I read books, I swear...

Not that it seems like it; according to this I haven't read any books between May 8 and May 19 - but I have!

It's just that one of them I can't talk about, and then I'm in the middle of a couple of them so no single one gets finished.

But I did finish (and start) In the Shadow of Blackbirds by Cat Winters. It was pretty good, especially for YA, I think - there were some "magical" elements, but also a lot about WWI and the Spanish Flu, and I thought the author did a nice job of incorporating her research and really setting the scene nicely. The story itself wasn't all that fascinating. An intriguing main character, and then some (not so) mysterious shenanigans.

Basically, she's the daughter of a man arrested for aiding draft dodgers and flees from Portland to her aunt in San Diego, where her childhood best friend / blossoming first love lived before he enlisted. Nobody's heard anything from him, then they hear he's dead, then he starts haunting her (after in a fit of rage at the desperation and hopelessness of life she goes and gets herself electrocuted) and it turns out things are not what they seem. Except...they kind of are. While I appreciated that in the end we didn't get the happy ending I thought was coming, the "twist" at the end wasn't much of one...unless the audience is supposed to spend the whole book yelling at the protagonist, "open your eyes, girlie!!" (I dunno, girlie seems period-appropriate). But I really did like Mary Shelley Black as the heroine - she loves science (and it's believable, not totally anachronistic, and not overly feisty) and does the right thing even when it's hard and/or dangerous.

Could be the start of a series - at least, MSB seemed way too well drawn, but also with hints at future developments, for a one-off. Not that a character in a non-series book couldn't or wouldn't be well-drawn, there's just something about it that feels like the author is setting her up for future escapades.

One major problem, though - the ghost non-sex sex scene was just LUDICROUS. I mean, seriously. So silly. And yet still a million times less stupid / hotter than the random 10-seconds-of-dry-humping orgasm in Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk, so that's something.

And they day before I finished a really good - although not as excellent as I had hoped - book, which I can't talk about because it was an advance copy I got my hands on.