Two Tahoe Reads

I always feel awkward about putting two books in a wrapup post. Three is fine! But two seems like the wrong number. Still, nobody actually cares at all so I will press on. I read two books while on vacation this weekend in the Lake Tahoe area.

The Maid: A Novel (by Nita Prose)

I love the (unreliable, of course) narrator here, a maid named Molly who is clearly neuroatypical in some way. This is a page-turning thriller and a fun, fast read. However, the ending is super disappointing, with multiple deus ex machinas. (Or is it deuses ex machina?) I wouldn't be surprised if the ending changed from an earlier draft, since one seemed to really fit with the clues and what is here.... doesn't, really.  There are also a few out-of-character moments that really seem off given all we know about Molly. This had so much potential but I wanted a more satisfying structure.

Mistborn: The Final Empire (by Brandon Sanderson) 

One of the Read Harder challenges this year is to "read a book recommended by a friend with different reading tastes." I am not much of a reader of high fantasy (I've read the Lord of the Rings books and that's pretty much it) and my friends have been recommending Brandon Sanderson to me for more than a decade.  Given his Kickstarter success recently, it seemed like a good time to try him once again. (I've tried in the past and have failed in the past.)

The first 200 pages or so of this book were the usual slow going. A lot of extensive worldbuilding, which I find tiresome even when done well (and Sanderson, to his credit, does it very well). But I was determined to make it through a Sanderson novel this time. (Plus I was on vacation with my Sanderson stan friends and I had promised.) By the time I hit the halfway mark though, I was all in. The world was built, and Sanderson's plot and characters pulled me forward. All my predictions for the ending were wrong but it all fit perfectly and was so satsifying. This is the first book in a trilogy and now that I've made the investment, I think I might see it all the way through!