Category: B Reviews

#BookReview: The Booklover’s Library by Madeline Martin

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B Reviews> blog tours> book reviews
#BookReview: The Booklover’s Library by Madeline MartinThe Booklover's Library by Madeline Martin
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, large print, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: historical fiction, World War II
Pages: 416
Published by Hanover Square Press on September 3, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

A heartwarming story about a mother and daughter in wartime England and the power of the books that bring them together.
In Nottingham, England, widow Emma Taylor finds herself in desperate need of a job to provide for herself and her beloved daughter, Olivia. But with the legal restrictions prohibiting widows with children from most employment opportunities, she’s left with only one option: persuading the manageress at Boots’ Booklover’s Library to take a chance on her.
When the threat of war becomes a reality, Olivia must be evacuated to the countryside. In her daughter’s absence, Emma seeks solace in the unlikely friendships she forms with her neighbors and coworkers, as well as the recommendations she provides to the library’s quirky regulars. But the job doesn’t come without its difficulties. Books are mysteriously misshelved and disappearing, and her work forces her to confront the memories of her late father and the bookstore they once owned together before a terrible accident.
As the Blitz intensifies in Nottingham and Emma fights to reunite with her daughter, she must learn to depend on her community and the power of literature more than ever to find hope in the darkest of times.

My Review:

When this story truly opens, after a heartbreaking prologue, it’s August of 1939 and the impending war is NOT the biggest problem looming on Emma Taylor’s horizon.

Her immediate worry is continuing to put food on the table – as well as continuing to have a table to put it on – for herself and her eight-year-old daughter Olivia. As a widow with a child, Emma is unemployable – regardless of her skills, her abilities, or her outright need to support herself and that child.

And her widow’s pension plus the government stipend for her daughter aren’t nearly enough to make ends meet – no matter how much Emma scrimps and saves – which she absolutely does – at every single turn.

Emma’s parents are dead, her late husband’s parents are, frankly, terrible – or at least they were the last time she saw them – and she has no options and no prospects. Not because she’s not capable but because that’s the way society wills it. (I am holding myself back from getting up on a soapbox SO HARD!)

The war is about to change all of that, but Emma doesn’t know it, yet.

Still, on a cold and rainy afternoon, a door opens for her in the person of Miss Bainbridge, the manager of Nottingham’s Boots’ Booklover’s Library. The Boots’ libraries, which really did exist, were subscription lending libraries housed within Boots’ Chemist shops around the country. They had strict educational requirements and equally strict standards for their female ‘librarians’.

Emma had the skills, after growing up in her late father’s bookshop, and Miss Bainbridge, for reasons of her own, bent the rules. Rules that began going by the wayside not long after, as Britain declared war on Germany after its invasion of Poland.

In the midst of what later became known as the “Phoney War”, the parents in cities that were determined to be targets for German bombers shipped their children out to the hopefully safer countryside. Nottingham was chock full of factories that either had been or would be converted to war production.

Olivia, like so many children, was sent – or evacuated as it was referred to – turning the white lie of Emma being alone into a lonely truth. A truth that, even as it broke her heart a bit, forced her into relying on her fellow librarians for companionship and friendship and opened up her world and her place in it, if only to get herself away from a flat that was empty, quiet and much, much too clean.

The Booklover’s Library becomes a story on three levels. On the first level, there’s Emma, her work and her life on the homefront as the Blitz bombards Nottingham as well as other industrial centers. On the second, there’s Olivia’s own story, an independent adventure she feels forced to take as hers becomes one of the placements that does not work out – at all. And over all of that, there’s the story of the power of literature to build community – and to help people find a light in even the darkest of places.

And if that last piece of the story reminds readers of The Last Bookshop in London, it’s only right that it should. Both The Booklover’s Library and The Last Bookshop in London are from the same talented pen, and both tell charming and heartwarming stories centered on the early days of that terrible war.

Escape Rating B: I picked up The Booklover’s Library because I was fascinated by the concept AND because I enjoyed the author’s earlier book, The Last Bookshop in London. (Which is absolutely a readalike for this book and vice versa!)

That both stories are grounded in surprising bits of real history made them that much more captivating. In this story, it’s the existence of the Boots’ Booklover’s Libraries, which existed until 1966! What’s notable about the Boots’ libraries is that they provided popular fiction – even salacious fiction – to their middle-class subscribers.

(The debate about popular vs. improving literature in public libraries has been loud, vociferous, and contentious in both the UK and the US and is STILL ongoing.)

As a librarian, I found the portrait of the Boots’ library, how it worked and how its ‘librarians’ were trained to be utterly fascinating, while the friendship, camaraderie and support that developed among the women working there – particularly under wartime conditions – is sure to charm the heart of ANY reader.

The story of the evacuations, told from both the perspective of Emma who misses her daughter but wants her safe, and Olivia who has found that safety from bombing is not nearly enough, provides a perspective that adds to the depth of the story. (This was not my favorite part of the story, but it was an important part nonetheless.)

Like The Last Bookshop in London, the story of The Booklover’s Library does not go into the details of Emma’s and Olivia’s experiences through the whole war. It doesn’t need to. It ends at the point where their personal crises have been resolved even though the war has several years to run. The icing on this cake – even if sugar is rationed – is that Emma has her chance at a Happy Ever After. The rest of their war will be following that admonition to ‘Keep Calm and Carry On’, but in much happier circumstances in spite of the war. And together.

But the reader needs to know that Emma, Olivia and their friends and loved ones made it out okay. Which we do get in a sparkling epilogue. A fitting ending to a lovely read.

#BookReview: What We Sacrifice for Magic by Andrea Jo DeWerd

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B Reviews> book reviews
#BookReview: What We Sacrifice for Magic by Andrea Jo DeWerdWhat We Sacrifice for Magic by Andrea Jo DeWerd
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: historical fantasy, relationship fiction, women's fiction
Pages: 304
Published by Alcove Press on September 24, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

Perfect for fans of Practical Magic and The Lager Queen of Minnesota: a coming-of-age novel following three generations of witches in the 1960s, this enchanting and heartwarming debut explores the importance of family and the delight and heartbreak of discovering who you truly are.

It’s 1968, and the Watry-Ridder family is feared and respected in equal measure. The local farmers seek out their water charms, and the teenagers, their love spells. The family’s charms and spells, passed down through generations of witches descending from the Black Forest, have long served the small town of Friedrich, Minnesota.

Eldest daughter Elisabeth has just graduated high school—she is expected to hone her supernatural abilities to take over for her grandmother, the indomitable Magda. She’s also expected to marry her high school sweetheart and live the rest of her life in Friedrich. But all she can ask is, why her? Why is her path set in stone, and what else might be out there for her?

She soon discovers that magic isn’t the only thing inherited in her family. That magic also comes with a great price—and a big family secret. The more she digs, the more questions she has, and the less she trusts the grandmother she thought she knew. Who is Elisabeth without her family? She must ultimately decide what she’s willing to sacrifice for her family, for their secrets and their magic, or risk it all to pave her own way.

Navigating the bittersweet tension between self-discovery and living up to familial expectations, What We Sacrifice for Magic is a touching look at coming into one’s own.

My Review:

The Age of Aquarius might have dawned in the rest of the world, but 1968 in tiny Friedrich, Minnesota seemed like it would be no different from the year before, or the year after. The witches of the Watry-Ridder family had been doing their very best – and occasionally their damndest – to make sure that life in the town they held under their protection stayed protected and pretty much the same.

Helped by the fact that it was a teeny-tiny farming community and change came even slower to those sorts of towns than it did to the big cities – and a few well-placed memory charms helped with the rest.

But 1968 was the year that Elisabeth Watry-Rider graduated high school – and was expected to settle down in Friedrich, marry the boy she’d been dating for two years, and take up the reins of her family’s magical power – reins that had been firmly held in the iron grip of her grandmother Magda since long before Elisabeth was born.

No one has ever asked Elisabeth what she wants. Not that she hasn’t always enjoyed the attention of being Magda’s favorite, and not that she hasn’t pitied both her mother and her younger sister Mary, whose powers seem to be considerably less than her own.

As Elisabeth feels the walls closing in, she envies them both their freedom from the strait-jacket of the family legacy. She begins to ask questions about why she is the one who must give up all her freedom, while everyone around her has choices. Choices that the formidable Magda took from her when she was too young to even have a voice to protest with.

Before the bars of her prison of expectations clang shut for good, Elisabeth publicly defies her grandmother, accidentally sets fire to half the town, and flees into the night. Clawing out just a little tiny space of time to see who SHE wants to be when she grows up.

It’s the making of her – even as it breaks the back of her family and shatters the community’s faith in their powers. But some things are made to be broken, and some family secrets have to be exposed before the light of hope and possibility can have a chance to heal what’s – and who’s – been torn apart.

Escape Rating B: If Hazel Beck’s Witchlore and The Lager Queen of Minnesota by J. Ryan Stradel had a book baby, with Alice Hoffman’s Practical Magic serving as either the midwife or the fairy godmother – or both – that book would be What We Sacrifice for Magic.

The title manages to tease the story without giving it away, and it’s a doozy but not in the way I expected, which leads back to those books I think contributed to its DNA.

Even though Lager Queen isn’t a book about magic, it is a story about family secrets and family rifts in a similar setting to What We Sacrifice for Magic with similar family dynamics. It’s a story about family traditions carried on by the women of the family, and the stresses and strains of a family heritage and business that is jealously guarded instead of shared.

Hazel Beck’s Witchlore and Ann Aguirre’s Fix-It Witches have similar witchy elements in that an older generation of witches is doing its damndest to control who gets power in ways that are detrimental to pretty much everyone involved – which is definitely paralleled by the story of What We Sacrifice for Magic.

The third element here – and one that didn’t get quite enough attention for this reader – is that late 1960s setting. The past is another country, they do things differently there, and that feels particularly true of the way things were before all of the social revolutions of the 1960s. The world was changing faster than small towns or formerly dominant institutions were able to keep up with – and Elisabeth’s coming of age felt like it was on the cusp of that but it wasn’t as much as this reader might have liked.

At its heart, this is a story about the family ties that bind and strangle, and the ballast of family expectations that may be great for the town but has turned out to be pretty catastrophic for the women who are supposed to bear its burdens. I felt for Elisabeth’s need to escape, I just found myself wishing that she hadn’t felt the need to take on so much guilt for having done so, and was glad to see the family start to heal when the dark secrets were finally exposed to the light.

#BookReview: Shoestring Theory by Mariana Costa

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B Reviews> book reviews
#BookReview: Shoestring Theory by Mariana CostaShoestring Theory by Mariana Costa
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: paperback, ebook
Genres: cozy fantasy, fantasy, fantasy romance, romantasy, time travel romance
Pages: 400
Published by Angry Robot on October 8, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

A queer, madcap, friends-to-lovers-to-enemies-to-lovers time travel romance with the future of the world at stake, this charming fantasy tale is sure to satisfy fans of Legends and Lattes by Travis Baldree.
The kingdom of Farsala is broken and black clouds hang heavy over the arid lands. Former Grand-Mage of the High Court, Cyril Laverre, has spent the last decade hiding himself away in a ramshackle hut by the sea, trying to catch any remaining fish for his cat familiar, Shoestring, and suppressing his guilt over the kingdom’s ruin. For he played his part – for as the King, Eufrates Margrave, descended further and further into paranoia, violence and madness, his Grand-Mage – and husband – Cyril didn’t do a thing to stop him.
When Shoestring wanders away and dies one morning, Cyril knows his days are finally numbered. But are there enough left to have a last go at putting things right? With his remaining lifeblood, he casts a powerful spell that catapults him back in time to a happier period of Farsalan history – a time when it was Eufrates’s older sister Tig destined to ascend to the throne, before she died of a wasting disease, and a time when Cyril and Eufrates’s tentative romance had not yet bloomed. If he can just make sure Eufie never becomes King, then maybe he can prevent the kingdom’s tragic fate. But the magical oath he made to his husband at the altar, transcending both time and space, may prove to be his most enduring – and most dangerous – feat of magic to date…
Featuring a formidable Great Aunt, a friends-to-lovers-to-enemies-to-lovers romance, an awkward love quadrangle and a crow familiar called Ganache, this charming story is imminently easy to read and sure to satisfy fans of fanfiction who like their fantasy lite.

My Review:

I picked this one up for the cat. Which is fair, because from a certain perspective, this whole story is, in fact and for real, all about Shoestring the cat. Even though, like Jacob Marley in A Christmas Carol, Shoestring is dead, to begin with.

If you’re also here for the cat, I will give you one spoiler, a spoiler that I seriously wished I had at the beginning. Because at the end, Shoestring will be just fine. Really, truly. (Not knowing that gave me some terrible approach/avoidance problems when I began reading the story. I was having as hard a time dealing with Shoestring’s apparent death as Cyril was.)

In a terrible future that should never have been, Cyril has been barely surviving as what used to be the Kingdom of Farsala literally rots all around him. It’s been years with bad air, almost no sun, and a starvation diet for both himself and poor Shoestring.

Cyril’s only reason for continuing this meager, guilt-ridden existence is to catch fish for his familiar, Shoestring. Everyone else he ever cared about is dead. From a certain perspective – namely Cyril’s – it’s all his fault.

But Shoestring’s passing is the cosmic kick in the pants that Cyril needed. Without Shoestring, he’s faced with two choices. He can either wither away into death, as all mages do when their familiars die, or he can get off his magical ass and go back and fix things.

Or at least try, making this whole marvelous story a fix-it fic, set in a magical world that needs a hell of a lot of fixing. The only problem is that Cyril isn’t really the right person to get the job. But he is the right person to keep his loved ones alive – and they absolutely are.

Escape Rating B: I had some mixed feelings about this book, in spite of how much I generally adore fix-it fics. Part of that can be laid at the feets of poor Shoestring, as I was nearly as heartbroken at his early, first-chapter death as Cyril was.

And, I’ll admit, I’m used to the protagonists of fix-it fics – which I usually love – being somewhat more competent hot messes than it seems Cyril could ever possibly be. He does not look before he leaps. It often seems as if he doesn’t even look after he leaps. Or at all. He doesn’t act – he reacts – and generally cluelessly at that.

Which is how his country got in the mess it did in the first place. Because Cyril is the heir to the Grand Mage of the whole entire kingdom and he’s supposed to be a whole lot more capable than he has ever demonstrated being. His great-aunt, Heléne, the current high-court witch, is that great and it seems from Cyril’s barely-adult perspective that she always has been.

But Heléne is slowing down, and Cyril hasn’t been stepping up. Which is why everything went pear-shaped. Because he didn’t see the rot in the kingdom at a point where it could be stopped. This time around, he has to do better, to be better, and at the beginning, he isn’t.

He does, eventually, and with frequent application of several boots to his ass, get better enough to figure out what went wrong the first time around – but he’s a bit slow on the uptake. Frequently. Often.

Which is why the comparisons between Shoestring Theory and Legends & Lattes fall spectacularly apart. They are both cozy fantasies – but they take vastly different approaches to both the coziness and the fantasy.

For one thing, Viv in Legends & Lattes is very competent and gets shit done. It’s just that what she wants to get done is very cozy in that her goal is to open a coffee shop. She has doubts, she has fears, she backslides in her ambition to eschew her old, violent ways as a mercenary – but she gets the job done because of herself.

Cyril gets the job done in spite of himself. In the end he does get there, but he faffs around a LOT. If it wasn’t for his friends he wouldn’t manage to get his head on straight. He IS, actually, quite capable – but he’s never been pushed to apply himself until now and it takes him a LONG time to get out of that mindset.

A lot longer than it took this reader to figure out who the true villain of the piece really was, and that Shoestring’s restoration would be part of Cyril’s reward for finally getting his act together.

In the end, I liked Shoestring Theory, but not nearly as much as I expected to. There just wasn’t enough of Shoestring himself in the story, and Cyril turned out to be a surprisingly incompetent protagonist for a fix-it story.

But I did enjoy the way the story turned itself inside out, that all of Cyril’s intentions and memories of that first, terrible, time around turned out to be not what he thought they were, and that he did manage to get to the truth and the whole truth of what went wrong the first time – and that it wasn’t ALL his fault.

So, in spite of Cyril’s frequent faffing around, the one thing he always was that shone through was that he loved deeply if not always wisely, that he had a huge capacity for trust even if it was sometimes misplaced, and that the story, the kingdom and even Cyril himself are finally saved by the depth of his loyalty to those he loves – and the reciprocation of that love and loyalty in full measure in return.

#BookReview: One Big Happy Family by Susan Mallery

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B+ Reviews> blog tours> book reviews
#BookReview: One Big Happy Family by Susan MalleryOne Big Happy Family by Susan Mallery
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss, supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: hardcover, large print, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: contemporary romance, holiday romance, relationship fiction, women's fiction
Pages: 320
Published by Canary Street Press on October 1, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

Please don’t come home for Christmas…
Julie Parker’s kids are her greatest gift. Still, she’s not exactly heartbroken when they ask to skip a big Christmas. Her son, Nick, is taking a belated honeymoon with his bride, Blair, while her daughter, Dana, will purge every reminder of the guy who dumped her. Again. Julie feels practically giddy for one-on-one holiday time with Heath, the (much) younger man she’s secretly dating.
But her plans go from cozy to chaotic when Nick and Dana plead for Christmas at the family cabin in memory of their late father, Julie’s ex. She can’t refuse, even though she dreads their reactions to her new man when they realize she’s been hiding him for months.
As the guest list grows in surprising ways, from Blair’s estranged mom to Heath’s precocious children, Julie’s secret is one of many to be unwrapped. Over this delightfully complicated and very funny Christmas, she’ll discover that more really is merrier, and that a big, happy family can become bigger and happier, if they let go of old hurts and open their hearts to love.

My Review:

That phrase is often said ironically, with a bit of a smirk instead of a smile, even an eye roll – as if somehow it’s a contradiction in terms like ‘jumbo shrimp’. When someone says “One big happy family” there’s usually a bit of a caveat to the ‘happy’ part. That something – or perhaps a whole lot of somethings or even someones – aren’t nearly as happy as things appear on the surface.

If they’re even bothering to pretend, that is.

But the Parker family is, at least, generally happy with each other – even if that’s leavened with just a bit of sadness this particular holiday as it’s their first without one of the family’s integral members. Julie Parker may have gotten over her marriage and her divorce from Eldon years ago, but he remained her friend and co-parent if not her spouse, and their adult children, Nick and Dana, miss him a LOT this first Christmas without him. The family holiday traditions just aren’t the same without him, because Eldon was really big on Christmas and he was at the center of a lot of those traditions.

Even if Julie was the person who put in the work to make them all happen. Which is the story of both her marriage AND her life. Julie gets things done, and isn’t good at relying on anyone else in the doing. The family Christmas traditions were a LOT of work – work that ALL fell on Julie’s strong but slightly tired shoulders.

She’s REALLY looking forward to this Christmas, a holiday where her big, generally happy, family is scattering to the four winds. She’s planning on two weeks of bliss and peace – not necessarily in that order – in the coziness of her own house WITH the boyfriend that she hasn’t told her kids about yet.

The only reason Julie has been keeping Heath a secret is that she’s much too worried about her family’s judgment of their relationship. Her kids know she’s dated in the decade plus since her divorce, and they’re fine with that. But she hasn’t let those relationships become serious enough to warrant the boyfriend meeting the family.

Heath is different. On paper, they match up well. Both divorced, both with two children, both owners of successful businesses, both strong and independent and capable. Heath’s a catch, and there’s no catch to the relationship, except for one thing that Julie can’t get out of her head. Heath is 42, and Julie is 54. There’s a lot of living between those twelve years, they are at different places in their lives, and people will judge them – because that’s what people do.

It may be a bigger problem in Julie’s mind than it is in the world at large or certainly among her family – but it is a real problem or at least it certainly can be.

Julie’s not sure their relationship is ready – or more to the point, that she is ready – to make Heath a part of her one big happy family. She’s happy to be able to put that off until after the holidays – possibly indefinitely.

Which is the point where all those plans refuse to survive first contact with the rest of that family, as Christmas turns into one last almighty grab at all their holiday traditions, all at once, with extra added family and a whole entire herd of drama llamas in tow.

Heath turns out to be more than willing to roll with all the punches. The question is whether Julie is, too.

Escape Rating B+: Julie’s issues over this family holiday are far, far, far from the only ones that rear their heads this holiday – but they are the ones that tugged at my heartstrings the most because they are oh so familiar and Julie is right, society will judge her relationship with a younger man. Some will judge harshly and some will say, “You go, girl!” but there will be judgment either way. And they are at different places in their lives and always will be – but that’s true of any couple with an age gap no matter which direction it goes – even if society usually glosses over those differences when the age gap is in the ‘expected’ direction.

But Julie and Heath’s issues together, along with Julie’s need to be in control and in charge at all times and not need anyone else, are not the only snow-covered hill to climb this holiday season. Every single member of this extended family has brought their very own, personal, drama llama to this Christmas feast.

The family isn’t entirely happy – as no family ever is all of the time – but there are a lot of them and the result is a lot of family dramas in a house with such wonderfully wonky acoustics that everyone can hear everything that happens everywhere outside of a closed door, even in a house big enough for SIX bedrooms and all the communal spaces that six bedrooms full of people might possibly need.

So it’s Julie and Heath, her son Nick, Nick’s wife Blair, the uncle who actually raised Blair AND her sourpuss of an estranged mother who didn’t – as well as Nick’s secret plans to NOT take over the family business after all. Julie’s daughter Dana and the man who keeps breaking her heart, over and over again – who is also Julie’s employee. Heath’s children, Madeline and Wyatt,who are ten and eight and no problem at all, but their mother, Heath’s ex Tiffany, got dumped for Christmas so Julie invites her, too. That’s not even everyone but it’s a bit past enough even before Julie ends up in the hospital after an accident.

All that’s missing is the partridge in the pear tree!

I love a good age gap romance – particularly when the woman is the older half of that relationship – when it’s done right. Which it very much is in One Big Happy Family. Howsomever, as an only child myself, the sheer number of family members and the craziness each of them brought to the holiday table – simultaneously – was the stuff of which nightmares are made. I found plenty to empathize with in most of their relationships – but I also found myself wishing there was one less of them – although I recognize that’s a ‘me’ thing and may not be a ‘you’ thing and your reading mileage may definitely vary.

All in all, if you’re looking for a happy ever after portrait of a chaotic family holiday with a family that loves each other completely and is going to stick together no matter what and get through this mess, One Big Happy Family does turn out to be a charming holiday portrait of, in the end, really, truly, one big happy family.

#BookReview: Murder at King’s Crossing by Andrea Penrose

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B Reviews> book reviews
#BookReview: Murder at King’s Crossing by Andrea PenroseMurder at King’s Crossing (Wrexford & Sloane, #8) by Andrea Penrose
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, large print, ebook, audiobook
Genres: historical fiction, historical mystery
Series: Wrexford & Sloane #8
Pages: 368
Published by Kensington on September 24, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

For fans of Miss Scarlet and the Duke and Bridgerton—a masterfully plotted mystery that combines engaging protagonists with rich historical detail and “an unusually rich look at Regency life,” (Publishers Weekly), plus a touch of romance that readers of Amanda Quick and Deanna Raybourn will savor.
Celebration is in the air at Wrexford and Charlotte’s country estate as they host the nuptials of their friends, Christopher Sheffield and Lady Cordelia Mansfield. But on the afternoon of the wedding, the festivities are interrupted when the local authorities arrive with news that a murdered man has been discovered at the bridge over King’s Crossing, his only identification an invitation to the wedding. Lady Cordelia is horrified when the victim is identified as Jasper Milton, her childhood friend and a brilliant engineer who is rumored to have discovered a revolutionary technological innovation in bridge design. That he had the invitation meant for her cousin Oliver, who never showed up for the wedding, stirs a number of unsettling questions.
Both men were involved in the Revolutions-Per-Minute Society, a scientific group dedicated to making radical improvements in the speed and cost of transportation throughout Britain. Is someone plotting to steal Milton’s designs? And why has her cousin disappeared?
Wrexford and Charlotte were looking forward to spending a peaceful interlude in the country, but when Lady Cordelia resolves to solve the mystery, they offer their help, along with that of the Weasels and their unconventional inner circle of friends. The investigation turns tangled and soon all of them are caught up in a treacherous web of greed, ambition, and dangerous secrets. And when the trail takes a shocking turn, Wrexford and Charlotte must decide what risks they are willing to take with their family to bring the villains to justice . . .

My Review:

The difference between “I’ve got a bridge to sell you” and “I’ve got revolutionary plans for building bridges to sell you” should be the width of a chasm – but it’s not nearly as far as one would expect in this latest entry in the Wrexford & Sloane Regency mystery series, after last year’s Murder at the Merton Library and the previous year’s Murder at the Serpentine Bridge.

There we go, bridges again! This one is pretty much bridges and bodies all the way down – with the occasional added Bonaparte. Not that Bonaparte is personally on the scene, but rather that this story takes place towards the end of his first brief exile. (Wrexford and company do not, as this story takes place, know precisely when that exile will end, but the handwriting was most definitely on the wall.)

The story begins when tragedy strikes in the midst of celebration. Wrexford and Sloane’s best friends, ‘Kit’ Sheffield and Lady Cordelia, finally tie their own marital knot at Wrex’s country estate. The celebration is intended to be small, close friends and family only, but one guest – or perhaps two guests – are missing, depending on how one counts. One is Lady Cordelia’s cousin Oliver Carrick and the other, Jasper Milton, is one of the dear friends who helped her sneak into mathematics lectures at Cambridge in male disguise.

Her happiness is dimmed when her friend’s body is found with her cousin’s wedding invitation as his only identification, putting her missing cousin in the frame for the murder.

And that’s where the bridges come in and cross the entire case. Her friend Milton had been hinting about a revolutionary new design that would allow bridges to be built in areas where it had been formerly considered impossible. If true and practical – and most likely yes to both because Milton truly was a genius – it would allow the new railroads to reach smaller and more remote towns. In turn, this would allow working class people to move to where their labor was needed instead of being stuck where they were born – and practically trapped.

There’s a lot of money to be made with Milton’s last designs – if they can be found. There’s also the potential for a lot of radical upheaval if those designs come to fruition – both at home and abroad.

Milton’s friends seem to be doing their damndest to place the frame for his murder around Cordelia’s cousin Oliver. At least until they start dropping like flies in their turn, at times and places where Oliver has an ironclad alibi. And yet, as far as Wrexford is concerned – and in spite of Cordelia’s hopes and fears – Oliver’s behavior makes him look guilty as sin.

There are too many in pursuit of those plans, muddying the waters and adding to the body count. Time is running out for Wrexford and Sloane to figure out who really ‘done’ it before the noose closes around the wrong neck. Or necks. Or their own.

Escape Rating B: It took the longest time for this particular entry in the series to grab me. Once it finally did, I was hooked again, but it took longer than usual. It was probably a combination of not being quite the right book at the right time, the domesticity of the early scenes (which I love but not quite so thoroughly front-loaded) AND the fact that the characters were flailing around to get even a glimpse of a direction for a bit longer than is usual for this generally über-competent crew.

Not that they were not trying – just that someone in the mix was deliberately obfuscating the situation and the clues were thin on the ground to begin with – in part because of the aforementioned malign, obfuscatory influence.

So this particular entry in the series had a LOT of plot threads going on, threw out a barrel of red herrings, and it took a fair bit of the book for those herrings to get re-gathered into the proper nets. Howsomever, as much as the process of getting there drove me a bit batty, the actual solution was priceless in the manner of those old MasterCard commercials.

Where this story was lovely was in the way that the relationships among the members of this extended found family continued to grow and deepen. Not just that Kit and Cordelia finally tied the knot, but also that the Weasels are both growing in number and growing up, which should provide plenty of family drama for future entries in the series.

Which I’m very pleased to say will be at least three more as the author has announced on her blog that she’s recently been contracted to continue the series with three more adventures. So I have hope that this time next year Wrexford & Sloane will be back!

#BookReview: The Lantern of Lost Memories by Sanaka Hiiragi, translated by Jesse Kirkwood

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B Reviews> book reviews
#BookReview: The Lantern of Lost Memories by Sanaka Hiiragi, translated by Jesse KirkwoodThe Lantern of Lost Memories by Sanaka Hiiragi, Jesse Kirkwood
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: hardcover, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: literary fiction, magical realism, world literature
Pages: 208
Published by Grand Central Publishing on September 17, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

From acclaimed Japanese author Sanaka Hiigari comes a heartwarming, life-affirming novel about a magical photo studio, where people go after they die to view key moments from their life—and relive one precious memory before they pass into the afterlife.
The hands and pendulum of the old wooden clock on the wall were motionless. Hirasaka cocked his head to listen, but the silence inside the photo studio was almost deafening. His leather shoes sank softly into the aging red carpet as he strode over to the arrangement of flowers on the counter and carefully adjusted the angle of the petals...
This is the story of the peculiar and magical photo studio owned by Mr. Hirasaki, a collector of antique cameras. In the dimly lit interior, a paper background is pulled down in front of a wall, and in front of it stands a single, luxurious chair with an armrest on one side. On a stand is a large bellows camera. On the left is the main studio; photos can also be taken in the courtyard.
Beyond its straightforward interior, however, is a secret. The studio is, in fact, the door to the afterlife, the place between life and death where those who have departed have a chance—one last time—to see their entire life flash before their eyes via Mr. Hirasaki's "spinning lantern of memories."
We meet Hatsue, a ninety-two year old woman who worked as a nursery teacher, the rowdy Waniguchi, a yakuza overseer in his life who is also capable of great compassion, and finally Mitsuru, a young girl who has died tragically young at the hands of abusive parents. 
Sorting through the many photos of their lives, Mr. Hirasaki also offers guests one guests a second a chance to travel back in time to take a photo of one particular moment in their lives that they wish to cherish in a special way.
Full of charm and whimsy, The Lantern of Lost Memories will sweep you away to a world of nostalgia, laughter, and love.

My Review:

If it’s true that your life passes before your eyes when you die, then The Lantern of Lost Memories is the story of how that precious reel of memories gets made – and more importantly, what that reel is made OF.

Mr. Hirasaki is the proprietor of a very special photo studio, a waystation on the journey between life and whatever comes after. Unlike the people who visit him, Mr. Hirasaki doesn’t remember who he was before he died. He also doesn’t know what comes after, because he’s stuck at his shop. It’s possible that he’ll move on someday, but he’s not eager to move on – at least not yet.

He’s still hoping that someone will come along who knew him in life, and can fill in the blank pages of his own memory. While he’s waiting, he helps others fill in theirs.

The story here is made up of three stories that interconnect – even if the individuals who have arrived at Mr. Hirasaki’s shop are not aware of it as they pass through. And neither is he.

From 92-year-old nursery teacher Hatsue, to the 47-year-old yakuza supervisor Waniguchi, to young Mitsuru, the process is the same. Just before each of his clients arrives, Mr. Hirasaki receives a shipment of photographs from the client’s life, one bundle for each year.

Needless to say, Hatsue’s box is considerably heavier than the others – but that’s as it should be.

For each person, the job is for the client to go through the photos and choose one picture from each year of their lives to represent that year. From those photos, the proprietor creates a lantern, perhaps a bit like an old fashioned zoetrope, and certainly a work of art.

The key part of each story isn’t the lantern – it’s the process of creation and the memory that goes into it. Each of the adults has one picture, an often referred to and much-loved picture – that is faded and worn because it’s been handled so often, even if just in memory. To refresh that one, precious photo, Mr. Hirasaki takes them back to the day it was taken, and spends 24 hours there with them where they can observe but not interact, refresh the photo, and tell him all about the specific memory, the day it happened, and the life that was wrapped around it.

None of which exactly works for the very young, abused to the point of absolute fear and almost complete silence, Mitsuru. It shouldn’t be her time to pass through his shop. But no one should have to go back to the situation she has only temporarily escaped from.

Which brings the story back around, full-circle, to the place it began, with Mr. Hirasaki, his shop of memories, and the reason he has none himself.

Escape Rating B: I’ve been making my way through a whole series of books very much like this one. They follow a similar pattern in which the location is magical or magic-adjacent, the function of that place allows for a semi-detached proprietor to serve a variety of people whose stories function as a series of vignettes within an overarching theme. Some of those stories have happy endings, but the overall tone is often bittersweet, as those vignettes are little slices of life – and not all lives are happy ones.

On a kind of magical realism spectrum, The Lantern of Lost Memories is closest to The Dallergut Dream Department Store and Water Moon, where the location is fully magical and adjacent to the real world but not part of it. A place that can only be found if all the circumstances are met, and if it needs you as much as you need it.

Before the Coffee Gets Cold and The Full Moon Coffee Shop take place  in locations where there is a bit of magic but are fully a part of the ‘real world’, while What You are Looking For Is In the Library and The Kamogawa Food Detectives are fully ‘real’ and easy enough to find and yet, something magical happens out of their very normalcy.

As I said, I’ve been reading books like this a lot this year, and I have more coming. They are all very much hot cocoa, warm fuzzy blankets and warm purring cat kind of books. Not too long, not too short and just right all the way around.

This one tripped me up just a bit, as I was looking for that interconnectedness and wasn’t in the least sure that I found it – not until the very end. It helps to make this story make more sense if, as part of one’s willing suspension of disbelief, the reader also sets aside the idea that time is linear – because that may be our reality but isn’t what’s happening here.

In these interconnected stories, time is a möbius strip that turns back on itself until the end is the beginning and the beginning is the end. Then it makes a whole lot more sense AND gets that much more magical, all at the same time.

#BookReview: The Sullivan’s Island Supper Club by Susan M. Boyer

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B- Reviews> book reviews
#BookReview: The Sullivan’s Island Supper Club by Susan M. BoyerThe Sullivan's Island Supper Club: A Carolina Tale by Susan M. Boyer
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: hardcover, paperback, large print, ebook, audiobook
Genres: cozy mystery, relationship fiction, Southern fiction, women's fiction
Series: Carolina Tales #2
Pages: 374
on September 17, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

From the bestselling author of the award-winning novel Big Trouble on Sullivan's Island comes a captivating new tale of friendship, family, and community, and the fissures that threaten to shatter even our closest bonds.

Welcome to Sullivan’s Island, an idyllic beachside town just outside Charleston, South Carolina. This serene, unspoiled sanctuary offers tourists a picturesque taste of the lush Lowcountry while the locals enjoy a laid-back, small-town lifestyle. Amidst an eclectic mix of newcomers and natives, lifelong resident and social maven Tallulah Wentworth’s legendary monthly dinners have united an unlikely group of women into the very best of friends.

To outsiders, this sunny, seaside haven is nothing short of paradise, but the residents of this beachside hamlet know that it harbors its share of troubles. Everyone has an opinion about the most hotly contested local issue—how to manage the maritime forest that’s sprung up on accreted land—and civility is quickly running out at both town council meetings and in online forums.

When a neighborhood meet-and-greet devolves into violence, several pillars of the community are led away in handcuffs. By the next morning, a very real, very dead body is the newest addition to Sarabeth Boone’s spooky Halloween graveyard display. But who could possibly be responsible for such a heinous act?

Did someone finally snap over the mounting tension between conservationists and cutters? Or was this a premeditated act perpetrated by an opportunistic killer masquerading as a trustworthy friend and neighbor?

The Sullivan’s Island Supper Club weaves a tale of mystery, friendship, and love—new love, old love, and second-chance love. Discover the lengths these women will go to protect each other and uncover the truth, even when it shatters the delicate balance of their seemingly perfect lives.

With her uniquely Southern voice, Susan M. Boyer delivers a fast-paced follow-up to the reader-favorite Big Trouble on Sullivan's Island. Perfect for fans of strong Southern women, twisting tales, and the breathtaking Carolina coast, this charming whodunnit mystery marries scandal and sisterhood for the ultimate reading treat.

Be sure to make your reservation at The Sullivan’s Island Supper Club today!

My Review:

In the first book in this very cozy mystery series, Big Trouble on Sullivan’s Island, we met P.I. Hadley Cooper and the group of sisters-from-other-misters from multiple generations who form the core group of Hadley’s friends on Sullivan’s Island – led by the grand doyenne of the group’s beachfront Happy Hour, Eugenia Ladson.

Together, they solved a big mystery and prevented an even bigger miscarriage of justice, even as Eugenia succumbed to the cancer that had done its damndest to blight the final years of her life – but did not succeed even though it took her life.

The Sullivan’s Island Supper Club, one of Eugenia’s many brilliant ideas to “fix” one of her friends – something she was extremely good at – was designed to give her lifelong best friend Tallulah Wentworth something to focus on after the death of her beloved husband, Henry.

The ‘supper club’ isn’t really a supper club in the old tradition. Rather, it’s a monthly dinner, often bartended and occasionally even catered, organized and arranged by Tallulah at her big, built-for-entertaining, Sullivan’s Island home.

It’s a grand idea that worked for Tallulah, and has provided all of the women involved – as well as the men in their lives – with a chance to get together, enjoy each other’s company, catch up with each other – and just generally keep the sisterhood that Eugenia started going strong.

Howsomever, just as the first book in the Carolina Tales series was titled Big Trouble on Sullivan’s Island, this second book could easily have been called “Big Trouble at the Sullivan’s Island Supper Club” – because that’s exactly what it’s about, and not just because there’s more big trouble on Sullivan’s Island itself.

Although there certainly is, as an island-wide civil war is brewing over the accreted land that has been deposited on all the sides of the island that face away from Charleston as a result of work done to maintain the Charleston harbor. A maritime forest has grown up on that “new” land – all of which belongs to the town and not to any of the property owners who bought ocean-front views they no longer have – but it seems are still being taxed for. Many of those owners want the forest clear-cut in spite of the protection it provides from soil erosion. Other owners want to eliminate the rats, snakes and other small burrowing wildlife that thrive in the forests and more than occasionally invade their homes.

And there are conservationists who want the maritime forests preserved, as well as many residents who believe the protection from soil erosion is worth the occasional rat sighting. (You may shudder but still agree – as this reader certainly did).

The island’s general troubles, pitting neighbor against neighbor and bringing former friends to outright blows, is just the terrible icing on the really awful cake of personal troubles that nearly every member of the supper club is experiencing during the months leading up to the big blowup and blowout between the cutters and conservers that takes place on one supper club member’s lawn, leading to the morning discovery of a dead body out front even as another friend is in grave danger – of being placed in one.

Escape Rating B-: I picked this up because I’ve really enjoyed the author’s Liz Talbot mystery series (starting with Lowcountry Boil) and had a good reading time with the first book in her Carolina Tales, Big Trouble on Sullivan’s Island. So I was expecting more of the same, meaning a cozy mystery with a good cast of characters set in a quirky small town with plenty of Southern charm.

Which was almost, but not quite, what I got. I came here looking for the mystery to be the backbone of the story, and that’s not what happens in The Sullivan’s Island Supper Club. There were plenty of little mysteries, definitely plural, but the big mystery, the dead body on the front lawn, wasn’t any bigger of a mystery – except for the corpse, of course – than any of the other many tangled mystery threads on the way to it.

This is a story of sisterhood – and about each of the sisters individually. Often with women’s/relationship fiction, I describe them as stories about friendship in which ‘a romance occurs’ but is not the focus. The Sullivan’s Island Supper Club is a story about friendship in which ‘a romance does occur’ AND ‘a mystery occurs’.

Which was not the emphasis I was looking for. Your reading mileage may vary.

The story this time around is told in first-person, as this author’s stories often are, but in this case it was multiple first persons. For each month – and each supper club meeting – in the months preceding the ‘main event’, we get a chapter from each of the core members of the group, from their individual points of view, focusing on the individual crises in their lives that includes a personal mystery in each case. I found some of their personal trials and tribulations more involving than others – and I expect that will be true for most readers, albeit mixed somewhat differently based on the reader.

As the story went on, it also felt like there was just ‘one too many cooks’ making this particular meal, but they all do tie mostly neatly together at the end. Leaving this reader, at the end, not as sure and/or happy about the thing as I expected. I think that this was the right book at the wrong time for me and probably means I just need to find a more straightforward ‘whodunnit’ this weekend.

Howsomever, the Carolina Tales continue next year in Trouble’s Turn to Lose, with P.I. Hadley Cooper featured again as the protagonist, AND there’s a short story about the beginnings of the Sullivan’s Island Supper Club, titled, appropriately, Beginnings, that’s available now. The next time I’m looking for something a little more relationship fiction-y I’m planning to go back and see how it all began.

#BookReview: We’ll Prescribe You a Cat by Syou Ishida, translated by E. Madison Shimoda

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B Reviews> book reviews
#BookReview: We’ll Prescribe You a Cat by Syou Ishida, translated by E. Madison ShimodaWe'll Prescribe You a Cat by Syou Ishida, E. Madison Shimoda
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, ebook, audiobook
Genres: literary fiction, magical realism, translated fiction, world literature
Pages: 304
Published by Berkley on March 8, 2023
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

A cat a day keeps the doctor away…Discover the award-winning, bestselling Japanese novel that has become an international sensation in this utterly charming, vibrant celebration of the healing power of cats.Tucked away in an old building at the end of a narrow alley in Kyoto, the Kokoro Clinic for the Soul can only be found by people who are struggling in their lives and genuinely need help. The mysterious clinic offers a unique treatment to those who find their way it prescribes cats as medication. Patients are often puzzled by this unconventional prescription, but when they “take” their cat for the recommended duration, they witness profound transformations in their lives, guided by the playful, empathetic, occasionally challenging yet endearing cats.Throughout the pages, the power of the human-animal bond is revealed as a disheartened businessman finds unexpected joy in physical labor, a young girl navigates the complexities of elementary school cliques, a middle-aged man struggles to stay relevant at work and home, a hardened bag designer seeks emotional balance, and a geisha finds herself unable to move on from the memory of her lost cat. As the clinic’s patients navigate their inner turmoil and seek resolution, their feline companions lead them toward healing, self-discovery, and newfound hope.

My Review:

Kyoto’s Kokora Clinic for the Soul can only be found if you really, really need it. You’ll probably only even hear the rumor about its existence – and a rather confused and confusing rumor at that – if you are in need of the service they provide.

If there’s an ache in your soul – even if you think that ache is in your mind, and you have the patience to circle the block and not let yourself get convinced that you’re, pardon the expression, barking up the wrong tree, you’ll see a poorly maintained building in the shadows behind newer and much taller ones, down an alleyway that can be found “east of Takoyakushi Street, south of Tominokoji Street, west of Rokkaku Street, north of Fuyacho Street, Nakagyō Ward, Kyoto.”

It’s the place where the young and slightly scatterbrained Dr. Nikké and his taciturn receptionist Chitose will prescribe you a cat for whatever ails you.

Shuta Kagawa is depressed and miserable. His job at a seemingly successful financial management firm is actually hell on Earth, with an absolute demon of a boss. (Not literally. Probably not literally. Comparisons could certainly be drawn). He wants to quit, but he doesn’t want to disappoint his parents. He wants a real life instead of a sentence to purgatory. He thinks that the Kokora Clinic provides some kind of mental health therapy.

Which they do, just not in any way that he imagines. They prescribe him a cat named Bee. And she gives him something to focus on besides his own angst. She changes his life – sometimes willingly on his part, but mostly not so much – and the lives of everyone around him. That the people around him at the end are absolutely NOT the same people around him at the beginning is just part of his cure.

Shuta and Bee’s story is the first thread of a delightful tapestry, that gets woven, one prescription – and one cat – at a time, by two practitioners who know just what it means to leave a part of your soul behind.

Escape Rating B: There are a LOT of books similar to this one, where the central location is mysterious or mythical or just difficult to find, where that place connects a series of stories that at first don’t seem connected at all, where there’s just a touch of magic or magical realism, where the overall experience ends up being a bit bittersweet. Not all of the vignettes have happy endings, but they all have cathartic ones.

I picked this up because I LOVE those kinds of books, and this one has cats, which is always a win for me. Certainly the idea of being “prescribed” a cat caught my imagination, as it did several people who saw this title in my Stacking the Shelves and Sunday Posts where this title was featured. Because really, a prescription for a cat – complete with cat! What’s not to love?

But, if the concept behind the prescription seems a bit familiar, that’s only because it has become so through books such as Before the Coffee Gets Cold and many others. Of the ones I’ve read so far, this reminds me of the most is The Full Moon Coffee Shop, so if you liked that you’ll probably like this and vice versa.

What makes this one work is the way that the prescriptions all have different results. Shuta Kagawa does, in the end, adopt Bee. They rescue each other, which is what often happens with companion animals who become part of our lives and hearts. It’s kind of what we expect in ALL the stories  – but that’s not what actually happens.

In other cases, the cat opens people’s eyes to their own situations. The cat doesn’t need rescuing, it’s the human who needs a different perspective – even if that perspective is that it’s time to let go – whether of a human relationship that isn’t working or holding on too tightly to the grief over the loss of a pet. Different situations require different forms of closure, after all.

The magical realism magic of this story rests in the disappearing/reappearing clinic and its origin story, which the reader is led to slowly and carefully over the course of the book. But the fun magic is that Dr. Nikké’s and receptionist Chitose’s labor of love for both cats and humans becomes so successful over this course of prescriptions that it looks like they’ll be keeping their doors open – when they can be found at all – for a long time to come.

#BookReview: Fury Brothers: Take by Anna Hackett

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B Reviews> book reviews
#BookReview: Fury Brothers: Take by Anna HackettTake (Fury Brothers #4) by Anna Hackett
Format: eARC
Source: author
Formats available: paperback, ebook
Genres: action adventure romance, contemporary romance, romantic suspense
Series: Fury Brothers #4
Pages: 251
Published by Anna Hackett on September 5, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Amazon
Goodreads

I share a perfect kiss with a handsome stranger…only to find out that he’s my brother’s best friend.

New Orleans is an exciting new start for me. When I’m not in my lab working on my project, I’m determined to enjoy all the city has to offer. That’s how I ended up at a party hosted by the Fury Brothers.

That’s how I ended up kissing Reath Fury. Six-feet something of dark, handsome, and gorgeous.

When Reath finds out I’m the little sister of his best buddy from the military, he’s not happy.

But then I get attacked in my lab. Someone is after my project. Did I mention I have top-secret military funding? Turns out some very bad people plan to auction my work to the highest bidder.

Now Reath vows to keep me safe. The former CIA agent gives new meaning to the words overprotective and bossy. But spending every hour of the day together makes it impossible to keep our hands off each other.

We agree to keep it our little secret—all sex, no emotions allowed.

But the criminal after my project has a history with Reath, and he’s out for revenge. My brother’s best friend, the man who tells me he doesn’t do love, is the only one who can protect me.

And the only one who can break my heart.

My Review:

They chose to call themselves Fury because that’s what they were when they bonded. All five – at that point VERY young men were in foster care. They were all, individually and collectively, furious at their treatment in the foster home when they met and bonded.

Because their so-called carer was a man who liked to take young male foster kids and break them. He enjoyed beating them to a pulp – because he could. Reath was his special target, because Reath was the youngest and smallest of the quintet – and because he was black and pretty.

But a man who can beat up and beat down one kid can’t necessarily take on five absolutely furious young men who have no one and nothing but each other. Together, Dante, Colton, Kavner, Beauden and Reath got back a whole lot of their own and left – bonded together and filled with fury.

Fast forward a whole lot of years. Those boys are now very successful men – not in spite of what they came from but because of it – and because of each other.

As the saga of the Fury Brothers and the piece of New Orleans they claim as their own has shown, Dante (Fury), Colt (Keep), Kavner (Burn) and now Reath have each been chased down and pretty much ambushed by love – in spite of every single one of them so far proclaiming to all and sundry that love is the last thing they need or deserve. Ever.

Reath Fury is not going to be the exception – no matter how much he thinks he is. He’s not going to be exempted from his brothers’ ribbing him about it, either.

Or, as it turns out, her brother’s – even though the “bro code” is one of the biggest things Reath thinks is standing in the way of any possible relationship between himself and his best friend’s all-too-grown-up little sister.

But Frankie Parker isn’t going to let the ‘bro code’, her overprotective brother, or even a whole gang of mercenaries led by Reath’s literal worst enemy keep her from what she has set her sights on.

Her first goal is to keep her genius biochemistry project out of the hands of anyone who would turn it to terrible ends. Her second goal is to get a reluctant Reath Fury to admit that not only does he have a heart – but that it is already all hers.

Escape Rating B: Take returns to what seems to be the standard pattern for the Fury Brothers series. There is nothing wrong with patterns, they can work very well. Tropes exist for a reason, after all.

The pattern in this series is that the female protagonists start the story out already in trouble – even if, as is the case of Frankie Parker in this story – she doesn’t know it yet. And she should have – or at least have considered the possibility.

It is possible that Frankie simply hasn’t read nearly enough science fiction, or seen enough of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, because she’s had her nose to the grindstone concentrating on her work. Her genius project – and it absolutely is a genius project – screams “super soldier serum” at high decibel volume with a whole phalanx of flying bullets to go with it.

Which is where Reath comes in. Frankie is in trouble. There really are some very bad people out to get her, to take her research – AND her – and sell both to the highest bidder. Because every villain in every world wants to make super soldiers and her project is a shortcut to that particular hellish road.

Reath and Frankie both have reasons for not wanting to get involved. Both have done their damndest to put their hearts on ice and both have succeeded at that terrible ambition entirely too well – except where their respective siblings are concerned.

But as has happened in the rest of this series, Frankie needs protection and Reath can’t seem to resist providing that protection. Then again, he can’t resist Frankie, either, and the feeling is very, very mutual.

They just have to get the villains out of the way first. Which turns out to be a bit more of a challenge than Reath and the rest of his brothers imagined. But they still get the job done.

As much as I liked the characters, and I adore the New Orleans setting, there were a couple of things in this story that tripped me up a bit. As I said, I found it a bit difficult to believe that Frankie didn’t know that her project was obviously capable of being weaponized even if that was not her intention. Likewise, the replacement lab where the climactic kidnapping took place was a screamingly obvious set up.

(Maybe I’ve read too much science fiction. Nah…)

So, a couple of things in this one didn’t quite work for me, but I had a good reading time and I still very much enjoy the series as a whole. Which is a good thing, as there’s one Fury brother – and therefore one book – left in the series. Claim, presumably Beauden Fury’s story, is coming in October. And then the author is on to the book I’ve been waiting for all year, the (still untitled) start of her next Sci-fi Romance series. I can’t wait!

#BookReview: Follow the Stars Home by Diane C. McPhail

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B+ Reviews> book reviews
#BookReview: Follow the Stars Home by Diane C. McPhailFollow the Stars Home by Diane C. McPhail
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, ebook, audiobook
Genres: historical fiction, U.S. history
Pages: 304
Published by Kensington on August 20, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

A captivating reimagining of the intrepid woman who – 8 months pregnant and with a toddler in tow – braved violent earthquakes and treacherous waters on the first steamboat voyage to conquer the Mississippi River and redefine America. 
The acclaimed author of The Seamstress of New Orleans brings to life Lydia Latrobe Roosevelt’s defiant journey of 1811 in this lush, evocative biographical novel for fans of Paula McLain, Gill Paul, Allison Pataki, and stories about extraordinary yet little-known female adventurers…
It’s a journey that most deem an insane impossibility. Yet on October 20th, 1811, Lydia Latrobe Roosevelt—daughter of one of the architects of the United States Capitol—fearlessly boards the steamship New Orleans in Pittsburgh. Eight months pregnant and with a toddler in tow, Lydia is fiercely independent despite her youth. She’s also accustomed to defying convention. Against her father’s wishes, she married his much older business colleague, inventor Nicholas Roosevelt—builder of the New Orleans—and spent her honeymoon on a primitive flatboat. But the stakes for this trip are infinitely higher.
If Nicholas’s untried steamboat reaches New Orleans, it will serve as a profitable packet ship between that city and Natchez, proving the power of steam as it travels up and down the Mississippi. Success in this venture would revolutionize travel and trade, open the west to expansion, and secure the Roosevelts’ future.
Lydia had used her own architectural training to design the flatboat’s interior, including a bedroom, sitting area, and fireplace. The steamship, however, dwarfs the canoes and flatboats on the river. And no amount of power or comfort could shield its passengers from risk. Lydia believes herself ready for all the dangers ahead—growing unrest among native people, disease or injury, and the turbulent Falls of the Ohio, a sixty-foot drop long believed impassable in such a large boat.
But there are other challenges in store, impossible to predict as Lydia boards that fall day. Challenges which—if survived—will haunt and transform her, as surely as the journey will alter the course of a nation . . .  

My Review:

Lydia Latrobe Roosevelt clearly did not believe that adventures were things that happened to other people. Because she absolutely had her own adventures for her very own self, in spite of her gender, the times she lived in, the overwhelming number of naysayers, and that she was pregnant. On her second trip, she was, in fact, very, very pregnant.

Follow the Stars Home is a reimagining of her story, fictionalized so that it can be told from her perspective, as she accompanied her husband Nicholas Roosevelt on not one but two history making journeys from Pittsburgh to New Orleans, down the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers. On her first journey in 1809, she traveled by barge and by flatboat, finishing up in a rowboat after a series of mishaps and outright disasters.

That trip was merely a scouting mission for the trip yet to come, the one that we get to take with her in 1811. The first successful attempt to conquer the Mississippi River with steam power. If their journey was successful – and it was – steamboats plying the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers would change the face of the fledgling United States with the speed of passage both down and UP the rivers against the current, for both passengers and especially – and profitably – cargo.

But the Roosevelts have to succeed to make that future possible. This is the story of that fantastic journey through territory the U.S. had yet to claim, on the way to a Manifest Destiny – for good and ill – that the Founding Fathers could only imagine.

All they have to do is keep the boat, their finances and their marriage off the rocks.

Nicholas J. Roosevelt, wife Lydia Latrobe Roosevelt, and their grandson J. Montgomery Roosevelt Schuyler, ca. 1848

Escape Rating B+: Follow the Stars Home is a story about being in the rooms where it happened – even if those rooms are powering down the Mississippi at the then astonishing rate of 12 miles per hour – and then steaming back up again.

Lydia Latrobe Roosevelt is the kind of unsung heroine whose accomplishments should have been shouted to the skies, but who is instead reduced to merely ‘Nicholas Roosevelt’s wife’ in the accounts of their history making journeys.

Instead, at least according to this fictionalized account – and it’s the version I WANT to believe in – she was as much of a full partner in this venture as the times and social conditions allowed – if not just a bit more. She’s certainly a real-life historical figure that it would be fascinating to know more about. Because she didn’t just marry into history, she was born to it. Her father, Benjamin Latrobe, was the architect of the U.S. Capital and many other buildings in the new capital of the newly formed United States.

A father who did not approve of his daughter’s marriage to his own friend and fellow engineer, a man more than 20 years her senior. (It’s not so much the age gap that gives this reader pause, but rather that they became engaged when Lydia was only 13.Your mileage and your judgment on that subject may definitely vary.)

The story in Follow the Stars Home is one that should be wider known, and I was certainly thrilled to learn about Lydia and her place on both epic journeys and in history.

That being said, her perspective on the events as they happen – at least her fictional perspective on her current situation, past experiences and her misgivings about them both – was a bit more domestically focused than I would have preferred. I was there for the adventure, the journey itself, and for the changes that happened after.

I fully recognize that’s a ‘me thing’ and may not be a ‘you thing’. In fact, I believe that a LOT of readers will be all in on that domestic perspective, because it was clearly damn difficult to manage a household, keep her toddler Rosetta occupied and more importantly out of trouble, AND give birth to her second child – at a scheduled stop in Louisville and NOT actually ON the steamboat – as history was being made.

I came to Follow the Stars Home for the history, but I stayed for this terrific portrait of a female adventurer who just plain isn’t as widely known as she ought to be. I sincerely hope that this marvelous story helps bring Lydia Latrobe Roosevelt to the more prominent place in the historical record where she truly belongs.