The Literate Kitty

Your first love… do you ever forget that? Those crazy rushes of hormone-enhanced feelings, hours spent daydreaming, and riding that constant high, while the first flush of infatuation (or “love”, as we all call it at the time) lasts?  No, those memories stay with you, most of us would agree, and it’s that notion which is at the heart, if you will, of author D.P. Lyle’s latest thriller, Rigged . But let me start by getting the big problem I have with this out of the way. The “first love”, in Rigged , took place between a pair of 12-year-olds… and ended right after the 6th grade, when the girl’s parents moved. (Okay, you’re thinking, so it was puppy love. What’s the problem?) I wouldn’t have a problem, if the author didn’t make such a monumentally-big deal of it, with one of his main characters—the humorously-nicknamed “Pancake”—going on (and on) about how “in love” they were, and how much he’s thought about her in the intervening twenty-plus years… despite never on...

For a lot of us—in this case, female, adult singletons who’ve moved to some place from somewhere else—daily life isn’t only about the usual challenges of work (or looking for work), feeding ourselves, doing laundry, paying bills, working out, and trying to fit some kind of fun in somehow, but it’s also a matter of trying to survive ... and often, feeling entirely alone in that very singular pursuit. In writing duo Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen’s latest, You Are Not Alone , Shay Miller is doing exactly that… while sharing an apartment with someone she has feelings for—who’s engaged to someone else. She is sporadically temping for work. And her prospects for anything resembling “fun” are… well, she can barely remember what that even is . Until one day, when a chance encounter with two women, Cassandra and Jane—sisters of similar age to her, who are vibrant, beautiful, captivating, and ( what??) apparently utterly charmed by Shay —changes everything . If these fabulous, su...

“ Witty, effervescent, charming, empowering, ‘60s-mod fun. " That’s my TL;DR take on Ms Fisher’s Modern Murder Mysteries , for those impatient to just get on with the show. But, for anyone who has longer than 10 seconds… Although it’s an updated—set some 35 years after the original Australian series, Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries (itself based on a character created by author Kerry Greenwood)—spin on the spunky-female-detective-ahead-of-her-time story, the new Ms. Fisher, Peregrine (a niece of the missing-in-action Miss F) exhibits as much chutzpah and charisma as her unknown aunt, the incomparable Phryne. While certain tropes carry over—Peregrine regularly enlists the aid of a few good friends in the solving of each mystery, just like her aunt Phryne did, and also enjoys serious chemistry with a handsome police detective (who, like the original, always manages to get called out to the same cases that Peregrine winds up taking)—make no mistake that this is a rehash...