July's Top Three Reads - Bumbling Heroes, Kitchen Trouble, and a Little Neighborly Murder

Hello Book Lovers!

You know how they say "a month Sundays"? Well, for me, July was a month of Fridays... Friday the Thirteenth, to be precise.

Seriously, if something could go wrong, it did. From a potentially catastrophic medical test result to a pretty vile case of harassment, July was a month during which I most definitely needed to escape reality.

Which may explain why I ended up reading and listening to about ten books over the past few weeks.

Thankfully, the book gods were cutting me a break, and every one of the books were terrific, entertaining, and provided that much-needed escape. Although, that did make it tough to pick the top few.

But pick I did! I picked so enthusiastically, I couldn't narrow it down my favorites to just three.

So, if you're finding yourself having a month of Friday the 13ths and need an escape, you might just find it below.

And if you're having the most fabulous-est month ever, then keep it going with these fabulous reads!

Note: If you're interested in grabbing any of these books for yourself, a tap on that title link or the cover will take you to the book's page on Amazon, or you can always look for the book at your local library.

First up, lunch ladies getting up to no good!

The Dinner Lady Detectives

by Hannah Henry

This book just goes to show, you don't mess with the lunch ladies! (Or "dinner" ladies if you're in the UK... possibly, you should mess with them even less, as this book goes to show!)

The basic premise of this is that one of the lunch (dinner) ladies at a private school has been found dead in a walk-in freezer. The police write it off as an unfortunate accident, but lunch-lady couple Margery and Clementine (mostly Clementine) can't ignore some obvious clues. And so they go about digging into the case as clumsily as you'd expect from two amateurs.

This was simply one of those books that you can tell the author had a ton of fun writing it. Although the "whodunnit" in this book was fairly obvious, watching Margery and Clementine get up to no good while trying to do good was a delight (if not a bit ridiculous in some places, but that was part of the fun... this is fiction, after all). The side characters are all delightfully quirky, and the secrets M & C uncover were like tidbits of juicy gossip.

The humor in this book is also wonderfully wry and subtle. The exaggerated references to the murder victim's age kept getting higher and higher (she starts out in her late 70s and ends up being 900 by the end), were hilarious. And some of the slapstick humor hit just the right note -- silly without being over the top.

My only complaint about this little gem was that sometimes Margery and Clementine were hard to tell apart. Other than Clementine being a bit bolder, there seemed to be little difference between them, and in the audiobook, the narrator did little to make their voices distinct.

Still, overall I gobbled up with the Dinner Ladies had to offer and loved nearly every bite. And I'm looking forward to trying out the next serving in the series.

Next, bumbling heroes...and octopus conspiracies

The Fairfax Redemption

By Christopher Shevlin

I want to say it's hard to believe that one person can get themselves into so much trouble without even trying, but Shevlin makes this entirely believable for his bumbling Jonathon Fairfax character.

The basic premise... oh man, where to begin with this one. Let's just say, Jonathon sees his old girlfriend on the Tube and this leads exposing a no-good politician and Jonathon breaking out of jail. Yes, it's one of those books where one thing leads to another in the funniest, most happenstance way possible, and Shevlin pulls it off without a hitch.

Although the Fairfax books are a series, I'd only read Book 1 prior to this (The Perpetual Astonishment of Jonathon Fairfax). But that worked out perfectly since nearly all the main characters in that first book play major roles in this book.

And while this could simply be a very well done comedy of errors, it's the characters that really pull you in.

That's not to say there's a ton of character development, but when I read about Jonathon getting arrested, it was one of those moments where I was almost shouting at Jonathon to stop digging the hole. Just put down the shovel and walk away (not a literal shovel, of course)!! There's very few books I've read lately that can do that.

Plus, it's downright brimming with wry humor combined with a bit of slapstick silliness, and who doesn't love that mix!?

Overall, highly recommended if you're looking for and easy-to-read bumbling misadventure with a load of quirky characters.

Next up, there's nothing like a little neighborly murder...

Close to Death

by Anthony Horowitz

Another great installment to the Hawthorne & Horowitz series. Great... but not the best.

If you're unfamiliar with this series, Horowitz has made himself a character in his own novels as he follows around private detective Hawthorne because Horowitz is meant to be writing novels about Hawthorne solving cases. And usually Horowitz gets tangled up in the crimes as he tries to figure out exactly who Hawthorne is.

And I LOVED the first four books. They were wryly funny (especially Horowitz's flares of jealousy over his publisher liking Hawthorne better than him), the mysteries were twisty, and the character interactions were beyond compare.

Now, if I had never read those earlier books, this would be a solid five stars. It was great, the mystery was clever, and Horowitz's stubborn determination to butt in on his own story was fun to watch play out.

But... I have to say I missed the interaction of Hawthorne and Horowitz. There is a little bit, as Horowitz collects case notes from Hawthorne, and Hawthorne critiques what Horowitz has written, but the "odd-couple-buddy-adventure" aspect that I loved in the first four books was sorely missed.

As for the mystery, it was pretty good, kept me guessing up to a point, but this felt more like a Magpie Murders mystery rather than a Hawthorne & Horowitz mystery. It just felt a tad too "cozy" compared to the other books.

Again, if this was the first H&H book I'd read, it would have gotten five stars and I'd have no complaints (except for the book ending REALLY abruptly... almost as if a deadline had been missed and it had been wrapped up ASAP), and I'll definitely be gobbling up the next installment of the series, but of the five so far, this was my least favorite.

And finally, one extra recommendation for the non-fiction fans out there...

How to Survive History

by Cody Cassidy

A perfect book for trivia nerds with a sense of humor!

This book takes you along from the Age of Dinosaurs to the modern age, looking at various disasters and (supposedly) how to escape them. From zigzagging away from a T. Rex to your best bet location on the Titanic, you get a quick rundown (in most cases) of what led up to the disaster, what made it so disastrous, and what your odds of survival are (and how to increase them).

How to Survive History mostly lives up to its promise, although some of the chapters were almost entirely about the disaster rather than how to actually survive it (hence, the four-star rating). Still, overall it's terrific, easy-to-read book. There's plenty of scientific and historical facts that appealed to my trivia-loving heart, and it's all delivered with plenty of tongue-in-cheek humor which keeps this from being a dry collection of facts.

The book is also presented really well. Each chapter moves you up a notch through history, and each is entirely independent of the others, making it easy to jump around if you prefer your history delivered a bit more randomly.

Definitely recommended if you're looking to giggle as you learn a bit of science and history... and survival tactics!

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