JENN MCKINLAY: It happened again. I discovered a book that has so captured my imagination, I wish I’d written it.
Emily Wilde’s Encyclopaedia of Faeries by Heather Fawcett is just perfection – in my opinion. A brilliant yet socially inept heroine, a charming and mysterious hero, and an adventure seeking and cataloging “The Folk” (faeries) of a remote Norwegian village for the Dryadology department in which they both work at the University of Cambridge in 1909. If Lessons in Chemistry and Grimm’s Fairy Tales (the originals not the watered down versions) had a book baby this would be it. It truly is the perfect winter tale.
So, that’s my latest - Darn it, I wish I’d written that! - book.
How about you, Reds? What books have you read recently that are so good you wished you’d written them?
HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: Wrong Place, Wrong Time, by Gillian McAllister. It’s a terrific novel of suspense, where in chapter 1, a woman sees her son murder someone. She’s baffled and astonished and horrified, and cannot figure out why this would happen! The next morning, she wakes up. And it’s the day before the murder. And the next time she wakes up, it’s the day before that. But! She remembers everything that happened. It’s hard to explain, and incredibly wonderful to read, and I cannot imagine how she wrote it. Highly highly recommend it.
It’s not only a terrific mystery, but absolutely poignant, and touching, about how our lives go by so quickly and we don’t notice the sweet and important little things, and we even forget our own happiness.
HALLIE EPHRON: Whenever I read a book by Peter Abrahams (aka Spencer Quinn) I am transported and delighted, whether it’s one of his books for children (“Down the Rabbit Hole”…) or one of his Chet and Bernie books (“Doggone It”...), I am in awe. I’ve been a fan ever since I was gobsmacked by his mystery novel “Oblivion” more than a decade ago (opens with the narrator testifying in court while losing consciousness and his memory to a brain tumor–a tour de force) when I was reviewing crime fiction for the Boston Globe. So add his latest, “Mrs. Plansky’s Revenge,” to my list of Peter’s books that I wish I could have written.
LUCY BURDETTE: My list is long (and I’m not including my blogmates)! Any of the Ann Cleeves Shetland or Vera books (love the characters and the setting,) Barbara O’Neal’s The Art of Inheriting Secrets, Ann Mah’s The Lost Vintage, Juliet Blackwell’s The Paris Key.
This is making me think I’d better get back to work ASAP!
RHYS BOWEN: The thing I most wish I had written was not a book but a TV series. The Bletchley Circle. When I saw that the first thing I said was “This is brilliant. Why didn’t I think of it?” But among recent books I wish I had written LESSONS IN CHEMISTRY. I loved that it was quirky, funny and didn’t fit any genre. Different. I really want to write a book that is different from anything ever written. That’s not easy. Oh, and I was impressed with Magpie Murders. I thought the story within the story was so clever, and the TV version was fantastic.
JENN: Oh, I loved, loved, loved, Lessons in Chemistry. And I agree, it defied categorization. Such an achievement.
DEBORAH CROMBIE: I hadn’t read anything by David Nicholls before we watched the Netflix series based on his novel ONE DAY. The series is astoundingly good–I can’t say much more than that because, spoilers, of which even the critics from a lot of major media have been guilty. (Maybe they assumed everyone had read the book? Or seen the Anne Hathaway/Jim Sturgess adaptation?) As soon as the last episode finished I had to dive into the book to see if it was as good, and there is my “Oh my gosh, I wish I’d written this,” moment. Such clever construction–the two characters meet on the day of their university graduation, July 15th, and the novel is a snapshot of that one day in their lives for the next twenty years. It’s funny, sexy, heartbreaking, human, and ultimately life-affirming. Just genius. Big sigh of envy and admiration from me!
JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: Oh, this is hard. I often get the severe case of the green-eyed monster over one aspect of a book or another. I remember reading BLOOD IS THE SKY the year after I met its author, Steve Hamilton, and wishing SO HARD I could write with his spare precision. Carol Goodman’s debut, THE LAKE OF DEAD LANGUAGES, is as perfect a blend of genre and literary as I’ve ever read, and damn it, I wish I could write like that! Who doesn’t wish they had written GONE GIRL, which not only won every award and was a major bestseller, but achieved the rare feat of jump-starting an entire new type of novel in the crime fiction realm.
If I could pick just one, though, it would be THE GLASS HOTEL by Emily St. John Mandel. A little less known than her also-amazing STATION ELEVEN, The Glass Hotel is beautiful and page turning and astonishing and heartbreaking and original and compelling - ugh! So good.
