Publisher: Mira

Spotlight + Excerpt: Cassandra in Reverse by Holly Smale

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | blog tours> Excerpts> Spotlight
Spotlight + Excerpt: Cassandra in Reverse by Holly SmaleCassandra in Reverse by Holly Smale
Formats available: hardcover, large print, ebook, audiobook
Genres: Chick Lit, time travel romance
Pages: 368
Published by Mira on June 11, 2023
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads


If you had the power to change the past…where would you start?

Cassandra Penelope Dankworth is a creature of habit. She likes what she likes (museums, jumpsuits, her boyfriend, Will) and strongly dislikes what she doesn't (mess, change, her boss drinking out of her mug). Her life runs in a pleasing, predictable order…until now.• She's just been dumped.• She's just been fired.• Her local café has run out of banana muffins.
Then, something truly unexpected happens: Cassie discovers she can go back and change the past. One small rewind at a time, Cassie attempts to fix the life she accidentally obliterated, but soon she'll discover she's trying to fix all the wrong things.

Welcome to the blog tour for Cassandra in Reverse by Holly Smale. I’ll be reviewing this book later this month, but in the meantime, here’s a bit of a teaser to whet ALL of our reading appetites!

Here’s how Cassandra’s story starts…(Excerpt from the first chapter of Cassandra in Reverse by Holly Smale)

WHERE DOES A STORY START?

   It’s a lie, the first page of a book, because it masquerades as a beginning. A real beginning—the opening of something—when what you’re being offered is an arbitrary line in the sand. This story starts here. Pick a random event. Ignore whatever came before it or catch up later. Pretend the world stops when the book closes, or that a resolution isn’t simply another random moment on a curated timeline.

  • But life isn’t like that, so books are dishonest.
  • Maybe that’s why humans like them.
  • And it’s saying that kind of shit that gets me thrown out of the Fentiman Road Book Club.

Here are some other things I’ve been asked not to return to:

  • The Blenheim Road Readers Group
  • A large flat-share I briefly attempted in Walthamstow
  • My last relationship
  • My current job

   The final two have been in quick succession. This morning, Will—my boyfriend of four months—kissed me, listed my virtues out of nowhere and concluded the pep talk by ending our relationship.

   The job situation I found out about eighty seconds ago.

   According to the flexing jaw and flared nostrils of my boss, I’ve yet to respond to this new information. He seems faint and muted, as if he’s behind a pane of thick frosted glass. He also has a dried oat on his shirt collar but now doesn’t seem the right time to point it out: he’s married—his wife can do it later.

   “Cassie,” he says more loudly. “Did you hear me?”

   Obviously I heard him or I’d still be giving a detailed report on the client meeting I just had, which is exactly what I was doing when he fired me.

   “The issue isn’t so much your work performance,” he plows on gallantly. “Although, Christ knows, somebody who hates phone calls as much as you do shouldn’t be working in public relations.”

   I nod: that’s an accurate assessment.

   “It’s your general demeanor I can’t have in this office. You are rude. Insubordinate. Arrogant, frankly. You are not a team player, and do you know what this office needs?”

   “A better coffee machine.”

   “That’s exactly the kind of bullshit I’m talking about.”

   I’d tell you my boss’s name and give him a brief description, but judging by this conversation, he isn’t going to be a prominent character for much longer.

   “I’ve spoken to you about this on multiple occasions— Cassandra, look at me when I’m talking to you. Our highest-paying client just dropped us because of your quote, unquote relentlessly grating behavior. You are unlikable. That’s the exact word they used. Unlikable. Public relations is a People Job. For People People.”

   Now, just hang on a minute.

   “I’m a person,” I object, lifting my chin and doing my best to stare directly into his pupils. “And, as far as I’m aware, being likable is irrelevant to my job description. It’s certainly not in my contract, because I’ve checked.”

   My boss’s nostrils flare into horsiness.

   I rarely understand what another human is thinking, but I frequently feel it: a wave of emotion that pours out of them into me, like a teapot into a cup. While it fills me up, I have to work out what the hell it is, where it came from and what I’m supposed to do to stop it spilling everywhere.

   Rage that doesn’t feel like mine pulses through me: dark purple and red.

   His colors are an invasion and I do not like it.

   “Look,” my boss concludes with a patient sigh that is nothing like the emotion bolting out of him. “This just isn’t working out, Cassie, and on some level you must already know that. Maybe you should find something that is better suited to your…specific skill set.”

   That’s essentially what Will told me this morning too. I don’t know why they’re both under the impression I must have seen the end coming when I very much did not.

   “Your job has the word relations in it,” my boss clarifies helpfully. “Perhaps you could find one that doesn’t?”

   Standing up, I clear my throat and look at my watch: it’s not even Wednesday lunchtime yet.

   Relationship: over.

   Job: over.

“Well,” I say calmly. “Fuck.”

So that’s where my story starts.

It could have started anywhere: I just had to pick a moment. It could have been waking up this morning to the sound of my flatmates screaming at each other, or eating my breakfast (porridge and banana, always), or making an elaborate gift for my first anniversary with Will (slightly preemptive).

   It could have been the moment just before I met him, which would have been a more positive beginning. It could have been the day my parents died in a car accident, which would have been considerably less so.

   But I chose here: kind of in the middle.

   Thirty-one years into my story and a long time after the dramatic end of some others. Packing a cardboard box with very little, because it transpires the only thing on my desk that doesn’t belong to the agency is a gifted coffee mug with a picture of a cartoon deer on it. I put it in the box anyway. There’s no real way of knowing what’s going to happen next, but I assume there will still be caffeine.

   “Oh shit!” My colleague Sophie leans across our desks as I stick a wilting plant under my arm just to look like I’m not leaving another year of my life behind with literally nothing to show for it. “They haven’t fired you? That’s awful. I’m sure we will all miss you so much.”

   I genuinely have no idea if she means this or not. If she does, it’s certainly unexpected: we’ve been sitting opposite each other since I got here and all I really know about her is that she’s twenty-two years old and likes tuna sandwiches, typing aggressively and picking her nose as if none of us have peripheral vision.

   “Will you?” I ask, genuinely curious. “Why?”

   Sophie opens her mouth, shuts it again and goes back to smashing her keyboard as if she’s playing whack-a-mole with her fingertips.

   “Cassandra!” My boss appears in the doorway just as I start cleaning down my keyboard with one of my little antiseptic wipes. “What the hell are you doing? I didn’t mean leave right now. Jesus on a yellow bicycle, what is wrong with you? I’d prefer you to work out your notice period, please.”

   “Oh.” I look down at the box and my plant. I’ve packed now. “No, thank you.”

   Finished with cleaning, I sling my handbag over my shoulder and my coat over my arm, hold the box against my stomach, awkwardly hook the plant in the crook of my elbow and try to get the agency door open on my own. Then I hold it open with my knee while I look back, even though—much like Orpheus at the border of the Underworld—I know I shouldn’t.

   The office has never been this quiet.

   Heads are conscientiously turned away from me, as if I’m a sudden bright light. There’s a light patter of keyboards like pigeons walking on a roof (punctuated by the violent death stabs of Sophie), the radiator by the window is gurgling, the reception is blindingly gold-leafed and the watercooler drips. If I’m looking for something good to come out of today—and I think I probably should—it’s that I won’t have to hear that every second for the rest of my working life.

   It’s a productivity triumph. They should fire people for fundamental personality flaws more often.

   The door slams behind me and I jump even though I’m the one who slammed it. Then my phone beeps, so I balance everything precariously on one knee and fumble for it. I try to avoid having unread notifications if I can. They make my bag feel heavy.

Dankworth please clean your shit up

   I frown as I reply:

Which shit in particular

   There’s another beep.

   Very funny. Keep the kitchen clear

It is a COmmUNAL SPaCE.

   It wasn’t funny a couple of weeks ago when I came down for a glass of water in the middle of the night and found Sal and Derek having sex against the fridge.

   Although perhaps that is the definition of communal.

   Still frowning, I hit the button for the lift and mentally scour the flat for what I’ve done wrong this time. I forgot to wash my porridge bowl and spoon. There’s also my favorite yellow scarf on the floor and a purple jumper over the arm of the sofa. This is my sixth flat-share in ten years and I’m starting to feel like a snail: carrying my belongings around with me so I leave no visible trace.

   I send back:

OK.

My intestines are rapidly liquidizing, my cheeks are hot and a bright pink rash I can’t see is forming across my chest. Dull pain wraps itself around my neck, like a scarf pulled tight.

   It’s fascinating how emotions can tie your life together.

   One minute you’re twelve, standing in the middle of a playground while people fight over who doesn’t get you as a teammate. The next you’re in your thirties, single and standing by the lifts of an office you’ve just been fired from because nobody wants you as a teammate. Same sensations, different body. Literally: my cells have cunningly replaced themselves at least twice in the interim.

   The office door swings open. “Cassandra?”

   Ronald has worn the same thing—a navy cashmere jumper—every day since he started working here a few months ago. It smells really lovely, so I’m guessing there must be plural. He walks toward me and I immediately panic. Now and then I’ve caught him looking at me from the neighboring desk with an incalculable expression on his face, and I have no idea what it could be. Lust? Repulsion? I’ve been scripting a response to the former for a month now, just in case.

I am honored by your romantic and/or sexual interest in me given that we’ve only exchanged perfunctory greetings, but I have a long-term boyfriend I am almost definitely in the process of falling in love with.

   Well, that excuse isn’t going to work anymore, is it.

   Ronald clears his throat and runs a large hand over his buzz-cut Afro. “That’s mine.”

   “Who?” I blink, disoriented by the grammar. “Me?”

   “The plant.” He points at the shrubbery now clutched under my sweaty armpit. “It’s mine and I’d like to keep it.”

   Ah, the sweet, giddy flush of humiliation is now complete.

   “Of course,” I say stiffly. “Sorry, Ronald.”

   Ronald blinks and reaches out a hand; I move quickly away so his fingers won’t touch mine, nearly dropping the pot in the process. It’s the same fun little dance I do when I have to pay with cash at the supermarket checkout, which is why I always carry cards.

   I get into the lift and press the button. Ronald now appears to be casually assessing me as if I’m a half-ripe avocado, so I stare at the floor until he reaches a conclusion.

   “Bye,” he says finally.

   “Bye,” I say as the lift doors slide shut.

And that’s how my story starts.

   With a novelty mug in a box, a full character assassination and the realization that when I leave a building I am missed considerably less than a half-dead rubber plant.

Excerpted from CASSANDRA IN REVERSE. Copyright © 2023 by Holly Smale. Published by MIRA, an imprint of HarperCollins.

 

About the Author:

Holly Smale is the internationally bestselling, award-winning author of the Geek Girl (soon to be a Netflix series) and The Valentines teen series, which have sold 3.4 million copies worldwide. In January 2021, Holly was diagnosed autistic at the age of 39. Suddenly a lot of things made sense. Holly regularly shares, debates about, and celebrates neurodiversity on Twitter and Instagram @holsmale. Cassandra in Reverse is her adult debut and was named A Reese’s Book Club Pick, an Amazon Editors’ Top Pick of the Month, and a June Must Listen on Apple.

Social Links:
Author Website: https://www.hollysmale.com/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/holsmale
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/holsmale/
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/5824402.Holly_Smale

Review: Seven Girls Gone by Allison Brennan

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A- Reviews> book reviews
Review: Seven Girls Gone by Allison BrennanSeven Girls Gone (Quinn & Costa, #4) by Allison Brennan
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: mystery, suspense, thriller
Series: Quinn & Costa #4
Pages: 443
Published by Mira on April 25, 2023
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

For three years, women have been disappearing—and eventually turning up dead in the small bayou town of St. Augustine, Louisiana. Police detective Beau Hebert is the only one who seems to care, but with every witness quickly silenced and a corrupt police department set on keeping the cases unsolved, Beau’s investigation stalls at every turn.
With nobody else to trust, Beau calls in a favor from his friend on the FBI’s Mobile Response Team. While LAPD detective Kara Quinn works undercover to dig into the women’s murders and team leader Matt Costa officially investigates the in-custody death of a witness, Beau might finally have a chance at solving the case.
But in a town where everyone knows everyone, talking gets you killed and secrets stay buried, it’s going to take the entire team working around the clock to unravel the truth. Especially when they discover that the deep-seated corruption and the deadly drug-trafficking ring at the center of it all extends far beyond the small-town borders.

My Review:

To paraphrase Shakespeare, “Something is rotten in the parish of Broussard,” specifically in the town of St. Augustine, in the heart of the Louisiana bayou.

When we first meet St. Augustine detective Beau Hebert, there are already five women dead, one missing and presumed the same, and a man has just committed murder in front of an entire crowd of folks mostly waiting for their turn in a bar that EVERYONE in town knows is a front for the local brothel and illegal drugs distributor.

There’s a lot going on, all of it bad, and looking like it’s going to get worse. Detective Hebert is pretty damn certain that his boss, the chief of police, is in on the whole mess past his wallet and up to his neck, and that there’s a fix in with the District Attorney. Between the two of them, nothing ever gets done and no one ever gets brought up on charges no matter how much evidence Hebert brings in.

Because it all disappears somewhere along the way.

At the end of his rope, feeling like his time is running out one way or another, with no one to turn to, Hebert phones a friend. An old friend from his days in the Navy, who just so happens to be a member of FBI Special Agent in Charge Mathias Costa’s Mobile Response Team.

Hebert thinks all he needs is someone to talk to – because he has too many hostages to fortune in the parish to rock the very rotten boat. But friends don’t leave friends out on a limb all alone, so Costa’s entire team makes their way to the heart of the bayou to dredge up all the muck that’s obscuring what’s at the bottom of the filthy water.

Along with all the alligators lurking among the corrupt powers that be in this tiny town. The thing about gators is that they bite. What those antediluvian descendants of dinosaurs don’t know – at least not yet – is that Costa and his team bite back.

Escape Rating A-: I picked this up for two reasons. First and foremost, because I fell straight into the plot and the team dynamics of this bunch when I read the second book in the Quinn & Costa series, Tell No Lies. I couldn’t put that one down, and the same was true of the third book in the series, The Wrong Victim. So I went into this one expecting a compelling thriller – and I mostly got that.

I also love this series for its ‘competence porn’ aspects. I was in the mood for something where the protagonists knew what the hell they were doing and weren’t worrying about the consequences of doing it. I was certain that was something I’d get in this series and I was pretty much all in.

The only thing keeping this from being an A+ like the previous two books is that the question about whether the relationship between Mathias Costa and Kara Quinn is merely friends-with-benefits, all hidden on the down-low because of their working relationship, or whether it’s going to be an actual ‘Relationship’ with a capital ‘R’ got a bit too angsty and had a bit too much of an impact on both of their behaviors during this case.

Which had all the angst it needed without throwing the emotional baggage they are both lugging around about romance into the mix.

The case itself had me on the edge of my seat because of the way the stakes start out high and just keep getting higher. And because even from the opening, it’s obvious to EVERYONE that someone – or several someones – have committed horrible crimes and that someone powerful is doing more terrible things to keep those crimes covered up.

The question that plagues Beau Hebert at the beginning, and Costa’s entire team once they get there, is exactly who to pin what on. Because someone keeps making the evidence disappear – right along with any potential witnesses. But there are so many motives and so many victims that the air is as thick with suspects as it is with humidity.

And there’s a traitor in their midst muddying the already murky waters, as well as a terrible question. As horrible as the situation is, and as frightened as every single person in town seems to be of pretty much everything – and rightfully so, if Costa and his team do manage to clean out the gators is anyone going to be left with the strength and the will and the sheer moxie to prevent the whole damn parish from sinking back down into the mire?

But that’s not Costa’s job. His job is to arrest the perpetrators with enough evidence to make the charges stick all the way to long jail terms – and to protect his team at all costs. Before all is said and done, and for once more is done than said and not the other way around, that cost almost becomes too high to pay.

While the team wraps up this case with a VERY satisfactory bow at the end, it does not read as if the Quinn & Costa series is anywhere near finished – which is an excellent thing! But there is not currently a next book in the series listed, I have hope there will be one. I am hooked on this author, so I’m very happy that the author has an upcoming standalone thriller, North of Nowhere (due out this August) to tide me over while I wait!

Review: Vampire Weekend by Mike Chen

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B+ Reviews> blog tours> book reviews
Review: Vampire Weekend by Mike ChenVampire Weekend by Mike Chen
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: fantasy, horror, paranormal, vampires
Pages: 368
Published by Mira on January 31, 2023
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

Being a vampire is far from glamorous...but it can be pretty punk rock.
Everything you've heard about vampires is a lie. They can't fly. No murders allowed (the community hates that). And turning into a bat? Completely ridiculous. In fact, vampire life is really just a lot of blood bags and night jobs. For Louise Chao, it's also lonely, since she swore off family ages ago.
At least she's gone to decades of punk rock shows. And if she can join a band of her own (while keeping her...situation under wraps), maybe she'll finally feel like she belongs, too.
Then a long-lost teenage relative shows up at her door. Whether it's Ian's love of music or his bad attitude, for the first time in ages, Louise feels a connection.
But as Ian uncovers Louise's true identity, things get dangerous--especially when he asks her for the ultimate favor. One that goes beyond just family...one that might just change everything vampires know about life and death forever.

My Review:

Vampires don’t sparkle. Everybody knows that’s a complete fabrication. Totally fictional. Also slightly ridiculous.

As Louise Chao has discovered over the decades, most of the things that people thought they knew about vampires are every bit as mythical as that sparkle. And Louise ought to know. She’s been a vampire for those same decades. For her, being a vampire isn’t remotely glamorous, nor is she accumulating wealth. She certainly doesn’t have super-strength or any other super-senses.

She’s absolutely not draining innocent – or even not so innocent – victims dry every night. Not only is that frowned upon – with extreme prejudice – by the vampire community, but honestly it’s not nearly as easy as it looks to bite someone in the carotid artery. The angles are just all wrong and the fangs aren’t nearly as sharp as fiction would have one believe.

For Louise, being a vampire is an endless search for night jobs to pay the bills while scrounging for safe sources of blood to stave off starvation. Her only solace is the best dog in the world, Lola.

Her best human friend died in a car crash just before COVID really sunk its teeth into the human population and psyche. Her Aunt Laura, the only family who ever accepted her as her punk rock, non-conforming self, died years ago and left her the house they shared in San Francisco.

It’s a lonely life. When the local blood supplies start running low, literal starvation is just a metaphor – although a gnawing, achingly, empty metaphor – for the starvation of the heart and spirit that Louise is already living in.

Until her self-imposed isolation is invaded by her long-lost family. Two of them. A middle-aged man who seems vaguely familiar, and a teenage boy who reminds Louise so very strikingly of the young, rebellious music loving rebel she used to be. And deep in her bruised heart, still very much is.

Ian needs a refuge from his mother’s impending death that will give him just a bit more distance and perspective than the bad attitude he’s currently fronting as his defense against the world. Louise isn’t able to admit it, even to herself, but she needs somebody to connect her to the world that might otherwise pass her by. She needs more than just a shitty job and a refrigerator full of blood bags.

All she has to do is let herself connect. To this teenager who needs a safe place to be himself. To the self that she left behind. And to the community that is willing to make her life a whole lot easier – and just a bit closer to some of those powers she thought were myths – if she’ll just let all of them in.

Escape Rating B+: Louise’s journey in Vampire Weekend is a combination of “no matter where you go, there you are” and “who do you want to be when you grow up?” Because Louise hasn’t. Grown up, that is. And that not-grown-up self has been dragging behind her and holding her back for decades. When Ian drops into her life – and all the landmines in her past that he unwittingly brings with him – she’s forced to reckon with who she once was and the baggage she’s still carrying from that person.

(One thing about all those vampire myths to get out of the way before anyone gets skeeved about Louise’s relationship with Ian. Vampires in Louise’s world are all asexual. The genetic and biological change of human to vampire kills off all the chemistry that creates both arousal and sexual gratification. Another vampire myth shot down.)

What makes Louise’s journey interesting is that her vampiric existence has meant that she hasn’t had to move on from the traumas of her family of origin. She hasn’t grown up because she hasn’t had to. So everything she took with her from her parent’s house when she left is still festering. When Ian and his grandfather drop into her life, because they’re part of the family that rejected both her and her beloved Aunt Laura, she has to finally process her shit because Ian is tangential to it and his grandfather is a bigger part of it than she even recognizes.

While the heart of this story is Louise’s growing relationship with Ian and her reconciliation with her own past, there’s another story woven into its edges that moves toward center stage as it progresses.

When there are vampires, it seems as if there are always politics and this story is no exception. At first the larger vampire community is on the periphery of Louise’s life – and that’s where she wants them to stay. But the blood supply is suddenly dwindling and she needs that network of support to locate supplies. And they need her – but not in any of the ways that she is worried about or that the reader expects.

That political angle felt a bit tacked on, to the point where its resolution seemed like a bit of a deus ex machina for the issues that brought Ian into Louise’s life in the first place. Not badly, and it made a certain kind of sense for the resolution of the whole story, but it just wasn’t as solid as Louise’s journey and Ian’s impending grief – although it does eventually tie into both.

This is not the first time that vampires have been into music, and not even the first story mixing vampires with some variety of rock and roll. The book The Vampire Lestat features the titular vampire fronting a rock band. And the WVMP series (starts with Wicked Game) by Jeri Smith-Ready (which took me forever to dig out of memory) is all about a radio station where the DJs are vampires who only play the music of the era when they were turned.

There is also a real band named Vampire Weekend. This isn’t about them, although there are a couple of in-jokes that refer to the real band, just as there are in-jokes featuring Louise’s beloved punk rock and rock music in general. I would imagine that an appreciation of those jokes and knowledge of that scene in general would add just that little something extra to the reader’s appreciation of the story. Howsomever, as someone who was not into punk in particular the story is still terrific. I’m not sure you need to be a fan of any genre of music in particular, as the heartbeat of the story is about loving music, particularly live performances, and needing it to be a part of your life. YMMV.

In the end, Vampire Weekend was a delightful surprise. It wasn’t any of the things I was expecting, much in the way that the author’s Light Years From Home wasn’t quite any of the things that I expected when I picked it up (and loved it!) either. But both stories are about families and making peace with them as well as yourself. Both have just the right touch of bittersweetness to tug at the heartstrings. And both are are terrific reads!

Review: Don’t Open the Door by Allison Brennan

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A Reviews> book reviews
Review: Don’t Open the Door by Allison BrennanDon't Open the Door (Regan Merritt, #2) by Allison Brennan
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: mystery, suspense, thriller
Series: Regan Merritt #2
Pages: 384
Published by Mira on January 24, 2023
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

“Downright spectacular. A riveting page turner as prescient as it is purposeful.” —Providence Journal on Tell No Lies
A child is shot while playing video games at home. His mother will stop at nothing to find out who did it—and why.
After their ten-year-old son, Chase, was senselessly murdered, Regan's life unraveled. Her corporate lawyer husband, Grant, blamed the death on Regan’s work as a US marshal. Unable to reconcile their grief, they divorced, and Regan quit her job and moved away.
Now she's back after a voice mail from her former boss Tommy said he had important news to share about Chase’s killing. Regan is stunned to learn Tommy is dead too. When she reaches out to Grant, his panicked reaction raises her suspicions. Then a lawyer with ties to her ex also turns up murdered, and the police make Grant their top suspect.
Unsure of his guilt or innocence, Regan risks everything to find Grant before the police do so she can finally get the answers to all that has haunted her since losing Chase. But the truth is not even close to what she imagines—and now she fears she has no one to trust.

My Review:

Former U.S. Marshall Regan Merritt seems to have turned “making lazy and/or corrupt investigators look bad” as her new life’s work. It’s a pity that the cases that bring her skills to bear on her former colleagues come from being much too close to a victim that someone has paid to have whisked under a rug.

Like her 10-year-old son Chase. And now her dead former partner, still a U.S. Marshall, who was looking into her son’s murder. A little too closely for someone else’s comfort.

When we first met Regan Merritt in The Sorority Murder it was a way of easing the reader into the recent tragedies of her life, just as she was easing herself out of the blackest depths of her grief after her little boy’s murder and her subsequent divorce. (Although, honestly, there are PLENTY of reasons why Regan Merritt’s marriage to Grant Warwick was over long before the death of their son – and every single one of them is on display in Don’t Open the Door. OMG the man is a douche. And for once I’m not digressing much at all. Although…my reading group has a metaphorical vat of acid we throw especially asshole-ish characters into on a regular basis. This jerk belongs in that vat!)

We got to know Regan over a case that didn’t have anything to do with her son’s death or the way that the F.B.I. closed it, in her mind very prematurely and with a TON of questions still unanswered. The same thing happened with The Sorority Murder – but as a private citizen Regan is able to turn over rocks and tilt at seeming windmills that finally result in seeing justice done.

So when Regan’s friend and mentor Tommy Granger is murdered after unofficially reopening the case of little Chase Merritt’s murder, Regan is certain – very nearly dead certain, in fact – that Tommy’s death is related to Chase’s, and that she’s not going to let the same damned F.B.I. agents take the easy way out yet again. She’ll just have to retrace Tommy’s steps and rerun his entire search to discover just which rock he turned over and exactly who and what crawled out from under it.

Even if – or perhaps a bit of especially because – it might turn out that her ex-husband is in this mess up to his neck. That perhaps when he blamed Regan’s job for their son’s killing that he already had a sneaking suspicion that it was really all about his own.

Escape Rating A: I read Don’t Open the Door in a single evening for the very same reason I got caught up in The Sorority Murder. I loved following Regan Merritt in her methodical but still compelling investigation. She’s careful, she’s even cautious to a certain extent, but she goes where the evidence takes her – even if she’s not supposed to be the one collecting it and even if it hurts.

I also empathized with the way that she painstakingly processes situations and presents solutions with logic and without much emotion interjected. And I found most people’s – read that as men’s – reactions to that all too realistic. Especially her ex-husband, who always wants everything to be all about him and expects her to have asked for his inclusion at every turn – even in situations where she has all the expertise and he has none. This is just the icing on the shit cake of reasons why their marriage failed.

The other thing that makes Regan such a terrific investigator is that while she trusts her gut instincts, she also verifies those instincts with solid technique. Trust, but verify applies in all sorts of situations, including situations where the person you need to trust is yourself.

The case Regan is attempting to piece together from scattered fragments keeps the reader’s attention – and not just because Regan’s whole heart is in it. It’s clear that Tommy died because he uncovered someone’s dirty secrets. More to the point, he was on the trail of exposing the kind of dirty secrets that are worth killing a U.S. Marshall over – which means they are very dirty, very costly, or more likely both.

Regan’s ex is a high-powered corporate attorney. It is WAY more likely that he saw or heard something that made somebody very important very nervous than that their son’s killer acted alone out of revenge. Somebody paid someone to make a problem go away and that’s not anything of what the F.B.I. decided to believe in order to close a messy case.

Unless someone at the local office is in on it too. Which just means more money and an even messier trail to follow.

So this case starts out personal for Regan, and only gets more so as it goes along. But what keeps us reading is her dogged determination to look out for herself and keep looking for the truth – no matter how many people try to get in her way – or try to get her out of theirs.

In the end, this was a compelling mystery thriller that also had a huge, heaping helping of closure embedded within it. Regan gets her answers – even if they’re not always the answers she wants. She doesn’t get over her son’s death – because one just can’t. (She’s already way past over her divorce.) But she’s turned a HUGE corner, and is looking forward and not just back. It feels like her story is done. I would love to see her in another mystery, because I enjoy the character. But if that never happens, her journey does feel like it has come to an appropriate conclusion and I’m happy with that ending for her.

My first introduction to this author was through Tell No Lies, the second book in her Quinn & Costa series. While we may, or may not, see Regan Merritt again, I’m really looking forward to the next Quinn & Costa thriller, Seven Girls Gone, coming this April.

Review: Would You Rather by Allison Ashley

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B- Reviews> blog tours> book reviews
Review: Would You Rather by Allison AshleyWould You Rather by Allison Ashley
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: Chick Lit, contemporary romance, women's fiction
Pages: 320
Published by Mira on August 23, 2022
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

Noah and Mia have always been best friends, and their friendship is the most important thing to them. Life is going great for Noah and he’s up for a promotion in a job he loves. But Mia’s life is on hold as she awaits a kidney transplant. She’s stuck in a dead-end job and, never wanting to be a burden, has sworn off all romance. So when the chance of a lifetime comes to go back to school and pursue her dream, it’s especially painful to pass up. She can’t quit her job or she’ll lose the medical insurance she so desperately needs.
To support her, Noah suggests they get married—in name only—so she can study full-time and still keep the insurance. It’s a risk to both of them, with jobs, health and hearts on the line, and they’ll need to convince suspicious coworkers and nosy roommates that they’re the real deal. But if they can let go of all the baggage holding them back, they might realize that they would rather be together forever.

My Review:

The United States is the ONLY wealthy, industrialized nation on this planet that does not provide universal health care. And that is what honestly makes the U.S. health insurance industry the big, scary, and all too real villain in this romance.

Noah and Mia have been the bestest of best friends since they were seven years old. They absolutely do love each other, whatever form that love might take – and whatever feelings about the form that love might take they are hiding from each other and the rest of the world. Especially from themselves.

But Mia has a life-threatening chronic illness. Her kidneys are slowly but inexorably failing. Her condition is currently managed by expensive medications and occasional hospital admissions for flare-ups, but it’s manageable. At least so far.

She does need a kidney transplant, and her life has in many ways been on hold since she was diagnosed. Two of the specific things that she has put on hold are her career aspirations and any possibility of romance.

Mia does not want to kill anyone else’s hopes and dreams the way she did her parents’. Not that they see it that way. At all. But when she was diagnosed in her late teens, their savings were pretty much completely wiped out by the cost of her care that wasn’t covered by insurance. She just isn’t willing to do that to any potential romantic partner.

She dropped out of college when she was diagnosed – not surprisingly as it was a LOT to deal with. She’s stuck in a dead-end job because she needs the excellent health insurance the company provides. Without it, she will, quite literally, die.

The job has several good points and one really bad one. She is the administrative assistant at the architectural firm owned by Noah’s dad where Noah himself works. BUUUUT, one of the other architects is a douche who seems determined to make her miserable and puts her down at every turn. (There’s a bubbling vat of acid waiting in the wings for him, I swear.)

So, when she gets a scholarship for mid-career learners to return to college and finish the degrees they abandoned, she wants to take it. But she can’t. Because (insert evil villain music here) she needs the insurance from her job.

And that’s where this story both kicks off and goes just a teensy bit off the rails.

Noah offers to marry her so she can stay on his insurance and chase her dream of becoming a pediatric nutritionist, a job that will also pay at least twice what she’s making now and undoubtedly come with its own excellent insurance. Or, she’ll get a transplant which will automatically qualify her for Medicare – again solving the insurance problem. (The real crime in this story is that SO MUCH is caused by the evil insurance companies!)

What they are planning is a marriage of convenience, 21st century American style. Or so it seems. What they actually get turns out to be anything but.

Escape Rating B-: There’s so much of this book that is so good. It’s a terrific friends-into-lovers and fake relationship romance rolled into a lovely story, and those tropes are classics for a reason.

Noah and Mia have been besties for-literally-ever. Their deep friendship is the foundation on which both of their lives are built. They are each other’s person in some seriously profound ways. That they both want more but are too afraid to admit it because of the consequences if it doesn’t work out feels real. They know they belong together, but they have both made the decision that being together as friends is enough – or at least that it’s not worth the risk of trying for more because neither of them can face the thought of ending up with less.

Where the story sent me into a ranting internal monologue was in the nature of the “fake” of their fake relationship. They’re not the first or the last people, undoubtedly in real life as much as in fiction, to have married out of something other than romantic love. The problem in the story is that it conflates the issues involved in faking a Green Card marriage with marrying to get insurance.

Their marriage isn’t fake or a con. It’s a real marriage, with real legal documentation. They share a real house and a real life. Whether or not they ever plan to have sex or romance is not the insurance company’s problem and they are NOT committing fraud. They ARE married with all the legal consequences and legal responsibilities thereunto.

The real, true issue in the story is the lies they tell to their friends, their families and most importantly, Noah’s employer. Who is also his dad and they do have a good relationship which means that Noah could have been upfront about this mess from the beginning. But the story treats the reason for their marriage and their intention to dissolve it after Mia completes her education as the big bad sin, when it isn’t. It’s the lying that is both the sin and the thing that’s going to trip them up over and over until it’s dealt with.

So the blurb and at least the first third of the story make it seem as if their so-called “fake” marriage is the problem when the real, true problem is that they lied about it. And that they’ve been doing a whole metric ton of lying about a whole lot of very real issues – to themselves and each other most of all.

Where the story gets both very, very good and in many ways very, very sad is that once the first lie gets exposed, all the cats claw their way out of all the bags and they both have to deal with all the issues they’ve been hiding from themselves. And papering over by being so invested in their friendship that they let each other bury some real and serious shit that is painful to deal with and is only going to be more painful for being hidden.

So there’s a LOT to unpack in this story. It’s not nearly as bright and breezy as the blurb might lead you to believe. It is seriously NOT a rom-com. And it would have been a lot better – and a lot less frustrating (and this review would be a lot less ranty) if it had started out by focusing on the real culprits in the mess.

Once it finally gets on the path it should have been on in the first place, the story of two people who have loved each other nearly all their lives who have been living a pretense that suddenly becomes real, the story has a whole lot of charm along with a marvelously cathartic resolution and a solidly earned HEA.

 

Review: Becoming Family by Elysia Whisler

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B+ Reviews> blog tours> book reviews
Review: Becoming Family by Elysia WhislerBecoming Family (Dogwood County, #3) by Elysia Whisler
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: contemporary romance, relationship fiction, women's fiction
Series: Dogwood County #3
Pages: 368
Published by Mira on August 16, 2022
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

Family is a feeling
There’s nothing like an important birthday to make a person realize all the things they haven’t accomplished. As Tabitha Steele blows out thirty candles, she makes a wish to take charge of her life. It’s a tall order, considering she doesn’t have much to show for herself since leaving military service. She works at a motorcycle shop but has never even ridden a motorcycle; she’s floundering in massage school; her social life consists of her aunt and her gym buddies; and her closest relationship is with Trinity, the service dog who helps her manage every day. She feels like an imposter in every aspect of her own life.
Playful and wild-hearted gym coach Chris Hobbs is Tabitha’s opposite. He likes to keep things fun and temporary, which is why he’s never tried to move the deepening friendship he has with Tabitha into anything more. But he’s the perfect person to help Tabitha discover her strengths. Then the sudden reappearance of his estranged brother forces Chris to face his past and the vulnerable part of himself behind the party-boy persona…and that means letting Tabitha in.
As difficult as it is for Tabitha and Chris to leave the old definitions of themselves behind, the journey is better with someone special at their sides, becoming who they’re meant to be, together.
"Sweet and sexy, packed with emotions… Romance, rescue dogs, and a side of mystery." —Trish Doller, New York Times bestselling author of Float Plan,on Forever Home

My Review:

This is my second trip to Dogwood County, after last year’s marvelous Forever Home. While the story in this entry in the series is very different from that one, they do have one thing in common. All the animals and all the people do get rescued, usually by each other. And at the end of the story all the animals are very definitely OK. (This is important! A lot of readers want to be sure that all the animals make it before they start a book. There’s even a website: Does the Dog Die, that tracks a lot more than just dogs.)

Where the action in Forever Home followed a seriously badass ex-marine who was a little too good at taking care of herself, Becoming Family is the story of the new counter help at Delaney’s classic motorcycle repair shop, Tabitha Steele, who is pretty much Delaney’s exact opposite.

Tabitha isn’t good at taking care of herself at all. Or at least she thinks she isn’t good at it, because she’s convinced that she isn’t good at or for anything at all. Tabitha always sees herself as a failure and is honestly surprised that anyone wants to be her friend.

She’s also envious of the sheer badassness of all of her friends, to the point where her 30th birthday wish is to become just as badass as they are. A task at which she does not expect to succeed, because she never does. Succeed, that is. At much of anything. At least as far as she can tell.

So Tabitha’s journey in this story is learning to tell that truth. That she’s not a failure, that she is wanted by her friends, that she has a use and a purpose and a gift and that she’s good at what she does. And doesn’t have any worse a case of impostor syndrome than anyone else on the planet.

And that she doesn’t need to become a badass because she already is one. And that her therapy dog Trinity will have her back – and her front – while she figures it out. And beyond.

Escape Rating B+: Like the previous book in this series, the story in Becoming Family fairly comfortably straddles the genre line between relationship or women’s fiction and romance. Although, at least for this reader, it’s the relationship side that steals the show.

Especially if one includes all the relationships with all the animals who steal all the scenes!

The family that is becoming – at least according to the title – is a family of choice rather than birth. Both Tabitha and her romantic interest, Christopher Hobbs, have some serious issues with their birth families. Hobbs’ was abusive. Tabitha’s was nonexistent. She was literally a foundling deposited in a church.

But they have both made families in Dogwood County. Tabitha with the woman who raised her, her beloved Auntie El, and all the people who belong to the Semper Fit fitness studio, where Hobbs works as a trainer.

The relationship side of this story is about the interconnectedness of all the friendships that began at Semper Fit. Which messily ties in the place that rescues and trains Pit Bulls like Tabitha’s Trinity. And even more messily ties in Lily’s work at the local animal shelter, from whence she brings home all the hard luck cases – and finds them homes. (The animals are all terrific but not universally well-trained, especially in puppy- and or kitten-hood.)

Which is how Hobbs and his sister Hannah end up with Lily’s hardest of hard luck cases, the sweet Lab mix puppy Gracie and her hairless guardian cat George. Honestly, George and Gracie’s story was the very best thing in this book of good things.

But the romance between Hobbs and Tabitha has a rocky start – and probably a rocky ever after as well. These are two people who have spent their lives having their boundaries attacked in one way or another. It’s great watching them both start to figure out where their lines are drawn – but it’s a battle that just isn’t realistically over when the story ends.

Although they’re certainly getting there.

So in the end this is lovely. The animals, of which there are many, all get their own HEAs. The humans are all works in progress, but progress is most definitely made. There’s a hook to a next book in the series, which is terrific because I’d love a return visit.

And in the meantime, I still have the first book in the series (Rescue You) to look forward to reading the next time I want to visit this marvelous place!

Review: A Proposal They Can’t Refuse by Natalie Cana

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B Reviews> blog tours> book reviews
Review: A Proposal They Can’t Refuse by Natalie CanaA Proposal They Can't Refuse by Natalie Caña
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, large print, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: contemporary romance, romantic comedy
Series: Vega Family Love Stories #1
Pages: 336
Published by Mira on June 7, 2022
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

Natalie Caña turns up the heat, humor and heart in this debut rom-com about a Puerto Rican chef and an Irish American whiskey distiller forced into a fake engagement by their scheming octogenarian grandfathers.
Kamilah Vega is desperate to convince her family to update their Puerto Rican restaurant and enter it into the Fall Foodie Tour. With the gentrification of their Chicago neighborhood, it's the only way to save the place. The fly in her mofongo--her blackmailing abuelo says if she wants to change anything in his restaurant, she'll have to marry the one man she can't stand: his best friend's grandson.
Liam Kane spent a decade working to turn his family's distillery into a contender. Now he and his grandfather are on the verge of winning a national competition. Then Granda hits him with a one-two punch: he has cancer and he has his heart set on seeing Liam married before it's too late. And Granda knows just the girl...Kamilah Vega.
If they refuse, their grandfathers will sell the building that houses both their businesses. With their futures on the line, Kamilah and Liam plan to outfox the devious duo, faking an engagement until they both get what they want. But soon, they find themselves tangled up in more than either of them bargained for.

My Review:

This story may have elements of a rom-com, but it absolutely does not start with anything remotely resembling a “meet cute”. The first meeting we witness between Kamilah Vega and Liam Kane is clearly not their first meeting. Their grandfathers have been best friends since before their parents were born, Kamilah and Liam have known each other since childhood – even if they can’t seem to stand each other as adults.

But the real reason that their meeting in the opening of this story isn’t a meet-cute is because the first interaction we see between Kamilah and Liam is when she punches him in the junk. Hard and fast. (I can still hear him wheezing in agony from here.)

That opening scene sets up a surprising amount of the action in this “proposal”, even if that’s not obvious to the players in that particular scene.

Both the Vega Family and the Kane Family owe their hearts, their souls and their origin to this two octogenarians, Kamilah’s beloved Abuelo, Santiago Vegas and Liam’s cantankerous grandpa Killian served together, bought a former blacksmithy in Chicago’s Humboldt Park together, and have raised their businesses and their families side-by-side.

Now the old men, the misbehaving delinquents of their senior citizens’ home, have come to their grandchildren with an offer that neither Liam nor Kamilah can afford to refuse.

Kamilah wants to modernize the Vega Family’s Puerto Rican restaurant to compete with the new, bougie eateries that are moving in on the gentrifying neighborhood. Her parents and her siblings never listen to anything she says, always brushing her off with tales of childhood misdemeanors – even though she has a degree in the culinary arts and is the person they all rely on to get shit done.

She still gets shit on to the point of abuse by pretty much everyone in the family – even though she’s right. They have to either compromise a bit to stay in business – or let the family business fade away with so many other local institutions that are being washed away in the tide of gentrification.

Liam just wants his grandpa to stick around long enough for them to realize Liam’s father’s dream. The Kanes are whiskey distillers, and the signature blend that Connor Kane put up before he died in a boating accident is about to mature. Killian has cancer that he’s not planning to even think about treating. Liam wants him to at least try to stick around – because he can’t bear the thought of losing anyone else.

The old men still own those family businesses and the building that houses both the businesses AND the families, even if they’ve left it to the next generation to run those enterprises. So the deal is simple. Kamilah gets her shot at running the restaurant, Liam gets his grandpa to enter treatment, and in return Liam and Kamilah get engaged and move in together – even though they haven’t been able to be in the same room with each other without breaking into a fight since they were children. And in return their grandfathers don’t sell the building out from under them all..

Nobody’s motives are remotely pure in this arrangement, but everybody gets something they want. Except, of course, for Kamilah and Liam’s friends and family – who all believe that this fake relationship is real.

Unless, of course, it is.

Escape Rating B: I’m not exactly sure that this book is a romantic comedy. It is certainly a romance, but I didn’t think a bit of it was funny – at least not once we learn what the grandfathers are up to besides switching out ALL the decaf at their community with espresso. And even that’s not really all that funny, as someone nearly had a heart attack from the caffeine surprise.

These families are both hot messes, with Kamilah and Liam being the biggest messes of them all. A big part of this story is them revealing to each other exactly what’s packed inside the emotional baggage that each of them has been lugging around since they were children. The unpacking of that messy luggage is heartbreaking all by itself without factoring in Killian’s cancer diagnosis.

It’s also not funny that the Vegas’ treatment of Kamilah, as much as they love her and as much as they mean well, borders on abuse. Nothing she does is ever right, nothing she says is ever taken seriously, and she’s beaten down at every single turn with a recitation of her failures going all the way back to early childhood. Whatever they think they’re accomplishing, all they’re really doing is undermining her self esteem while expecting her to pick up everyone’s slack.

That Kamilah has turned into a martyr about it may not be a healthy reaction – but it’s not a surprising one either. She’s learned that the only way to get anything approaching what she wants is to be a big underhanded about it – in ways that eventually bite her in the ass.

Liam still blames his father for dying when Liam was 11. His grandmother died in the same accident and his grandfather drove Liam’s mother away in the aftermath. Liam expects all relationships to end in people leaving him, as his grandfather is about to do. He pushes everyone away and doesn’t know how to make himself stop.

Kamilah’s manipulations run smack into Liam’s need to push people away before they leave him – giving him the perfect excuse to expose everyone’s machinations in this mess into the bargain. It’s not funny at all. It’s downright tragic.

What makes this story work is that they get the help they both need. It’s not so much a complete happy ever after as it is a happy work in progress with a sincere hope of ever after. Love doesn’t conquer or cure all – nor should it. There’s too much that needs fixing in this case. But it does provide a firm foundation to stand on to get the work done.

That’s a lesson we don’t see often enough in romance, but I’m definitely here for it.

Review: The Boardwalk Bookshop by Susan Mallery

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B+ Reviews> blog tours> book reviews
Review: The Boardwalk Bookshop by Susan MalleryThe Boardwalk Bookshop by Susan Mallery
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, large print, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: contemporary romance, relationship fiction, women's fiction
Pages: 448
Published by Mira on May 31, 2022
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

From #1 New York Times bestselling author Susan Mallery—a story of friends who become family, giving each other courage to start over…
When fate brings three strangers to a charming space for lease on the California coast, the Boardwalk Bookshop is born. Part bookstore, part gift shop, part bakery, it's a dream come true for Bree, Mikki and Ashley. But while their business is thriving, their personal lives are…not.
Bree, wounded by brilliant but cold parents and her late husband's ultimate betrayal, has sworn to protect her heart at all costs. Even from Ashley's brother, a writer and adventurer who has inspired millions. He's the first man to see past Bree's barricades to her true self, which terrifies her. Mikki has this divorce thing all figured out—somehow, she's stayed friends with her ex and her in-laws…until a new man changes how everyone looks at her, and how she sees herself. Meanwhile, Ashley discovers that the love of her life never intends to marry. Can she live without being a wife if it means she can have everything else she's ever wanted?
At sunset every Friday on the beach in front of the Boardwalk Bookshop, the three friends share a champagne toast. As their bond grows closer, they challenge one another to become the best versions of themselves in this heartachingly beautiful story of friendship, sisterhood and the transformative power of love. 

My Review:

Six months after their decision to move their businesses in together, Ashley, Bree and Mikki are all pretty happy with the results. Between the new, more central, beachfront location, and the synergy between Bree’s bookshop on one end, Mikki’s gift shop on the other and Ashley’s cupcakery in the middle, traffic is up, profits are up and all three businesses are booming.

Howsomever, on the personal front, while Ashley believes she’s happy with her live-in boyfriend Seth, and Bree is certain she’s happy with using men for sex as long as she’s up front about her unwillingness to commit for more than a night or two. Meanwhile Mikki believes that she’s content with the company of Earl – her vibrator.

Their business successes are real. Their romantic contentment, on the other hand, is considerably more questionable as each of their respective illusions crash and burn in different and unexpected ways.

Bree meets someone who makes her wish she wasn’t too damaged to let anyone into her heart ever again. Ashley discovers that her perfect boyfriend has commitment issues of his own – he claims to want to be with her forever but refuses to even consider marriage. While Mikki’s realization that a vibrator is far from enough finds her leading not one but two men on while believing she’s doing no such thing.

The story of the Boardwalk Bookshop and its three proprietors is the story of what happens after things fall apart. And how they help each other put everything back together. Not the same as before. Not necessarily and certainly not completely better. But getting up and putting one foot in front of the other no matter how hard it is until it gets just a bit easier. Because they have each other.

Escape Rating B+: Although this book is being billed as a romance, the heart of the story isn’t the romances. The heart of the story is the friendship. It’s not that love doesn’t lift them up, it’s that the love between these women who began as strangers is what gives them the support to make those romances possible.

Bree is the one who comes into the story with the most damage. Her famously intellectual parents saw her as an interruption to their work and were not in the least bit shy about reminding her of that fact. Looking for love and acceptance, she married a man who made her feel important because he needed her to take care of him, not because he either loved her or respected her. She tries to say she’s not capable of falling in love, but what she really means is that she’s too afraid to risk her heart again so keeps people at arm’s length so they can’t get close enough to hurt her. Bree is the one who needs the most help and the most healing, but it’s not going to happen unless she is able to admit that she’s just plain scared.

Ashley’s initial damage is old and scarred over and she’s learned to deal with it reasonably well. Her older brother barely survived a hit and run accident. While her parents were taking care of him, she learned to take care of herself. Her habit of compromising her own needs because others’ were so much greater makes her cling too long to a relationship that just isn’t working because she’s so used to giving up what she wants for others. When she can’t this time she’s crushed. (And IMHO he’s an asshat.)

I have to admit that I found it easier to empathize with Bree and Ashley than I did Mikki. She’s so competent in her business and so ditzy in her personal life that I didn’t enjoy her parts of the story as much as the others – although her frequent conversational gaffes about Earl were hilarious. But Mikki’s dilemma is that she’s considering remarrying her ex-husband while dating someone else. If second marriages are the triumph of hope over experience, what are second marriages to the person you divorced? The triumph of hope over experience AND knowledge? I know it does happen in real life but in her situation it was wrong, wrong, wrong. Getting herself out of the mess that she’d unwittingly gotten herself into required lots of uncomfortable conversations and a whole lot of groveling.

All in all, this is a charming story about three women who help each other to be strong in their broken places – sometimes even in spite of themselves. So come for the champagne-fueled walks on the beach, and stay for the healing power of friendship. It’s all here in The Boardwalk Bookshop.

Review: Never Coming Home by Hannah Mary McKinnon

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A- Reviews> blog tours> book reviews
Review: Never Coming Home by Hannah Mary McKinnonNever Coming Home by Hannah Mary McKinnon
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: mystery, psychological thriller, suspense, thriller
Pages: 368
Published by Mira on May 24, 2022
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

First comes love. Then comes murder. Lucas Forester didn't hate his wife. Michelle was brilliant, sophisticated and beautiful. Sure, she had extravagant spending habits and that petty attitude, a total disregard for anyone below her status. But she also had a lot to offer. Most notably, wealth that only the one percent could comprehend.
For years, Lucas had been honing a flawless plan to inherit Michelle’s fortune. Unfortunately, it involved taking a hit out on her.
Every track was covered, no trace left behind, and now Lucas plays the grieving husband so well he deserves an award. But when a shocking photo and cryptic note show up on his doorstep, Lucas goes from hunter to prey.
Someone is onto him. And they’re closing in.
Told with dark wit and a sharply feminist sensibility, Never Coming Home is a terrifying tale of duplicity that will have you side-eyeing your spouse as you dash to the breathtaking end.

My Review:

Lucas Forester probably wasn’t the only person to have more than a few idle thoughts about killing their spouse during the long months of COVID induced lockdowns. He probably wasn’t even the only one to come up with more than a few not-so-hypothetical scenarios to accomplish it. Hopefully there weren’t too many that actually contracted to get the job done once things went back to normal.

Then again, part of Lucas’ normal was that he didn’t like his wife all that much. He married her for her money, and has been playing a long game since the day they met, successfully pretending to be a loving, doting spouse. He’d planned to divorce her and take her to the cleaners in the settlement. It’s not his fault she made him sign an iron-clad prenup, leaving her demise as his only option to collect all the money she was just throwing away anyway.

Lucas thought that he had tied up all the loose ends. He used the darkweb not just to find a contract killer but even to vet the qualifications of the contractor he found. He paid in cryptocurrency. He only used burner phones for the rare contacts. He made sure to have an ironclad alibi for when the hit took place. It was his brilliant idea to make the whole thing look like kidnapping for ransom, because his wife’s family had plenty of money for ransom.

It was supposed to be a flawless performance. A perfect murder. All he had to do was wait until someone else – the police, her mother, the insurance company – declared her dead. He was prepared to play the long game of being the grieving almost-widower for as long as it would take.

Then it all started falling apart – and so did he.

Escape Rating A-: What makes this story surprisingly compelling is that we see it from inside Lucas’ head – which is an honestly funny place to be. Because Lucas is right, there is a little bit of evil in all of us. So as we follow along with him as his plans come apart around his ears, we’re a bit him and we do kind of feel for him as well as with him.

Because he did have a pretty hard-knock life that he’s done his best to leave behind. Unfortunately the way that he’s left it behind is by hiding his true origins and conning pretty much the entire world.

(The idea of being inside the head of the murderer can be squicky, but Lucas isn’t insane and isn’t a serial killer. He’s not interested in blood and gore for their own sake and doesn’t dwell on them at all even in the privacy of his own head. Lucas is all about getting the job done. If it weren’t for the fact that the job that needs doing – at least from his perspective – is murder he’d be an interesting guy to be around. And he’s got such a snarky and wry perspective on life that his observations often ring true.)

It helps a lot that he’s intelligent and brutally honest inside his own skull. His running commentary about everything he does and everyone he interacts with along the way generates a TON of rueful chuckles. His wife was a bit of a Karen. She was an over privileged trust-fund baby who never grew up and never even saw the people she stepped on and over along her self-indulgent way.

And he really, really loves his dog.

This is not the story of Lucas’ original plan to have his wife murdered. When we first meet Lucas that event is already in the past. Instead, this is a story about Lucas’ chickens all coming home to roost. Not just about the bad karma from his recent actions, but going all the way back to all the bad eggs that Lucas has hatched over his entire, never above board life.

At the beginning, it really, really looks like Lucas is going to get away with it all. And he’s pretty proud of himself about it. As the story gets going, we start to get an inkling that maybe it isn’t going to go his way after all, but we’re not sure why or how it’s going to fall apart. Or even how we feel about it because we do feel for him a bit more than might be comfortable.

And his story gets even more compelling as we watch him crash and burn. We’re even with him as he figures out just how he got done in.

As the old saying goes, those best laid plans of mice and men often going astray – and Lucas’ plans certainly have. That saying makes absolutely no mention of the best laid plans of women – and maybe that’s something Lucas should have thought of before he ever got the idea to murder his wife.

 

Review: Sand Dollar Lane by Sheila Roberts

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B Reviews> blog tours> book reviews
Review: Sand Dollar Lane by Sheila RobertsSand Dollar Lane (Moonlight Harbor, #6) by Sheila Roberts
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: hardcover, large print, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: contemporary romance, relationship fiction, women's fiction
Series: Moonlight Harbor #6
Pages: 336
Published by Mira on April 26, 2022
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

USA TODAY bestselling author Sheila Roberts will have readers laughing and swooning in turn as two rival business owners compete for the homes and hearts of Moonlight Harbor.
Brody Green is finding it hard to recover after being dumped by his fiancée, Jenna Jones, then watching her walk down the aisle with someone else. Jenna is determined to make up for her love defection and find him the perfect woman, but Brody is done with love. First a divorce, then a broken engagement. From now on he’s keeping things light, no commitments. Luckily Brody’s business is booming. Beach Dreams Realty is the best real estate company in town. And the only one. Until…
Lucy Holmes needs a new start. In business, in love, in…everything. If ever there was a cliché, it was her life back in Seattle. She was a real estate broker working with her husband until she caught him trying out the walk-in shower in a luxury condo—with another agent. She’s always been the more successful of the two, and with him gone, she’s determined to build a business even bigger than what she had. Moonlight Harbor is a charming town and it has only one real estate agency. Surely there’s room for a little competition.
Or not. Looks like it’s going to be a hot market in Moonlight Harbor. And maybe these two competitors will make some heat of their own.

My Review:

“If you’re lucky enough to live at the beach, you’re lucky enough,” or so the saying goes on so many cute signs – particularly at beachfront communities.

But neither Lucy Holmes or Brody Green are feeling particularly lucky when this story begins – even though Brody already has his own house at the beach in Moonlight Harbor. Brody’s either heartbroken or cheesed off – or honestly a bit of both – that his fiancée Jenna Jones broke up with him in the previous book in this series, Sunset on Moonlight Beach, and married someone else.

Jenna owns The Driftwood Inn, a homey little B&B that seems to be the emotional if not the physical heart of tiny Moonlight Harbor. Brody, the only real estate agent in town and the head of the chamber of commerce, has no choice but to keep running into his ex and her new husband everywhere he turns.

It’s not making the hurt heal any faster, particularly since Jenna is determined to make it up to Brody for following HER heart by finding the perfect person for him to lose his to.

Lucy Holmes left her lucrative real estate business in Seattle behind – along with her marriage – after finding her husband in a cliché – and a naked clinch – with one of their junior real estate agents in a condo that Lucy was showing to prospective buyers. She gets half of everything they built together, both their marital property and their real estate business – but she needs a fresh start.

She discovers Moonlight Harbor, a little town on the Washington coast that looks like its on the cusp of discovery – and only seems to have one real estate agency in position to take advantage of the coming boom. There’s plenty of room in this growing community for two real estate agents. Or there should be. But Brody’s feeling sensitive about everything after losing Jenna, and Lucy is not only feeling sensitive about plenty herself, but NEEDS that fresh start in the worst way to get past, well, her past.

It’s a tiny town. They keep running into each other – and running after anyone in town who looks like they’re planning to buy or sell a house. Their college-age children, Brody’s son Declan and Lucy’s daughter Hannah, can’t seem to get enough of each other – enough of a worry for their parents without adding the Montague and Capulet vibes their respective parents are spreading all over town.

But the sparks that Brody and Lucy throw off every time they lock horns or glances puts the truth in another old saying about what three things kissing and real estate have in common. The guiding principles for both endeavors are “Location, location, location.”

Escape Rating B: Sand Dollar Lane is the sixth book in the author’s Moonlight Harbor series, which began with the fittingly titled Welcome to Moonlight Harbor. I haven’t read the previous books in the series – as much as I loved this author’s Life in Icicle Falls series (my favorite is Merry Ex-Mas) I think this one fell down the “so many books, so little time” conundrum.

I didn’t feel like I was missing any of the plot by not having visited this little town before – there are plenty of hints to catch a new reader right up embedded into the current action. What I think I did miss was being previously invested in Brody Green’s relationship with Jenna Jones. Her ‘torn between two lovers’ dilemma stretches over the first five books and finally ends with her marrying Seth Waters at the end of the fifth book.

So here we are in the sixth book, Jenna is happily married and Brody is miserable. (She seems to be a great person and he really did love her so his misery is completely understandable.) But, and this is where I think I missed something, I didn’t know them so I didn’t feel FOR them when this book started.

So Brody comes off as a bit of a self-absorbed jerk, and Jenna’s continuous attempts to assuage her own guilt over their breakup by awkwardly and obviously trying to match Brody up with every unattached female in their age bracket comes off as weird and intrusive. On the other hand, I’m an introvert and would want to lick my wounds in private, thankyouverymuch. Brody, Jenna and Lucy for that matter are all extroverts. So they might feel differently. Jenna certainly does, but Brody, not so much.

Lucy is every bit as salty about men and relationships as Brody is about women, but she earned it more. At the same time, she really is doing her best – and it turns out to be damn good – to wash that man right out of her hair and move forward with her own life and a fresh start.

That she turns into the Wicked Witch of the West whenever Brody gets when spitting distance is not her usual, but she’s having some trust issues about men who seem to be smooth and charming because that was her ex all over. And Brody seems to be able to turn it on and off at a moment’s notice.

In other words, this is a romance where the adults are squabbling like children on a playground and not actually adulting. It’s their newly adult children who are much closer to adulting. Not that Hannah doesn’t fall off that wagon once or twice in a really big way, but then, she’s at the age where that’s expected behavior.

But very much on my other hand, Moonlight Harbor is a lovely, close-knit community, and the people who live there seem to be utterly charming. While the romance in this particular entry in the series turned out to be not quite my cuppa, I did enjoy visiting here and I really liked the way that Lucy ‘put on her big girl panties’ and moved forward with her life. That part was terrific – even with her occasional partial transformations into Maleficent. (Although I loved the time when she had nightmares about it – not for the nightmare but because the invasion of Disney into her dreamscape was just so well done AND on point.)

To make this long story short, while I may not have fallen in love with the romance between Lucy and Brody, I did fall hard for Moonlight Harbor and would love to come back. And probably will the next time I’m in the mood for life in a lovely place that isn’t that far distant in either miles or mood from my beloved Icicle Falls.