Publisher: Berkley

#BookReview: Bayou Book Thief by Ellen Byron

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B Reviews> book reviews
#BookReview: Bayou Book Thief by Ellen ByronBayou Book Thief (Vintage Cookbook Mystery, #1) by Ellen Byron
Format: ebook
Source: purchased from Amazon
Formats available: paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: cozy mystery, culinary mystery, mystery
Series: Vintage Cookbook Mystery #1
Pages: 304
Published by Berkley on June 7, 2022
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

A fantastic new cozy mystery series with a vintage flair from USA Today bestselling and Agatha Award-winning author Ellen Byron.
Twenty-eight-year-old widow Ricki James leaves Los Angeles to start a new life in New Orleans after her showboating actor husband perishes doing a stupid internet stunt. The Big Easy is where she was born and adopted by the NICU nurse who cared for her after Ricki's teen mother disappeared from the hospital.
Ricki's dream comes true when she joins the quirky staff of Bon Vee Culinary House Museum, the spectacular former Garden District home of late bon vivant Genevieve "Vee" Charbonnet, the city's legendary restauranteur. Ricki is excited about turning her avocation - collecting vintage cookbooks - into a vocation by launching the museum's gift shop, Miss Vee's Vintage Cookbooks and Kitchenware. Then she discovers that a box of donated vintage cookbooks contains the body of a cantankerous Bon Vee employee who was fired after being exposed as a book thief.
The skills Ricky has developed ferreting out hidden vintage treasures come in handy for investigations. But both her business and Bon Vee could wind up as deadstock when Ricki's past as curator of a billionaire's first edition collection comes back to haunt her.
Will Miss Vee's Vintage Cookbooks and Kitchenware be a success ... or a recipe for disaster?

My Review:

There is just something about New Orleans, and there probably always has been. There certainly always has been for me, as I’ve been drawn to reading books set in that city ever since my very first visit decades ago. So, when a friend picked up this book and said it looked like fun, I was more than willing to come along for the virtual trip.

Ricki James isn’t so much visiting as returning home to New Orleans after a long absence when this story begins. Her move may be a return to her roots after years in Los Angeles, but it also represents a fresh start – or at least Ricki certainly hopes so. She has come home in an attempt to dodge not one but two scandals she hopes she left behind in LA.

Just as no good deed goes unpunished, no really big scandal ever truly gets left behind – particularly not when there’s still some juice left in it. A situation with which Ricki becomes all too aware when a new and equally juicy scandal arrives at her door.

Not, initially, her personal door, but definitely, more importantly and absolutely worse, the door of her new and just barely established antique cookery, bookstore and museum gift shop at the equally newly established Bon Vee Culinary House Museum in the Garden District home of the late and much lamented Genevieve “Vee” Charbonnet, one of the city’s legendary restaurateurs.

One of the museum’s docents, a man nearly everyone on the staff can barely stand – at best – is caught red-handed with a selection of her shop’s vintage cookbooks concealed under his coat. It’s theft, pure and simple – no matter how much he tries to pin the blame that is so obviously his on practically every other person on the scene. His attempt to shift the blame merely spreads the ill-will he has always engendered – and avails him absolutely not.

But it might be the cause of his murder that night. A murder that casts a shadow over the Museum AND Ricki’s shop, as the theft, the spurious accusations the man threw around, AND the general enmity that nearly everyone seems to have felt for him, points out a possible motive. A motive that, as thin as it might seem, seems to be the only one the police can find.

The question, a question that seems to generally hover around the NOPD according to these local residents, is whether the police are willing and/or able to look all that hard when there’s an easy solution clearly to hand.

And that’s what leads antique cookbook expert Ricki James onto the path that many a worried amateur sleuth has trod before her. She decides to investigate the murder herself. Just to see if she can find a clue – or ten – that the police might have missed. In the hopes of preserving a wonderful place full of terrific people who are doing good work and might just offer her a chance to make a new place for herself into the bargain.

Escape Rating B: Bayou Book Thief was simply a delicious starter for a cozy mystery series. There was plenty of atmosphere – well of course because New Orleans – along with tempting red herrings, a fascinating ‘home base’ filled with interesting and quirky characters AND a whole series of villains that were easy to hate.

Beginning with that first murder victim, as it seems like no one misses the man. He was a nuisance when he was alive – and an even bigger one now that he’s dead. Leaving behind oodles of potential suspects and plenty of motives.

What made the story extra, added fun and filled with even more surprises was that the motive was wrapped around a decades old secret in a way that added to all the charm – and warmed the cockles of this booklover’s heart.

Writing randy romances – actually soft core porn – in the 1950s (around the time that the infamous Peyton Place was first published) was just not the done thing for young blue-blooded women possessing New Orleans’ finest pedigrees. Over half a century later, the now 80something Madame Lucretia Noisette is delighted that her old pseudonym has been rediscovered and she’s more than willing to own it.

The world has changed in the intervening decades, and at her age she’s past caring about any possible remaining potential scandal – even if her son and her grandchildren are not.

Little do they know that it’s not grand-mère’s once upon a time scandal that will cause the most problems. It’s not even Ricki’s much more recent scandals – the ones that she hoped she had left behind in LA. (That she had one serious scandal in her past is not atypical for the amateur detective in a cozy series. Two, however, struck this reader as a bit over-the-top, as both scandals were extremely juicy to the point where having one person be involved in both felt a bit like ‘overegging the pudding’. I’m curious to see the effects they’ll have on Ricki in future books in the series.)

Where back in the day the investigative axiom “cherchez la femme” might have led to the real villain, in this later day “follow the money” is a much better bet. Even if Ricki doesn’t figure out the whole thing at the very last moment.

She’s still ahead of the NOPD, something that is likely to spur her to future investigations. As it already has, considering that there are at least two more books in this charming cozy mystery series, Wined and Died in New Orleans and French Quarter Fright Night. I’m certainly planning on a return visit the next time I feel like ‘laissez les bon temps rouler’ the way to murder.

A- #BookReview: Love You a Latke by Amanda Elliot

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A- Reviews> book reviews
A- #BookReview: Love You a Latke by Amanda ElliotLove You a Latke by Amanda Elliot
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: contemporary romance, Hanukkah romance, holiday romance, romantic comedy
Pages: 368
Published by Berkley on October 8, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

Love comes home for the challah-days in this sparkling romance.
Snow is falling, holiday lights are twinkling, and Abby Cohen is pissed. For one thing, her most annoying customer, Seth, has been coming into her café every morning with his sunshiny attitude, determined to break down her carefully constructed emotional walls. And, as the only Jew on the tourism board of her Vermont town, Abby's been charged with planning their fledgling Hanukkah festival. Unfortunately, the local vendors don’t understand that the story of Hanukkah cannot be told with light-up plastic figures from the Nativity scene, even if the Three Wise Men wear yarmulkes.
Desperate for support, Abby puts out a call for help online and discovers she was wrong about being the only Jew within a hundred miles. There's one Seth.
As it turns out, Seth’s parents have been badgering him to bring a Nice Jewish Girlfriend home to New York City for Hanukkah, and if Abby can survive his incessant, irritatingly handsome smiles, he’ll introduce her to all the vendors she needs to make the festival a success. But over latkes, doughnuts, and winter adventures in Manhattan, Abby begins to realize that her fake boyfriend and his family might just be igniting a flame in her own guarded heart.

My Review:

It may be “beginning to look a lot like Christmas” – but it’s beginning to look a lot like Hanukkah, too. Particularly this year, as Hanukkah begins on the evening of December 25, 2024 – yes, that’s Christmas Day – and ends at sunset on Thursday January 2, 2025.

Hanukkah is not “late” this year – or in any other year. It’s EXACTLY when it’s supposed to be, the 25th day of the month of Kislev according to the Hebrew calendar – which is a LUNAR calendar based on the phases of the moon with a bit of a fudge factor to keep the months in line with the seasons of the solar year. The secular calendar, otherwise known as the Gregorian calendar, is a SOLAR calendar, based on the Earth’s orbit around the sun – with its own bit of fudge factor (leap years with leap days) to keep months lined up with the seasons. They aren’t the same.

And this is just the kind of thing that Abby Cohen finds herself attempting to explain – a LOT – as the only Jewish small business owner in her tiny town in Vermont. The one who has been voluntold that she’ll be planning a Hanukkah Festival/Market in less than a month, in the hopes of helping the town to stand out a little in the midst of the more ‘traditional’ Holiday Markets – meaning Christmas – in the neighboring towns. Even though the planned date for the ‘Hanukkah Festival’ is going to miss the actual holiday by more than a bit.

Abby’s coffee/pastry/lunch place isn’t doing well, financially – and neither are any of the other shops on the town’s Main Street. They ALL need a boost. The idea for the Hanukkah Festival isn’t bad – it’s just that the head of the town’s business association is a real steamroller who really wants a traditional holiday market but recognizes the market – ahem, so to speak – is saturated.

And who both doesn’t want to do all the work involved in any festival AND is most likely planning on using Abby as a scapegoat when people complain – either that the festival is too Jewish – or much more likely considering Lorna’s plans for the Festival – not nearly Jewish enough.

A problem that Abby is already having plenty of trouble with herself. She’s disconnected herself from the Jewish community in general – and from her parents in particular – for reasons that are far from apparent as the story begins.

But it’s clear she’s running away from something – or someone, or her own feelings about one or the other – and this little town in Vermont is far enough from her native New York City to be an escape from whatever trouble she left behind. Even if she brought the trauma of it with her.

Which is where her best and possibly least favorite customer comes in – and helps her out. Seth’s not a bad or troublesome customer in any single way. It’s just that he’s an effusive, cheerful, morning person – annoying so – and Abby is neither. He seems a bit of a pollyanna, always seeing the brighter side of everything – while Abby sees all the glasses, and cups, and plates, as half full AT BEST.

A best she is never, NEVER at first thing in the morning. (As a fellow non-morning person, I feel for her. Seriously. Morning people are TERRIBLE and need to stay far, far away – and be quiet about it – until after serious applications of caffeine.)

But Seth turns out to be the only other Jewish person in town. And he has a brilliant idea. A way they can help each other. Abby needs to go to New York City – in spite of just how much the very thought of running into anyone from her past gives her the heebie-jeebies – to find vendors willing to come for the festival.

And Seth needs to bring a nice Jewish girl home to his parents for Hanukkah in just a few short days. If Abby is willing to fake a relationship for the eight days of Hanukkah, Seth will help her make all the connections she needs to make the festival a success.

What could go wrong? Everything. What could go right? EVERYTHING!

Escape Rating A-: This is the second book in my personal participation in the 2024 Ho-Ho-Ho Readathon. If you are playing along with my Holiday Bingo Challenge, Love You a Latke checks off the box for either “Other Winter Romance” or “Seasonal but not Xmas” as well as “Snow on the Cover” but you’ll have to pick just one. I was specifically looking for a holiday romance centered around Hanukkah instead of Christmas because there just aren’t as many of those as I’d like to see.

Like Abby in the story, I often get just a bit annoyed that saying “holiday” this time of year is simply a coded way of saying “Christmas” that doesn’t acknowledge any of the MANY other holidays that are celebrated this time of year.

And a part of this story is Abby pushing back against that nearly overwhelming tide. The organizer wants to have her cake and eat it too, a “Holiday” Festival that’s labeled as Hanukkah so it stands out but is really Christmas after all. I was a bit astonished that Abby never thinks that Lorna isn’t getting kickbacks or trading favors with all of the ‘friends’ she expects Abby to hire to work on the festival she doesn’t want to plan and carry out herself.

But maybe I have a more suspicious nature than Abby does.

I’ll get down off my soapbox now – or at least I’ll try. Because the heart of this story is, of course, the will they/won’t they/can they/should they fake romance between Seth and Abby. Fake relationship romances are always so much fun because of the tension between what the couple is pretending to be versus what they think they really are and how easy the fake becomes real.

And that oh-so-very-much worked between Abby and Seth. Because his mother, as much as she is meddling, is actually right. Abby and Seth belong together because they make each other better people through challenging each other to be their best and most honest selves.

But the soul of the story is Abby’s internal conflict – and did I ever feel for her in that. She grew up in a close-knit Jewish community in New York City – a community that she loved BUT that she couldn’t really trust because her parents were lying, gaslighting, abusive assholes, and they poisoned everyone against her to make themselves look like perfect parents.

So she’s lost touch with her roots because it felt like the only way to excise the cancer in her soul. She misses being a part of the community so much, of being in on the jokes and sharing the history and all of what makes it a comfort to be among one’s own people no matter how that group is defined.

And she’s afraid of it at the same time because her parents have poisoned it for her and she fears – not unreasonably – that if she trusts anyone with her true self, with her fears and weaknesses and hopes and dreams – that they will either weaponize her feelings against her or betray her to her parents and their clique – or both. Letting Seth in AT ALL, even just as a friend, is a HUGE leap for her – and it’s so understandable that she very nearly doesn’t make it.

I felt SO MUCH for Abby’s journey. Both her disconnect and her need and desire to reconnect. But I kept waiting for her confrontation with her parents. She needed it and so did I as the reader. It felt like she couldn’t really have a happy ever after until at least some of that boil got lanced – no matter how painful THAT operation might be.

But I’m not sure it did. And I’m caught on the horns of a dilemma about that because the way it went felt more real. Not satisfying, because I was hoping for a big blowup and a huge catharsis – and that’s not how life works. Which is honestly a pity, but that’s the way things go.

I think the question for readers – and it’s the one I’m still puzzling over – is whether the way it does go is enough for Abby to start healing. In the end, I think so. I hope so. But I’d still love to have seen some just desserts get served.

#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: Requiem for a Mouse by Miranda James

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B Reviews> book reviews
#BookReview: Requiem for a Mouse by Miranda JamesRequiem for a Mouse (Cat in the Stacks, #16) by Miranda James
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, ebook, audiobook
Genres: cozy mystery, mystery
Series: Cat in the Stacks #16
Pages: 282
Published by Berkley on June 25, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

Librarian Charlie Harris and his ever-intuitive feline friend Diesel must catch a killer in a deadly game of cat and mouse where no one is who they seem to be…
At last, Charlie and Helen Louise’s wedding is only a month away. They’re busy preparing for the big day, and the last thing Charlie needs is a new mystery to solve. Enter Tara Martin, a shy, peculiar woman who has recently started working part-time at Helen Louise’s bistro and helping Charlie in the archive. Tara isn’t exactly friendly and she has an angry outburst at the library that leaves Charlie baffled. And then she abruptly leaves a catered housewarming party Charlie’s son Sean is throwing to celebrate his new home in the middle of her work shift. Before ducking out of the party, Tara looked terrified and Charlie wonders if she’s deliberately trying to escape notice. Is she hiding from someone?
When Tara is viciously attacked and lands in the hospital, Charlie knows his instincts were correct: Tara was in trouble and someone was after her. With the help of his much beloved cat, Diesel, Charlie digs deeper, and discovers shocking glimpses into Tara’s past that they could never have predicted. Will they catch the villain before Charlie’s own happily ever after with Helen Louise is ruined?

My Review:

As today marks the start of the American Library Association Annual Conference, it’s the perfect day to review the latest entry in the Cat in the Stacks series, Requiem for a Mouse, featuring librarian Charlie Harris and his large and lovable Maine Coon cat Diesel.

While the possessive should probably be in the other direction, that Charlie belongs to Diesel and not the other way around, as a librarian himself Charlie would have attended many ALA conferences over the course of his career, especially back when he was one of the Branch Managers at the Houston Public Library.

Charlie’s current position, as the part-time cataloger and rare book librarian for his hometown – and alma mater’s – tiny Athena College Library in Athena, Mississippi – generally doesn’t have the budget to make Charlie schlep to wherever the conference happens to be each year. (This year it’s San Diego.)

Which is just fine with him, as he’s been there, done that, and probably has thrown away the conference t-shirts quite some time ago.

Besides, Charlie has much more interesting things to do. Such as ‘help’ the local police solve murders. A help that Athena P.D.’s Chief Deputy generally thinks of as poking his nose in where it doesn’t belong and beating her detectives to the clues a bit too often.

This time around, Charlie’s nose DOES belong in the case – because it happened at the desk right across from his. Not literally, but certainly more than figuratively enough that he feels compelled to help discover who murdered the intensely private, socially maladroit woman who had been his part-time assistant.

Tara Martin may have been rude and tactless – and she certainly was – but that certainly wasn’t enough reason for someone to drive deliberately onto the sidewalk to run her over. But the cops’ certainty about her cause of death is the one of only two sure things in this entire case – and the victim’s identity is not the other.

But Charlie can’t let it rest until he knows both whodunnit and the truth of who it was done to – even when that puts him squarely in the killer’s sights.

Escape Rating B: I’m here for Diesel. Not just because I’ve always wanted a Maine Coon, but because he’s just sweet and charming – and large – but also because he’s intelligent and empathetic but on a cat scale and not a human one. There are quite a few cozy mystery series that feature cats – and why not? – but it’s refreshing that the cat in this series doesn’t solve the mysteries on his own and doesn’t mysteriously help his person solve them.

Which leads back to Diesel’s person, Charlie Harris. One of the things I love about this series is not just that Charlie is a librarian, but that he feels like ‘one of us’ and not merely the result of some cursory research. (This is not a surprise as the author is themself, one of us.) But it’s lovely not just to see one’s own profession represented in a story but to have it done correctly – which is far from always the case.

This series is a very cozy series. Athena is a small town, Charlie has a charming and well-developed ‘Scooby Gang’ who help him, worry about him, and occasionally rescue him from his own folly. The portrait of the town as a whole turns it into the kind of fictional small town that makes readers want to live there – except in the hot, muggy Mississippi summers.

So this is a series I pick up because I’m always happy to see Diesel and I love catching up with Charlie and his friends and family.

That being said, the beginning of this one is particularly rough. Tara Martin, whoever she is, puts everyone off with her tactlessness and her inability to pick up on social cues. When the story opens, as much as many of the characters want to help her out, there’s a surprising amount of backbiting and general verbal nastiness. There’s not even a suggestion that she might be neuroatypical – which was my first thought. It’s only after she’s struck down that people begin to treat her situation with any real understanding. But the initial impression that people were badmouthing her behind her back stuck with me and stained my impression of the book.

The mystery was a lot of sad fun, as it was very twisty and filled with lots of delicious red herrings for Diesel and his little buddy Ramses to beg for – even though every reveal about the victim’s true circumstances made her life and her death just that much sadder. (She’s certainly the ‘Mouse’ of the title) Those twists and turns, along with a whole cast of characters using false names and fake pretenses made this a very quick read as .well. But that initial impression meant that in the end I liked it rather than loved it as I had expected to.

But I’m still Team Diesel, so I’ll still be back to check up on how he’s doing the next time there’s a Cat in the Stacks mystery.

#BookReview: A Ruse of Shadows by Sherry Thomas

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B+ Reviews> book reviews
#BookReview: A Ruse of Shadows by Sherry ThomasA Ruse of Shadows (Lady Sherlock, #8) by Sherry Thomas
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: historical fiction, historical mystery
Series: Lady Sherlock #8
Pages: 368
Published by Berkley on June 25, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

Charlotte Holmes is accustomed to solving crimes, not being accused of them, but she finds herself in a dreadfully precarious position as the bestselling Lady Sherlock series continues.
Charlotte’s success on the RMS Provence has afforded her a certain measure of time and assurance. Taking advantage of that, she has been busy, plotting to prise the man her sister loves from Moriarty’s iron grip.
Disruption, however, comes from an unexpected quarter. Lord Bancroft Ashburton, disgraced and imprisoned as a result of Charlotte’s prior investigations, nevertheless manages to press Charlotte into service: Underwood, his most loyal henchman, is missing and Lord Bancroft wants Charlotte to find Underwood, dead or alive.
But then Lord Bancroft himself turns up dead and Charlotte, more than anyone else, meets the trifecta criteria of motive, means, and opportunity. Never mind rescuing anyone else, with the law breathing down her neck, can Charlotte save herself from prosecution for murder?

My Review:

A Ruse of Shadows is a fascinating study in contradictions. It’s a story about paying it forward, payback, and revenge served ice cold. It’s a yarn spun out of a tissue of lies and a truth that literally sets several people free. All the while it’s a game of three-handed chess that only one player understands is being played in 3D while both of the other players assume it’s being played in only two – and who consequently suffer the fate of those who assume.

This eighth entry in the Lady Sherlock series is also a bit of a caper story, as it begins, not at the beginning, but rather at what at first seems to be the end. Charlotte being in the midst of being questioned by the police in regards to the death of Lord Bancroft Ashburton in the immediate aftermath of his escape from the prison to which he had been remanded after his perfidy and treason were unveiled – by Charlotte and her friends – in the previous book in the series, A Tempest at Sea.

(This is a hint, by the way. Theoretically the books in this series could be read as standalone, but I wouldn’t recommend it. It’s not just that the endings of each book flow into the next, but that there’s a vast, interconnected and rather sticky web between all of the cases – at least so far. I’m glad I began at the beginning with A Study in Scarlet Women – and I think many readers are or will be as well.)

What makes the plot of this particular entry in the series so sticky – and so convoluted – is that it seems as though every past case is tied into this present one – particularly the most recent pair, Miss Moriarty, I Presume? and A Tempest at Sea.

It’s those cases that give Charlotte her motives for both facilitating Bancroft’s escape AND murdering the man – at least in the minds of the police investigators.

But Charlotte has a bland, banal and utterly blameless answer for every single one of their questions – at least on the surface. While she relates the story that she has prepared, the reader, however, is presented with the truth behind that fiction and the story switches between Charlotte’s innocuous tale and a vast and far-reaching plot of much more interesting but considerably less innocent truths.

Along with a few switches in perspective from Charlotte’s part of the story to accounts by some of her other agents in her grand plan to thwart Bancroft’s and Moriarty’s equally grand plots to trap her and her friends – one way or another.

Each of her enemies believes that they have her – and their counterpart – firmly within their grasp. The police believe that they have her “dead to rights” as well. But, particularly when it comes to outsmarting ‘Sherlock’ Holmes their beliefs don’t hold a candle to Holmes’ strategies, their intelligence, or the vast circle of friends and even frenemies willing to help them against any forces arrayed against them.

Escape Rating B+: I have consistently found this series to be fascinating and frustrating in equal measure – and this entry in the series is no exception.

On the one hand, as Bancroft, Moriarty and the police in the persons of Inspector Treadles and Chief Inspector Talbot all know that Charlotte is Sherlock is Charlotte, she doesn’t need to pretend to consult a fictitious brother – which certainly removes one of my chief sources of consternation with the series.

Charlotte does, however, make plenty of use of both male and female disguises – but then so did the original Sherlock. She has little need to protect her own supposedly delicate femininity – but is forced to kowtow to society’s restrictions and assumptions on behalf of some of the other women involved in the case. Still, it makes the story considerably less frustrating for the reader as Charlotte is finally able to just get on with the case by the employment of a suitable change of face and costume.

Howsomever, the way that this story is told, with its framing story of Charlotte pretending innocence to Chief Inspector Talbot while telling the reader the truth behind her bland answers – does occasionally get more than a bit muddled, a muddling that is not helped by the additions of Olivia’s point of view as Olivia’s part of this charade isn’t revealed until the end.

Which, admittedly, was exactly as it should have been, as Olivia is the chronicler of her sister’s cases.

This story is also a bit of a mirror image to Miss Moriarty, I Presume? in that this time around it’s Lord Bancroft Ashburton (the disgraced former Mycroft after the events of A Tempest at Sea) who holds Charlotte’s hostages to fortune even as he attempts to maneuver Charlotte and her friends into a trap with the more-than-willing assistance of Moriarty. Her enemies are not friends, but are willing to collude with each other to get her, as she’s been a consistent thorn in both their sides.

The case itself, as we finally get the full picture – was every bit as twisty and convoluted and purely confounding and compelling as this reader has come to expect in this series. At the very same time the corkscrews that those twists have turned themselves into feel like they’ve been winding and tangling since the very first book in the series – only because some of them have.

In the end, I found the case fascinating, even though the way the story got told felt like a bit of a muddle, particularly at the beginning. But when it came to the reveal at the end, the whole thing wrapped up marvelously and even though we’d seen most of how Charlotte got there she still had plenty of secrets left to uncover at the finish.

A finish which doesn’t remotely feel like an end to the series. I’m not sure what Charlotte and Company will be up to next – but I can’t wait to find out!

#AudioBookReview: The Bodies in the Library by Marty Wingate

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | audio reviews> audiobooks> B Reviews> book reviews
#AudioBookReview: The Bodies in the Library by Marty WingateThe Bodies in the Library (First Edition Library Mystery, #1) by Marty Wingate
Narrator: Fiona Hardingham
Format: audiobook, eARC
Source: purchased from Audible, supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: hardcover, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: cozy mystery, mystery
Series: First Edition Library Mystery #1
Pages: 315
Length: 9 hours and 23 minutes
Published by Berkley on October 8, 2019
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

Hayley Burke has landed a dream job. She is the new curator of Lady Georgiana Fowling's First Edition library. The library is kept at Middlebank House, a lovely Georgian home in Bath, England. Hayley lives on the premises and works with the finicky Glynis Woolgar, Lady Fowling's former secretary.
Mrs. Woolgar does not like Hayley's ideas to modernize The First Edition Society and bring in fresh blood. And she is not even aware of the fact that Hayley does not know the first thing about the Golden Age of Mysteries. Hayley is faking it till she makes it, and one of her plans to breathe new life into the Society is actually taking flight--an Agatha Christie fan fiction writers group is paying dues to meet up at Middlebank House.
But when one of the group is found dead in the venerable stacks of the library, Hayley has to catch the killer to save the Society and her new job.

My Review:

I have never been so happy to see a dead body in all of my reading life as I was when Tristram Cummins’ corpse was discovered in the library of Middlebank House, the home of the late Lady Georgiana Fowling’s First Edition Society.

Lady Georgiana Fowling died of natural causes – after all the woman was 92! – four years before this story begins. She was a collector of works written by the female authors of the Golden Age of Mystery, particularly Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, Marjorie Allingham, Ngaio Marsh and Josephine Tey, among others. Daphne du Maurier’s works are also included in the library, not because she wrote mysteries – not exactly – but because she was a personal favorite of the late Lady Fowling.

Lady Fowling may be dead, but the Board of the charitable society that inherited her house and its contents – along with Lady Fowling’s secretary and personal assistant, Mrs. Glynis Woolgar – seem determined to preserve the library, the house, and its contents like a fly trapped in amber. Even if that is far from what Lady Fowling would have ever desired.

Hayley Burke, the newly appointed curator of the library, is determined to move the Society and its Library into the 21st century. She sees her job as placing the Library as prominently on the list of Bath’s literary-related attractions, such as the nearby Jane Austen Centre, as can possibly be arranged as quickly as can be managed. Or can be gotten past the Board and the Society’s Secretary.

Even though Hayley doesn’t know a thing about the Golden Age of Mystery – she knows plenty about ways that a literary site can put itself on the map, having previously worked – albeit in a rather junior position – at the Jane Austen Centre which has done an excellent job of just that.

The discovery of a body in the Society’s library, the morning after a contentious meeting of a local writers’ group, seems a bit too much like it’s straight out of the pages of one of the Agatha Christie novels sitting on a nearby shelf, The Body in the Library.

Whether inspired by Christie or not, that discovery, and the police investigation that ensues, certainly does put the First Edition Society on the map and at the top of mind of a whole lot of people who would otherwise never have heard of the place – in spite of Hayley’s best efforts.

But it’s not the kind of attention either Hayler or the Society actually wants. Because with all of the amateur and professional sleuths on the premises, someone will eventually deduce that the one person who should be an expert, the curator herself, doesn’t have a clue.

Escape Rating B: As much as I usually enjoy this author – and I’m particularly loving her London Ladies’ Murder Club (starting with A Body on the Doorstep) these days – I remember that I bounced off of this particular book really hard but didn’t remember exactly why.

So when I hit a hard flail and bail last week, in conjunction with a 2-for-1 sale at Audible, I picked this up in audio out of a bit of desperation. I knew that whatever had made me set this book aside when it came out, it couldn’t possibly be the same thing that was driving me away from the book I had just stopped listening to – with extreme prejudice – in the present.

I started the audio of The Bodies in the Library and figured out pretty quickly what drove me away the first time. OMG but Hayley Burke begins this story as a complete and utter doormat, and her doormat persona has invaded every part of her life.

This story is told in the first person, so we’re inside Hayley’s head – and it’s kind of a boring place to be, quite possibly because it seems like there’s no spine holding it up. Her long-distance boyfriend, her adult daughter, and her repressive, stick-up-her-bum colleague all walk all over her at every turn.

I could rant, but I’ll refrain. The work parts of this exhibition of lack of backbone are the one part of Hayley’s situation that make sense, as these two women share both the job and the house and making an actual enemy out of her recalcitrant colleague is the recipe for a very quick job change that Hayley can’t afford to make.

Howsomever, on top of the more personal aspects of her spinelessness it drove me round the twist. At least until Trist, the leader of that writers’ group, is found dead on the floor of the library and the pace of the story picks up while Hayley picks up her big girl panties and finally starts dealing with her life as well as the mystery that has been literally dropped in her lap.

One of the more, let’s call it awkward, parts of Hayley’s character at the beginning is that she doesn’t merely have impostor syndrome – don’t we all on occasion – but that she IS an actual impostor. She’s not REALLY qualified for the well-compensated job she lucked into. Hayley knows nothing about the Golden Age of Mystery as she specialized in 19th century literature for her degree. For a lot of the story, we see her flailing about in an attempt to hide her lack of knowledge – what we don’t see is her actually rectifying that lack until after the body drops. It’s clear that her continuing forays into the world of Golden Age mystery is going to be part of her journey – and will hopefully induce readers to do the same – but early on I found myself wondering, repeatedly and OFTEN, why she didn’t just stream a whole lot of video because they’ve ALL been done. It wouldn’t have been the same as reading the books, but it would certainly have given her a leg up that she desperately needed.

Speaking of media, however, the audio was fine, and it certainly got me over the rough first third of the book that drove me away the first time around. So I’m glad I picked it up – even though once the story finally got started I got more than caught up in it enough to want to find out whodunnit a whole lot faster than audio would allow.

The advent of that body in the library (all due apologies to Agatha Christie because the cases aren’t much the same after all) turns out to be the making of both Hayley and the story as a whole, which is the reason I ended up at a ‘B’ grade in spite of the character’s and the story’s frustrating and glacially paced opening. By the end, the whole thing shows a LOT of promise, to the point where I’m sure I’ll pick up the next book in the series, Murder is a Must, the next time I’m in the mood for a very cozy and gentle mystery.

Or I want to see how the Library’s cat Bunter is doing with the new visitors that Hayley is hopefully bringing to the place!

Grade A #AudioBookReview: Funny Story by Emily Henry

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A Reviews> audio reviews> audiobooks> book reviews
Grade A #AudioBookReview: Funny Story by Emily HenryFunny Story by Emily Henry
Narrator: Julia Whelan
Format: audiobook, eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Libro.fm, supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: hardcover, paperback, large print, ebook, audiobook
Genres: Chick Lit, contemporary romance, relationship fiction, women's fiction
Pages: 400
Length: 11 hours and 23 minutes
Published by Berkley, Random House Audio on April 23, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

A shimmering, joyful new novel about a pair of opposites with the wrong thing in common.
Daphne always loved the way her fiancé Peter told their story. How they met (on a blustery day), fell in love (over an errant hat), and moved back to his lakeside hometown to begin their life together. He really was good at telling it…right up until the moment he realized he was actually in love with his childhood best friend Petra.
Which is how Daphne begins her new story: Stranded in beautiful Waning Bay, Michigan, without friends or family but with a dream job as a children’s librarian (that barely pays the bills), and proposing to be roommates with the only person who could possibly understand her predicament: Petra’s ex, Miles Nowak.
Scruffy and chaotic—with a penchant for taking solace in the sounds of heart break love ballads—Miles is exactly the opposite of practical, buttoned up Daphne, whose coworkers know so little about her they have a running bet that she’s either FBI or in witness protection. The roommates mainly avoid one another, until one day, while drowning their sorrows, they form a tenuous friendship and a plan. If said plan also involves posting deliberately misleading photos of their summer adventures together, well, who could blame them?
But it’s all just for show, of course, because there’s no way Daphne would actually start her new chapter by falling in love with her ex-fiancé’s new fiancée’s ex…right?

My Review:

This is not a meet-cute, it’s more like a meet-really-really-ugly. But it starts with a meet-cute. It’s just that the meet-cute is NOT between our protagonists Daphne and Miles. It’s between Daphne and her very suddenly ex-fiancé Peter. There may, or may not, have been another meet-cute between Miles and his equally suddenly ex-girlfriend Petra – but that really doesn’t matter by the time we meet all of the above.

Because of all of that VERY sudden ex-ing that happened. In the wee hours after Peter’s bachelor party, between Peter and his childhood bestie, the beautiful Petra. The woman he claimed had always been a platonic friend. Always.

At least until Petra confessed to Peter, when they were alone in the aftermath of that bachelor party, which of course Petra attended because she was, after all, his bestie, that she was in love with him and couldn’t watch him marry someone else without letting him know that.

The resulting mess – and was it ever a mess – left Daphne with one week to move out of the house that she and Peter were supposed to share, alone in the small town she’d moved to because that’s what HE wanted, with no support network because all of “their” friends were really his friends – and a job she loved and didn’t want to leave in a place she could no longer bear to stay.

Not too far away, in that same tiny little town, Petra’s ex Miles was left with an apartment he could only afford half the rent on, in a town that he felt like he’d made his own, with an utterly shattered heart.

Daphne, ever practical EXCEPT when it came to Peter, made Miles an offer he literally couldn’t afford to refuse. His need for a roommate dovetailed heartbreakingly and conveniently with her need for a place to live.

They may have agreed to be roommates out of their shared tragedy but they are definitely respectful of each other’s space and each other’s brokenness. At least until they both receive invitations to – you guessed it! – Peter and Petra’s upcoming nuptials. After a long and very drunken night of shared drinking, ranting and more than occasional sobbing, Daphne and Miles decide that living well – or at least the appearance of it – will be their revenge on their exes.

They RSVP to the wedding of the people they each once believed to be the love of their lives, together. And to back that up, they post a selfie that gives the unmistakable impression that they’ve found the new loves of their own lives – with each other.

Miles is certain that they can keep up the pretense of dating each other for the summer – just long enough to get past that dreadful wedding. Daphne isn’t nearly so sure – but she’s willing to try. She certainly expects it all to go terribly, terribly wrong long before they reach that Labor Day weekend disaster-ganza. And it very nearly does.

At least until it all starts going terribly, terribly right.

Escape Rating A: I started out listening to this one, and that’s probably what got me over the hump of the early chapters. This is one of those stories that, of necessity, has a very hard start. We meet Daphne just after very nearly the entire life she had planned crashed and burned. She’s wallowing in a whole lot of angst and regret and self-recrimination, nearly buried by the weight of her emotional baggage piling up all around her. Listening to the excellent narrator makes the listener feel like they are literally inside Daphne’s mostly despairing head and it’s a realistically well-portrayed terrible place to be.

Fortunately for the reader/listener and Daphne, it really does get better – mostly thanks to Miles – who very nearly crashes and burns it all around her again.

The thing that keeps the whole meet-ugly/meet-cute of the thing from going over the top is that Peter in particular may be the villain of this piece – which he definitely turns out to be – but he isn’t evil. He’s certainly awful, and he displays all of his awful bits over the course of the story – but he’s not actually, technically, evil. He’s just selfish and self-centered and more than a bit spoiled.

Daphne was willing to continue spoiling him because he represented something she’d never had – stability. Her dad was mostly absent and generally in the midst of his next big score that never materialized. Her mother was the very best in Daphne’s eyes, but they moved a LOT in pursuit of financial security and Daphne stopped bothering to make connections because she knew they’d never survive a move. Peter, his large, loving family and his wide circle of lifelong friends is a situation she wants to be adopted into wholesale so she lets herself be surrounded and subsumed into it.

Only to be confronted with the fact that it was never really hers – and neither was Peter. (Although that turns out to have been dodging a bullet she never would have seen coming.)

The fun part of this story – and it mostly is fun after that first long, deep and totally justified wallow – is watching the way that Miles courts Daphne by getting her to fall in love with tiny, slightly touristy, totally scenic, Waning Bay Michigan. He loves the town that he’s adopted and been adopted by, and does his damndest to share that love with Daphne. That he makes the town irresistible makes him irresistible and their hesitant steps toward a relationship turn this story into a marvelous kind of dance of a romance.

That, at the very same time, Daphne uses the foundation of having a job that she totally loves – even if it barely pays the bills – to put herself out there in the sense of opening herself up to the possibilities of deep and true friendship and fellowship – is what makes this story so much her journey to happiness and fulfillment. Whether or not, in the end, either of those things includes Miles, or Waning Bay, or both, or neither.

That Peter ultimately gets the shaft all the way around turned out to be merely the icing on a very tasty cake of a book – or perhaps that should be the slathering of cheese and jalapenos on a fresh, hot serving of Petoskey fries. The part that makes a good thing just that much better.

My favorite of Emily Henry’s books is still Book Lovers, but Funny Story definitely moved into the runner-up slot. I loved that Daphne was a librarian, and she definitely read like “one of us” while her Waning Bay Library read as both realistic and on the good side of places to work – except for the poor salary which was equally realistic – dammit.

I’ve read all of the author’s adult books except for People We Meet on Vacation, which I can feel climbing the virtually towering TBR pile as I type this. It looks like a perfect book to pick up later this summer – when we’re on vacation!

A- #BookReview: People in Glass Houses by Jayne Castle

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A- Reviews> book reviews
A- #BookReview: People in Glass Houses by Jayne CastlePeople in Glass Houses (Ghost Hunters, #16) by Jayne Castle
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, ebook, audiobook
Genres: action adventure romance, futuristic, paranormal romance, romantic suspense, science fiction romance
Series: Harmony #16
Pages: 313
Published by Berkley on May 7, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

Dive into the alien world of Harmony in this new novel by New York Times bestselling author Jayne Castle.
His name is Joshua Knight. Once a respected explorer, the press now calls him the Tarnished Knight. He took the fall for a disaster in the Underworld that destroyed his career. The devastating event occurred in the newly discovered sector known as Glass House—a maze of crystal that is rumored to conceal powerful Alien antiquities. The rest of the Hollister Expedition team disappeared and are presumed dead.
Whatever happened down in the tunnels scrambled Josh’s psychic senses and his memories, but he’s determined to uncover the truth. Labeled delusional and paranoid, he retreats to an abandoned mansion in the desert, a house filled with mirrors. Now a recluse, Josh spends his days trying to discover the secrets in the looking glasses that cover the walls. He knows he is running out of time.
Talented, ambitious crystal artist Molly Griffin is shocked to learn that the Tarnished Knight has been located. She drops everything and heads for the mansion to find Josh, confident she can help him regain control of his shattered senses. She has no choice—he is the key to finding her sister, Leona, a member of the vanished expedition team. Josh reluctantly allows her to stay one night but there are two rules: she must not go down into the basement, and she must not uncover the mirrors that have been draped.
But her only hope for finding her sister is to break the rules…

My Review:

We all know the way that phrase ends, don’t we? “People who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.” It’s a somewhat more potentially kinetic way of talking about the “pot calling the kettle black.” Or putting it yet another way, people who have the same faults should resist poking at each other along the same fault lines.

As it turns out, this particular story is also a case of “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” – although Joshua Knight and Molly Griffin want to be much more than friends the moment they meet, in spite of both of them living in the glass house of having extremely high levels of paranormal talent that they keep under wraps.

Because too much power can be extremely dangerous – especially when all the power is encased in the fragile mind of a human. Any human.

Although at the moment they meet, both Joshua and Molly do happen to be rather fragile humans – particularly in the context of the not-totally-explored and still all too frequently dangerous lost Terran colony on Harmony. A planet where high-resonating crystal artifacts left on the planet by aliens have caused, raised and enhanced the psychic powers of the humans who have occupied the planet for more than two centuries.

Joshua Knight is considered to be psi-burned. He was a talented guide and navigator to Harmony’s fascinating but treacherous underworld, and he lost ALL the members of his last expedition.

An expedition that included Molly Griffin’s sister Leona. Molly needs Joshua to lead her to where he lost her sister. Joshua needs Molly to help him regain his lost memories of where he lost the expedition in order to have even a chance at making that happen.

Lucky for them, their talents dovetail in a harmony that neither of them ever expected. But not lucky at all for the mastermind who set Joshua up to take the fall and did not reckon, at all, on the dogged persistence of the Griffin sisters.

And not that the villain doesn’t have a plan B to take care of all of those new, pesky, loose ends that Molly and Joshua have managed to unravel in the crystal palaces hidden under Harmony.

Escape Rating A-: Once upon a time, a historical romance author writing under the name of Amanda Quick introduced an organization of physically adept practitioners and mad scientists into her Victorian Era set romances – and the Arcane Society was born. In one of her other personas, Jayne Ann Krentz, the author carried the Arcane Society in the 20th and 21st centuries. Under a third name, Jayne Castle, she created the lost Terran colony world of Harmony and eventually admitted that the original colonists included a considerable number of members of, you guessed it, the Arcane Society.

It’s been over two centuries since Harmony was cut off from Earth. The population has evolved to include paranormal talents, many of which have become specialized in response to the resonating crystal artifacts that aliens left behind on their new home world. Their society has also evolved into the close-knitted, family oriented, relatively stable structure that we see in this series.

The population also still throws out the occasional mad scientist.

Which is part of Molly and Leona Griffin’s background, although it’s not really part of this story – except in the trust issues that background left in both women – although the next book in the series will be going there – and I’m seriously looking forward to it.

But in the meantime, this book is focused in Harmony’s present, and follows directly after the events of Guild Boss while putting brand new characters in the literal hot seat – along with another of Harmony’s adorable, scene-stealing predators, Newton the intrepid dust bunny.

As is often the case in the entire extended Arcane Society/Harmony series, there’s both a crime to solve and a talented person to save from what seems like the brink of madness. Molly’s sister is missing, the search has been called off. Molly is determined to pursue the only lead she has left, the supposedly burned out has-been navigator, Joshua Knight.

Joshua is the one who needs saving – he’s pretty sure he’s going mad, and the crazy house he’s squatting in is helping to finish the job that the mess of that lost expedition merely started. Joshua and Molly are each other’s last chance, so they grab onto that chance – and each other – with both hands.

That they manage to find the lost expedition – as wonderful as that is – opens up an entirely new can of worms so that the chief worm can finally get squashed. Only to open the way for yet another and even more dangerous worm – or perhaps that should be wyrm – to emerge from the shadows.

The romance between Molly and Joshua is as hot as the energy they both channel, but the way that their mutual needs and insecurities keep bumping up against one another keeps the relationship from feeling like insta-love. They also have a lot more in common than just their tangling insecurities, leaving the reader to believe that they really do have a good chance at an HEA even after the adrenaline of this case evens out.

To make a long story – or review – short; Harmony is a fascinating world, the paranormal powers keep everything and everyone involved tuned up to the max, the dust bunnies are both adorable and deadly, the romances are scorching, and the tension of whatever wrong needs to be righted or case that needs to be solved has been keeping this reader on the edge of her seat from the very first and this entry in the series continues that happy trend. Visit Harmony and settle in for a long, highly charged, utterly captivating binge-read.

And, also very much to the good, the way that the resolution of this adventure hints so tantalizingly at the next gives this fan of the series a lot of high-rez hope for the next – which doesn’t appear to be coming nearly soon enough!

A+ #BookReview: What Cannot Be Said by C.S. Harris

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A+ Reviews> book reviews
A+ #BookReview: What Cannot Be Said by C.S. HarrisWhat Cannot Be Said (Sebastian St. Cyr, #19) by C.S. Harris
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, large print, ebook, audiobook
Genres: regency mystery
Series: Sebastian St. Cyr #19
Pages: 368
Published by Berkley on April 16, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

A seemingly idyllic summer picnic ends in a macabre murder that echoes a pair of slayings fourteen years earlier in this riveting new historical mystery from the USA Today bestselling author of Who Cries for the Lost.
July 1815: The Prince Regent’s grandiose plans to celebrate Napoléon’s recent defeat at Waterloo are thrown into turmoil when Lady McInnis and her daughter Emma are found brutally murdered in Richmond Park, their bodies posed in a chilling imitation of the stone effigies once found atop medieval tombs. Bow Street magistrate Sir Henry Lovejoy immediately turns to his friend Sebastian St. Cyr, Viscount Devlin, for help with the investigation. For as Devlin discovers, Lovejoy’s own wife and daughter were also murdered in Richmond Park, their bodies posed in the same bizarre postures. A traumatized ex-soldier was hanged for their killings. So is London now confronting a malicious copyist? Or did Lovejoy help send an innocent man to the gallows?
Aided by his wife, Hero, who knew Lady McInnis from her work with poor orphans, Devlin finds himself exploring a host of unsavory characters from a vicious chimney sweep to a smiling but decidedly lethal baby farmer. Also coming under increasing scrutiny is Sir Ivo McInnis himself, along with a wounded Waterloo veteran—who may or may not have been Laura McInnis’s lover—and a charismatic young violinist who moonlights as a fencing master and may have formed a dangerous relationship with Emma. But when Sebastian’s investigation turns toward man about town Basil Rhodes, he quickly draws the fury of the Palace, for Rhodes is well known as the Regent’s favorite illegitimate son.
Then Lady McInnis’s young niece and nephew are targeted by the killer, and two more women are discovered murdered and arranged in similar postures. With his own life increasingly in danger, Sebastian finds himself drawn inexorably toward a conclusion far darker and more horrific than anything he could have imagined.

My Review:

Most readers, myself included, read mysteries for what one author has called “the romance of justice”. What we love about the genre is that no matter how dark the deed, the investigator is able to figure out ‘whodunnit’, justice triumphs and evil receives its just desserts, followed by the reader’s catharsis that order has been restored to the world.

That’s not what happens in this case – because it can’t. This is a case where there can be no justice. Even though the investigator does manage to figure out ‘whodunnit’ there is no catharsis to be had and it would be wrong if there were.

Two bodies are discovered in Richmond Park, a mother and her 16-year-old daughter. That they are cut down in the prime of – or even worse at the beginning of – their lives is unjust enough. Then the situation gets worse.

The bodies are posed in repose, in exactly the same way that the bodies of another mother and daughter were found in that same park, near that same spot, fourteen years previously. It’s the grief over the deaths of his wife and daughter that put Magistrate Henry Lovejoy on the road that led to his first case with Viscount Devlin nearly a decade later, and could be said to have changed both their lives.

Seeing these two bodies – so like his own wife and daughter – make Lovejoy question whether in his zeal to bring SOMEONE to justice all those years ago he pushed for the wrong man’s conviction and execution. In his reinvigorated grief, his crisis of conscience is profound. Yet he still soldiers on in a case that he should have passed on to another Magistrate. Because someone else might get it wrong – as he might have fourteen years ago. He has to see this through – even if – or especially because – he may have apologies owing now, at the end, that won’t begin to redress the damage he caused at the beginning.

Devlin has a crisis of another kind, as the more he delves into this case, both the past tragedy and the present conundrum, the less ANY of it makes sense. The mother had enemies. The daughter had indiscretions. There are plenty of people with motive to kill the mother and even a few who might wish to eliminate the daughter but seemingly no one with this deep an animus for them both – although the husband/father certainly comes closest. As those closest to the victim or victims often do.

It’s only when Devlin sets aside his initial assumptions that logic forces him to reckon with the maxim later attributed to Sherlock Holmes, that “when you have eliminated all which is impossible, then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.” In this case, a truth that is so heinous, so previously unthinkable, that no one who confronts it with him can even conceive of a just punishment.

But one desperate man can see – if not justice – at least an ending.

Escape Rating A+: This was, as is usual for my reading in this series, a one-night read that wouldn’t let go of me until it was over. Which doesn’t mean that I’m over it. Sebastian St. Cyr, Viscount Devlin, certainly was not at the story’s end.

One of the things that has always fascinated me about this series is the way that even though the murder is always solved, the amount of justice available to be served along with that solution is always limited.

Not that this era didn’t punish its criminals harshly – and as is often shown during the course of the series – unjustly. Rather, it’s that Devlin investigates crimes among the highest and mightiest, and as the saying has always gone, “the rich are different from you and me”.

In other words, Devlin often finds himself in the middle of cases where many of the suspects and even the perpetrators are above the law and protected, as is the case of one suspect here, by someone even higher.

Also, in investigating the dark and dirty underbelly of the glittering Regency, Devlin all too often finds practices that, while perfectly legal, turn both his stomach and ours. As is true in this particular case, as his wife, as well as the murder victim, were pushing hard for reforms in the commonly abused apprentice system – not to mention the vile practice of baby farming – and ruffling plenty of important feathers along their reforming way.

That feather ruffling could have been a motive for one of the murders, but not both. A big part of what keeps the reader turning pages in this one is watching the normally indefatigable and unflappable Devlin flag and flap because the pieces of this puzzle don’t add up – not even badly.

And not that we ALL don’t hope that the husband did it and that Devlin can make THAT stick. Alas, that hope is in vain – which is good for the story in a peculiar way because that would have made things much too easy and considerably less unsettling for both Devlin and the reader.

In the end, this is a story about bringing the unthinkable into thought, and just how much justice is even possible in a case that is indubitably true that absolutely no one will want to believe. Those are hard questions, and they are just as valid in contemporary mystery as they are in this historical iteration.

This series, centered on the riveting character of Sebastian St. Cyr, Viscount Devlin, and the equally compelling cast of friends and  enemies – definitely the enemies! – that have gathered around him and his “poking his nose into situations where many believe it does not belong” has had this reader caught in its unshakeable grip since that very first book, What Angels Fear, so very long ago. The fascination hasn’t let go yet, and I don’t expect it to.

What I, maybe not expect but certainly hope for, is yet another page-turning story in the Sebastian St. Cyr series, hopefully this time next year!

A- #BookReview: Always Remember by Mary Balogh

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A- Reviews> book reviews
A- #BookReview: Always Remember by Mary BaloghAlways Remember (Ravenswood #3) by Mary Balogh
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, large print, ebook, audiobook
Genres: historical fiction, historical romance, regency romance
Series: Ravenswood #3
Pages: 366
Published by Berkley on January 16, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

Lady Jennifer Arden and Ben Ellis know that a match between them is out of the question. Yet their hearts yearn for the impossible. Discover a new heartwarming story from New York Times bestselling author and beloved “queen of Regency romance” Mary Balogh.Left unable to walk by a childhood illness, Lady Jennifer, sister of the Duke of Wilby, has grown up to make a happy place for herself in society. Outgoing and cheerful, she has many friends and enjoys the pleasures of high society—even if she cannot dance at balls or stroll in Hyde Park. She is blessed with a large, loving, and protective family. But she secretly dreams of marriage and children, and of walking—and dancing.When Ben Ellis comes across Lady Jennifer as she struggles to walk with the aid of primitive crutches, he instantly understands her yearning. He is a fixer. It is often said of him that he never saw a practical problem he did not have to solve. He wants to help her discover independence and motion—driving a carriage, swimming, even walking a different way. But he must be careful. He is the bastard son of the late Earl of Stratton. Though he was raised with the earl’s family, he knows he does not really belong in the world of the ton.Jennifer is shocked—and intrigued—by Ben’s ideas, and both families are alarmed by the growing friendship and perhaps more that they sense developing between the two. A duke’s sister certainly cannot marry the bastard son of an earl. Except sometimes, love can find a way.

My Review:

At the beginning of the Ravenswood series, back in Remember Love, I compared the late and more or less lamented Earl of Stratton, Caleb Ware, with the late and entirely unlamented Humphrey Westcott, Earl of Riverdale, the discovery of whose marital perfidy kicked off that series, and found both of them wanting in only slightly different ways and degrees.

As that earlier series continued through the stories of all the family members impacted by the lies that were shockingly revealed upon Westcott’s death, the man was never redeemed – not even in memory. In fact, as the impacts of his lies rippled out in the years after his death, the worse a character he became.

Therefore, one of the fascinating things about Caleb Ware, Earl of Stratton, is the way that his memory has been redeemed in the years after his death. Not that he wasn’t unfaithful to his wife from the very beginning of their marriage, and not that he didn’t constantly seek love, approval and attention wherever he went, but the reasons behind his actions become clearer with each book – even though that book is centered around another character entirely.

That is especially true of this third book in the series, after Remember Love and Remember Me, because the male protagonist of this story is Ware’s illegitimate oldest son Ben, whose mother was, as it turns out, truly, the love of Ware’s life.

A woman of his own class who he would have married if he could have, but that would have made her guilty of the same sin as Humphrey Westcott. It would have made Lady Janette Kelliston, who her son only knew as plain ‘Jane Ellis’, a bigamist.

But this is, after all, Ben’s story and not the story of his parents, although his discovery of the truth about that relationship and so much more is a central part of his story. While he does not discover those truths until well into this story, it does set the stage for the things he already does know about himself.

That in spite of his complete and thoroughgoing acceptance by Caleb Ware’s legal family for all of Ben’s life, he is, and always will be, the Earl’s bastard. And therefore, not eligible to marry any of the girls – and now women – he meets as part of his membership in the Ware family.

Which means that when widowed Ben and his three-year-old daughter Joy come to Ravenswood Hall to celebrate the revival of the annual Summer Fete, even though he has marriage on his mind he does not expect to find anyone who would consider him suitable among his family’s aristocratic guests.

Because he is NOT suitable, as the rest of the world is all too willing to remind him. The question is whether he, and the woman with whom he falls in love in spite of all the whispers against it, are willing to damn the consequences and the social opprobrium likely to follow in their wake.

Escape Rating A-: I came into Always Remember with high hopes after a bit of disappointment with Remember Me. I liked the characters of that book well enough, but Lady Philippa Ware was a bit TOO perfect and too privileged to identify with and that affected my reading of her story quite a lot.

The heroine of this entry in the series, Pippa’s now sister-in-law Lady Jennifer Arden, is far from perfect – although she fakes it well. Not the perfect beauty that Pippa absolutely does have, but rather, a perfect amiability – or at least the appearance of it – that allows her to find as much happiness and fulfillment in the life that the lifelong disability that remains after a childhood illness (most likely polio) has left her with as is possible. Which is quite a lot if one puts their mind to it, which Lady Jennifer absolutely does.

So this is a romance between an unconventional hero – at least for a Regency romance – and an equally unusual heroine – for any romance at all. That it is their differences from the others around them that brings them together – even as their differences in social position pulls them apart – that made even the possibilities of this story something I was definitely looking forward to.

Ben Ellis and Lady Jennifer Arden find a bond because they are able to see behind each other’s masks to find the real person within. Both are in positions where they ‘should’ be grateful. He because his father’s family took him in and made him their own – as much as they could and considerably more than he knew he had any right to expect. Lady Jennifer’s entire family has rearranged itself, and continues to do so, in order to make sure that she is taken care of, has as much freedom and opportunity as they believe is safe for her, and in general has a good, well-privileged life with friends and opportunities and someone always available to take care of her.

But they are both in pursuit of the missing pieces in their lives. Ben needs to know about his mother’s family, for the sake of his own identity as well as that of his daughter. Lady Jennifer is twenty-five years old, she needs to find out what her OWN limits are. From her perspective, she has one blighted leg but the rest of her, including most definitely her heart and her brain, are just fine. She is an adult and needs to forge her own path – even if that path is navigated on crutches or in a wheelchair.

Ben sees possibilities for her. She sees answers for him. Together, they forge a path that no one expected, and that some would have preferred they not even begin to try. I half expected the author to contrive a solution that would make Ben legally legitimate no matter the actual circumstances of his birth in order to clear that path, but it made for a much better story that the easy solution was not taken after all, making this a deeply earned HEA that kept me up late because I had to find out how it ended.

Speaking of endings, this could be the ending of the Ravenswood series, but I sincerely hope that it is not. The late – and now reasonably lamented – Earl of Stratton and his Countess had several more children who have yet to find their own HEAs. I’d LOVE to see their stories added to this series!