"Been looking forward to this book so much! 🪶Allow me to ferry you to the realm between the Living and the Dead...

CHP 01

My fate is to walk amongst ghosts but to never become one myself. My name is Senka, and I am a Ferryer of souls.

Senka is with and he's wearing a yeti print T-shirt and a rainbow necklace she made him from hollowed-out bones. She says he's a big nerd who likes board games, books, and coffee. �� Cute!

And there's Mortimer, the friendly neighborhood messenger-raven. 🐦‍⬛ I love ravens!

In this version of the Underworld, there's mail (delivered by raven, of course), and shops like Medusa's Marvelous Menagerie (which sells mostly snakes)🐍 and Nyx's Shoppe of Nightmares 👹.

Charon's muscles are so big, they make Hercules jealous. 😏💪

My origin story, as is the case with all denizens of the Underworld, is that I was created when someone was needed to do a job. Charon needed an assistant, and boom, here I was. Though why I sprang up as a scrawny twelve-year-old girl and not some buff, ancient dude like Charon is a bit baffling.

Super cute first chapter! And is that a dragon I spy? 🐉

CHP 02
Omg, Mortimer is HUGE! Nearly as tall as Charon and his wing span reaches either side of a room. And he smells like "cinnamony zucchini muffins." This is the cutest version of the Underworld I've ever encountered. 😂

Beneath the Underworld is the Underwild, a realm filled with lost souls, monsters, and gods bent on revenge.

CHP 03
Dionysus is now in the home-brew kombucha business. 🤭

CHP 04
Hecate has arrived to deliver produce from the Underworld, like giant cabbage and sage whose leaves glitter and sparkle. 🥬

CHP 05
So Senka isn't a Ferryer yet, though her training has begun. But it's not easy steering a boat that has a mind of it's own. Senka gets splashed during training and Targosz writes, "The boat creaked another laugh." Love the whimsy!

CHP 07
🦙 Senka is rowing down the Archeron wearing llama pajamas, an epic hooded black cloak, and headphones while listening to "Girls Just Want to Have Fun." 🎶 There are so many amusing juxtapositions in this book.

CHP 08
Wait, the cloak is sentient too? Fun!

CHP 09
👉 Hold up... (view spoiler)[Senka just fell in the river with all the chimera, and the dragon clearly saved her by swimming under her feet and pushing her up and out of the water, but she's gonna go on pretending like the chimera are evil creatures? We're not even going to acknowledge the life-saving dragon? (hide spoiler)]

The dark sand glitters menacingly, while thick fog licks between the twisting tree trunks.

We have arrived at the Underwild, where the Living eventually become "wretched souls" doomed to wander for eternity. This wouldn't be so bad for Senka if (view spoiler)[a human girl hadn't just accidentally found her way there and refused to leave (hide spoiler)].

CHP 10
🎵 Now she's listening to Barenaked Ladies. "It's been one week since you looked at me..." 🎶"

"This one was not on my currently reading shelf. But it has been here waiting for me to read so that I could catch up on the series. And, not knowing exactly when I would begin, it was easier just to make it a reading experience between me and this book. Actually, a couple of his books. I also just finished, “The More the Terrier.��

What exactly is a dog day afternoon? Well, if we look at the book cover, we certainly can find ourselves absolutely in love with that powder puff puppy. And, it doesn’t hurt that this same puppy is biting down on some money. But what does this all mean?

I’d like to believe that a ‘dog day afternoon�� refers to those hot, sleepy afternoons when people with their dogs just want to lay around and languish. Maybe take long, meandering walks and enjoy nature. Will this be possible in another Andy Carpenter series?

For anyone new to this series, please start at the beginning with “Open and Shut.�� And, for more information on why I love this series, go to my reviews of “New Tricks�� and “Leader of the Pack.�� In both, I give background on Andy Carpenter, our main protagonist, his team and all that would make anyone want to adopt this as your new favorite series.

We begin this book with a mass shooting in an office that leaves 6 people dead (thankfully not graphically described), and a person being charged with it. But the supposed “perpetrator�� Nick Williams has his own story about what he was doing at the time of the murder. And, because he is one of Marcus�� proteges, Andy is willing to defend him.

“…I would like to know what would make a guy like that walk in and coldly gun down six people, five of whom he worked with.��

So, is his story true? And, if he wasn’t the killer, who was? And, why?

With many twists and turns, this cozy mystery with an interesting premise that is not clear to readers early on, will no doubt please readers/fans.

Open and Shut �� Review here: /review/show...
New Tricks �� Review here: /review/show...
Leader of the Pack �� Review here: /review/show...
The More the Terrier �� Review here: /review/show..."

"Maybe the reason I love McMurtry is the powerful way he evokes the emotional truth of a place through its disparate physical details: the way a man slaps his gloves against his leg or “two young dog coyotes trotting along the edge of a ridge�� or “a big freezerful of peach ice cream, rich as Jersey milk.��

In the foreground of this story is the narrator, Lonnie, whose heart is an adolescent reservoir of sexual and spiritual longing. He is the stoic poet, a boy who spends many a night beneath the big fins of the ranch’s windmill to see “across the dark prairie.�� Below him, the lights and sounds of the far off town of Thalia, chickens and whippoorwills, create a deep and beautiful melancholy. He says,

Sitting there with only the wind and the darkness around me, I thought of all the important things I had to think about: my honors, my worries, my ambitions.

External to Lonnie’s rich inner life are the relationships of the ranch he lives on. Raised by his grandfather (and the second grandmother), Lonnie is not completely orphaned. The love and admiration he feels for his grandfather, the old-time rancher Homer Bannon, is tempered by the knowledge that Homer has his flaws. Included in the cast are particular “types��: the sour and cynical Jesse, the goofy Lonzo, the hypochondriac grandmother, and the laughing/irreverent/soulful black housekeeper Halmea. Despite the conventional nature of their characters, all seem genuine. I know these people. The stranger in their midst is the boy-man Hud, the son of Homer’s second wife, who has also been raised on the ranch. His mind and heart are unreadable. He is the cruel poison of the book.

“Dey’s a snake in this yard,�� says Halmea to Lonnie, “I stay right here and watch him.�� She’s referring to the cottonmouths and rattlers that inhabit the grasses in the yard �� but the presence of the dangerous Hud is more frightening than the snakes, and later even more toxic than the disease that infects and destroys Homer’s cattle.

Still, reading the book a second time made clear to me what might have happened to Hud. He wanted to go to college �� but Homer made him enlist. He wants more power on the ranch, but Homer (like so many old men) is not going to share. He may have been born mean, but the reader will never be certain of the “why�� of it. We’ll only ever know the results.

The events that happen in the book are tragic, but the writing is gorgeous and deeply moving. I fully empathize with the teen-age Lonnie who doesn’t totally understand the emotional landmines that surround him and doesn’t like the changes he sees.

"Things used to be better around here,�� I said. “I feel like I want something back.��

"Pity,�� [Halmea] said. She picked up her pillow and held it in her lap. “you mighty young to be wantin�� things back,�� she said.
"