Review: A Scarcity of Condors (Venery #3) by Suanne Laqueur

Juleón "Jude" Tholet has survival in his DNA. His father, Cleon, lived through imprisonment and torture during Pinochet's military coup in Chile. His mother, Penny, risked everything to gain her husband's freedom and flee the country with their newborn son. But as a closeted gay teenager growing up in Vancouver, Jude is targeted by a neighborhood bully called El Cóndor, culminating in a vicious hate crime that forces the Tholets to flee their country again.

Jude cautiously rebuilds his life in Seattle, becoming an accomplished pianist, but his his wings have been clipped and he cannot seem to soar in his relationships. Only family remains a constant source of strength and joy, until a DNA test reveals something that shocks all the Tholets: Jude is not their child.

Stunned by the test results, the Tholets must dig into their painful past, re-examine their lives in 1973 Santiago and the events surrounding Jude's birth story. It’s a tale rooted in South America’s Operation Condor. It spreads through Pinochet’s terrifying regime of detention camps, torture, disappeared civilians and stolen children. The journey forces Penny Tholet to confront the gaps in her memory while Cleon must re-live an ordeal he’s long kept hidden away in a secret world. The tale ends with Jude digging through his genetic code in a quest to find his biological parents. Are they alive?

Or are they among Los Desaparecidos—the Disappeared Ones? Suanne Laqueur’s third book in the Venery series explores the desperate acts of love made in times of war, and the many ways family can be defined.

Disclaimer: I'm not going to be able to do this book justice with this review.

I went in warily since reviews were mixed and my own past experiences with this author have been uneven. To be perfectly frank, Ms. Laqueur has a penchant for penning painful books that tend to wring me out emotionally so I've learned to gird my loins. Her writing is some of the best there is, lyrical at times and evocative to the very end.

Why are these women here dancing on their own?

Why is there this sadness in their eyes?

Why are the soldiers here

Their faces fixed like stone?

I can't see what it is they despise

Dancing with the missing

They're dancing with the dead

They dance with the invisible ones

Their anguish is unsaid

They're dancing with their fathers

They're dancing with their sons

Dancing with their husbands

They dance alone

They dance alone

A Scarcity of Condors was no different than the previous two books in this series in that regard but this one carved out a special place in my heart and maybe, just maybe, turned me into a fan. No one was more surprised by this development than I since not only is this not a romance but it also delves deep into a very painful period in Chile's history filled with rape, genocide and unimaginable tortures during the reign of Pinochet.

So, you can imagine my surprise when I found myself not just engrossed, not just unable to put it down but moved to tears more than once usually over fairly innocuous exchanges between the characters.

These characters are exceptionally crafted and without that the whole thing would've fallen apart. The Tholets share the spotlight in A Scarcity of Condors. Penny and Cleón, the matriarch and patriarch of the family survived Operation Condor and fled to Canada with Jude in 1973 only to see their first born, Jude, survive a vile act of homophobia in high school forcing the Tholets to flee yet again to the U.S.

The narrative bounces around in time explaining their collective pasts, stirring into the mix the delightful and unflappable Serena Tholet, sister extraordinaire, as well as Tej Khoury. Tej is audacious and irresistible. He and Jude crash into each other and choose to stay crushed. Their chemistry is undeniable and I enjoyed their angst-free, genuine and heartfelt evolution from first-time into forever.

So there are romantic elements but by and large A Scarcity of Condors is a tour de force ensemble fiction that not only kicks over the rocks of humanity to examine the ugly underbelly but obliterates them. Ms. Laqueur rarely shies away from the darkness that exists in the human psyche but here she deftly paired it, again and again, with the triumphs over said darkness especially through reliance on family, however that may be defined or redefined, as it were.

One day we'll dance on their graves

One day we'll sing our freedom

One day we'll laugh in our joy

And we'll dance

One day we'll dance on their graves

One day we'll sing our freedom

One day we'll laugh in our joy

And we'll dance

~Sting

The Tholets were woven into the Venery thread seamlessly, like they'd been there all along and that too touched me. I'm even hopeful there will be another book forthcoming in this series. Technically this book could probably be read as a stand-alone but I don't think it will resonate as much without having read the previous two but especially An Exaltation of Larks, where the Pinochet storyline was introduced. In many ways, this seems like a venerable love letter to Chileans, particularly those that were disappeared.

If you're looking for a read that will dig its claws into you and not let go, look no further.

A copy was provided by NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Review: Renaissance (Village Love #2) by Lillian Francis

Smudge really needs to get laid, if only to stop himself wondering about the softness of Raleigh’s curls and why he keeps running away.

After his tumultuous teenage years, Smudge has settled into his quiet life in the sleepy English village of Slopy Bottom. He’s his own boss with the time and space to indulge his artistic creativity. And he has friends. He’s happy. Satisfied. Lonely. And the pool of potential soulmates is almost non-existent. His friends, Rick and Mal, flush with their own happy romance, keep trying to set him up with the most incompatible men, and he's never finding true love on Grindr. Hell, he's not even going to manage a hook up based on the kinky messages he’s been getting recently. He'll just have to slake his desire to find his own HEA in the pages of bosom-heaving romance novels.

Raleigh is the darling of Slopy Bottom’s blue rinse brigade: church organist, mobile librarian, and apparently wedded to his trademark cardigans. He seems to be the polar opposite of the artistic Smudge, whose brightly coloured mohawk and piercings should be a red flag to Raleigh. Yet he’s yearning for company too. It’s just that Raleigh has less expectation and definitely less courage to chase after it, for reasons that he keeps very close to his chest. Reasons that don’t stop him from being drawn irresistibly to Smudge.

Smudge is sure that the way Raleigh runs from him whenever he sees him is cruelly deliberate. A reflection on his bad boy looks and his disdain for Raleigh’s precious church. So why can’t he stop thinking about the softness of Raleigh’s curls and his delicate body? Then Raleigh offers an olive branch of sugar and caffeine, Smudge’s favourite combination, starting them on a road to an awkward truce. And when they are conned into working together on a community project at the local hospital, the proximity ignites a spark that can’t be ignored. But navigating the murky waters that could take their relationship beyond tentative friendship all depends on whether Raleigh can release his secret fears – and whether Smudge is the man to share and allay them.

Five bliss-filled hearts - though I have a bit of a confession; for some reason this book took me a while to get into. I kept starting it, then reading something else - I just couldn't get into it. Until I could. I truly don't know why this took me so long to get into to read because I loved it enormously once I did get going. Once I properly started it was an I-can't-put-this-down kinda read. I genuinely, genuinely loved it and had a horrendous book hangover at the end. I liked the first book, and the short prequel,  in the series, so it should have been no surprise that I loved this too. It just kinda was after taking a little while to get into. My brain is a peculiar place. *shrug*

I love books that are set in Britain, especially in rural Britain, it is my favourite setting, if pushed to choose. I love small village/town stories, they generally have such a feel-good factor about them and this was no exception. Smudge and Raleigh are both characters we've met in the series as secondary characters and now it was time to find out their story. Smudge with his bad-boy aura and Raleigh seeming too good to be true - it just worked perfectly. Through in a bit of a crisis/humanitarianism/helpfulness, add a dash of UST, a pinch (and it was just a pinch thank goodness) of miscommunication, mix it up with helpful friends and a sprinkle of unnecessary jealousy and you have a beautifully baked story. The kind that warms your cockles, and make you crave tea and scones (jam first) while reading.

It's just good. A perfect series to comfort read. This book definitely can be read as a standalone - but why would you want to miss out on all the tales of Slopy Bottom? I, for one, cannot wait until the next instalment is available.

A copy of this book was given in exchange for an honest review.
For more information, see Goodreads.