Wind's Goings On

Against the Currant 52% Review

 

This book has been a welcome change of pace from Don't Let Her Stay. It's a bit melodramatic, but in a way that feels earnest even when we're rehashing information for the xth time. 

 

Against the Currant is a first person POV about a woman and her family establishing her dream career, running an East Indian Bakery. As part of a proud immigrant family who has worked their asses off over the years, Lyndsay wants to not only share her family's cuisine but also her experience and love of her heritage through their cooking and baking. 

 

A stormcloud rapidly rolls in, however, as she is thrown into a murder investigation on the day of the Grand Opening. 

 

I'm torn between simultaneously wishing I could just stay in the bakery, listen to Lyndsay grow her brand in a slice-of-life story and knowing I would probably get quite full quite quickly. Nevertheless, the moments where I enjoy this book the most are the ones where we're getting information about a baked good or tea or anything related to the food and culture. 

 

I do think it's fairly far-fetched to have Lyndsay decide that the answer to being a prime suspect is simply to go and investigate the real killer. It makes sense for a detective story with a hard-boiled P.I., the sort of gritty noir tale where the world is all out of fair shakes and you just have to clear your name, but Lydnsay is far from that sort of protagonist and far from that genre. Her brother is a very well-educated lawyer and he pulls his protege in to be Lyndsay's defense attorney. The issue is that whoever is setting her up is doing so with the express purpose of ruining her bakery, or so it would seem. And so if she waited around to go to trial and had all the negative publicity of having the trial out, she feels she will lose her bakery, into which she has invested everything. 

 

 

I immediately understood a few things, but it's only looking at the series wholecloth that I feel like I have a proper portrait. This is a remarkable feat, in truth; the whole series works in chain, not just as a linked narrative, but a linked understanding of the Baudelaire children and their development over time with each other's influence as well as those of the external factors (read: dangers) to which they're constantly exposed.

 

I'm going to be spoiling the whole series, so if you haven't read them I would suggest going to do so; they're very quick reads if you have a library card and want to listen to them at 2.0x speed, another suggestion of mine.