went to Goodreads to start writing my review because I was enjoying it so much and didn't want to miss anything. When I got there, I was puzzled as to why a three-star average (which may, of course, change, and god knows I definitely have enjoyed books more than the Goodreads average). But I was only 100 pages in at that point. And I remained puzzled until the last 150 or so pages. Oofda. I feel like the last part of this book was from some other story and was just copied and pasted on to the end. There is absolutely no rhyme or reason for why a book that was zigging and zagging along gentlly (though Silverton seems turns out to be much more of a rake than I suspect Lord Peter was and Emmeline really was turning out to be TSTL, though I could argue with myself that that was probably closer in character to how a woman of her time would have been) all of a sudden veered off a cliff and nosedived into a completely new genre. Even the writing style changed. It was frustrating. Especially given how much I remembered liking the "Duke of Olympia Meets his Match" (which I only gave three stars but thought that it could have been better as a full-length novel). Both books could have benefited from good editing.

Two and a half stars because I enjoyed so much of the book so much before the ending tanked it badly enough that I'm not sure I would even try to pick up the next book in the series
This book comes out October 4

Narwhal: Unicorn of the Sea by Ben Clanton

In a recent yoga training, the teacher talked about unicorns and narwhals as a way to think about posture, to hold your horn high, so to speak. So when this book crossed my NetGalley queue a few days later, I requested it, thinking it a nice coincidence.
And I'm glad I pulled this book. It's a just a nice, fun story about a Narwhal who is maybe a little overenthusiastic but very imaginative and read to play. The illustrations were great and went well with the story.
Book comes out October 4
Four Stars
Followed by Super Narwhal and Jelly Jolt

You Can't Touch My Hair And Other Things I Still Have to Explain by Phoebe Robinson

OK, so the biography authors I've been reading lately have really been knocking it out of the park and Phoebe Robinson is no exception. I had never heard of her before but the title of her book intrigued me. I soon learned that Phoebe is a an actress and, if I still watched the Daily Show, I might've seen her there.

And her strong authorial voice makes me feel like I get to know her as a person. A wonderfully delightful person. She talks a lot about what it's like to be a black woman in today's day and age and speaks very insightfully into the struggles that she faces as someone who is more often surrounded by people who are not her skin color than people who are.

Her stories are told with not a little bit of humor but at the bottom you can still feel the anger and frustration that builds up as these little micro aggressions get you Every. Single. Day. She brings her experience to the page in a way that even I, a white woman living in Montana, can start to understand. I will most definitely be looking up 2 Dope Queens and will be looking out for more by this author as well as her partner on "Queens," Jessica Williams (awesome name!), who wrote the forward.

This book comes out October 4

Five Stars

The Secret Keepers by Trenton Lee Stewart

Benedict Society fans rejoice! This new book from Trenton Lee Stewart introduces new characters  who feel familiar and the writing is like a cozy blanket, recognizable and comforting. There were some rough spots but overall an enjoyable story.
Reuben is a boy who lives in a neighborhood ruled by The Smoke through the man's group The Directions, four men who  collect bribes to keep the neighborhood safe, mostly from them. He avoids thinking about his neighborhood life and how life for he and his mother has changed, gotten harder. Instead, he does a version of parkour, exploring the abandoned buildings around him. But then, he discovers a mysterious watch, one that enables him to turn invisible. A treasure The Smoke will do anything to get ahold of.
So Reuben will need help. He tracks down the family of the man who used to own the watch, more specifically, he finds Penelope, "Penny". Penny is related to another Penelope, one who was an adventuress (but not in the romance novel sense, a woman after someone's money, no- she is a female who had adventures. At least, until she disappeared). Apparently, Penny's family has stayed in the same lighthouse for generations, just waiting until the day that they will be able to find out what happened to the first Penelope and what she hid in the smugglers tunnels.
With The Directions quickly tracking Reuben, he and Penny and her brother Jack will have to work hard and fast in order to stay out of the hands of The Smoke.

Three and a half stars
This book comes out September 27

Comics Confidential by Leonard S. Marcus

I think you might really have to be into graphic novels to enjoy this book. I got it on a whim, not having read lot of nonfiction books at the time and was a little disappointed by the format. This is a book where it's a series of questions and answers rather than essays written by the artists themselves.
A nice look into the world of graphic novels and the people who create them, but a little hard to read since it doesn't really flow. It was really nice to see examples of the artists work and I'll probably still go look some of them up online or find more of their books. IT also seemed like a nice cross-section of artists.

Three Stars
This book comes out September 27

Timmy Failure: The Book You're Not Supposed to Have by Stephan Pastis

This was a weird and wacky book. I quickly realized (once I started reading) that I was coming into a series in the middle. While I was quickly able to jump into the story, I did wish I had the background from the first four books to help clear up some of the mysteries-- is that a real polar bear? or a stuffed animal a la Calvin and Hobbes? Why doesn't Timmy like Doorman Dave? Why doesn't Timmy seem to actually encounter very many mysteries if he's a detective?
I really enjoyed this book. I'm pretty sure I had no idea what was going on for most of it but enjoyed the ride all the same.

This book comes out September 27
Four stars

Home with My Sisters by Mary Carter

There were times when the writing was rough and the story didn't quite hold together in all the places, but this was overall a book that gave me some warm feels.
The book opens with an elderly woman revealing to her neighbor that her cancer is going to cause her death, probably before the new year. Then, she tells him that she has three granddaughters, about whom he's never known. And she wants them to come for Christmas. In order to get them there, he's to tell them that they will inherit her estate. And it's a pretty big chunk of change.
Hope is ecstatic. She's been trying to get her sisters together for the holidays for years. Her older sister Faith took off pregnant at seventeen and left them to the dubious care of their mother. The youngest sister, Joy, is flighty and also isn't talking to Hope at the moment. Hope is just trying to ride out the holidays so she can break up with her boyfriend when neighbor Michael appears on her doorstep. Well, not exactly her doorstep, at the shelter where she works. After having just taken in a bloodhound.
The three of them are off (since Hope's boyfriend decides to break up with her, Merry Christmas! (she's actually very relieved)) to find Joy. She's panhandling with her boyfriend but Hope and Michael are able to follow her and her boyfriend to the boyfriend's mother's apartment where Joy is at first reluctant to come up to visit their grandmother, but then learns of the money and decides to come along. And the portrayal of Joy was problematic. She was painted as being perceived as money-grubbing by her sisters, but we were supposed to be seeing her in this different light because of a side she wasn't showing them. And frankly, the money-grubbing was way more apparent than the other.
And Faith, the oldest, shows up with her two children, even though she was supposed to spend one last holiday playing Happy Families with her husband. It seems he caught her cheating and their marriage is about to be kaput. Faith was also a character that was difficult to like, since she is so concerned with staying thin and fit and not at all concerned about her children, barely even noticing that her son is on the verge of committing suicide.
There are some major themes in this book like suicide, mental illness, and racism (Joy's boyfriend is black) but many of them are dealt with rather perfunctorily -- here's a problem, it's bad, now we've fixed it. The swiftness of it bothered me but somehow the book overall charmed me.

This book comes out September 27
Three and a half stars