Clik here to view.
SuperWendy’s TBR Challenge Review: “Once More With Feeling”…Elizabeth Rolls’s...
I am once more taking a stab at completing Wendy Super Librarian’s TBR Challenge and hope 2024 goes better than previous attempts. If you’d like to check out the challenge and/or join it because it’s a...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Contemporary Romance Review: Opal Wei’s WILD LIFE
I love romance with a conceit and Wei delivers in Wild Life, setting up a contrast between “wild” and “tame”, wilderness and urban landscape. For her main characters, it translates into an analogy of...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Contemporary Category Romance Review: Anna Grace’s REUNITED WITH THE RANCHER...
I loved the last Grace romance I read, The Firefighter’s Rescue, and looked forward to another. Is it possible Reunited With the Rancher was better? I’m not sure, maybe more assured, not as...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Contemporary Romance Review: Jenny Holiday’s CANADIAN BOYFRIEND
Utterly pathetic confession: I cried reading Holiday’s Canadian Boyfriend and not because the hero and heroine’s backstories are tear-worthy (they are). Holiday managed to make Canada and Canadians and...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Contemporary Romance Review: Charlotte Stein’s WHEN GRUMPY MET SUNSHINE
I’m not sure what I thought of Stein’s When Grumpy Met Sunshine, except what I thought depended on what part of the romance novel I was reading. Stein’s romance fell into three not-well-meshed parts:...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Contemporary Romance (With a Touch of Paranormal) Review: Kylie Scott’s THE...
I’m a newbie to Kylie Scott and I sure did enjoy her standalone The Last Days of Lilah Goodluck. It was refreshingly entertaining and I haven’t been purely entertained in oodles of romance. No agenda,...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Historical Mystery Review: Alys Clare’s THE WOMAN WHO SPOKE TO SPIRITS...
Thanks to one of this blog’s readers for reccing Clare’s Victorian-set mystery series. I read the first, as “non-stop” as I could manage given the pesky time demands of the day job. Like Lilah...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Contemporary Romance Review: Cara Bastone’s READY OR NOT
Is it a romance? Is it women’s fiction? Is it coming-of-age? Like some of the best romance (see Jane Austen), Bastone’s latest, Ready or Not, is a romance and definitely a story about the heroine’s...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Historical Mystery Review: Alys Clare’s THE OUTCAST GIRLS (World’s End Bureau...
I continue my reading journey through Clare’s World’s End Bureau Victorian mystery series with the second, The Outcast Girls. It’s a tighter book, less episodic than the first, and I was quite keen on...
View ArticleClik here to view.
SuperWendy’s TBR Challenge Review “Furry Friends”: Marian Lennox’s NIKKI AND...
Thank goodness for Lennox’s dog-centric category romances, or I would have a hard time fulfilling Wendy’s February theme. I reviewed the second Banksia Bay romance back when for Wendy’s TBR Challenge...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Contemporary Mystery Review: Janice Hallett’s THE MYSTERIOUS CASE OF THE...
The first time I tried to read Hallet’s Mysterious Case of the Alperton Angels, I failed, her writerly choices leaving me nonplussed. But I then listened to the NYT’s books podcast praising it to high...
View ArticleA Few Notes on Frances Spufford’s THE CHILD THAT BOOKS BUILT…
Though blog-absent, occupied with too much going on at work and care-giving, I have been reading. And, I noted, what I’ve been reading came together in a peculiarly apt pairing, through no conscious...
View ArticleInterlude with BLACK NARCISSUS…
I’m a Backlisted (“giving new life to old books”) podcast fan, though every time I read one of their recommended, “resurrected” reads, I have a “do not like” to “meh” reaction. This is what happened...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Historical Mystery Review: Jennifer Ashley’s SPECULATIONS IN SIN (Below...
I’m always content to see another Below Stairs Victorian mystery from Ashley: the main character, master-cook Kat Holloway, and her band of merry assistant cooks and butler, Mr. Davis, along with...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Historical Mystery Review: Deanna Raybourn’s A GRAVE ROBBERY (Veronica...
I adore this series and its latest appearance is one of the most pleasurable volumes yet. Though I saw the who and why dunnit pages ahead of the final revelations, my goodness, Veronica and Stoker are...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Historical Romance-Mystery Review: Manda Collins’s A GOVERNESS’S GUIDE TO...
It’s lovely to be in Collins’s imagined world where characters are warm and fuzzy, society a place where good triumphs over evil and everything recounted with a light, humorous, loving touch. I wrote...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Contemporary Romance Review: Kate Clayborn’s THE OTHER SIDE OF DISAPPEARING
When I set out to read The Other Side of Disappearing, I dreaded its women’s fiction vibe (I mean sisters) and thought, another one bites the dust (miss you, Sarah Morgan). But I’ve loved Clayborn’s...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Historical Romance Review: Bliss Bennet’s NOT QUITE A SCANDAL (Audacious...
Bennet should be congratulated on her latest romance novel for tackling a Quaker heroine. The powerful shadow of Kinsale’s Flowers From the Storm Maddy is seminal to the genre and to attempt a Quaker...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Historical Fiction Review: Kate Thompson’s THE LITTLE WARTIME LIBRARY
When SuperWendy recs a book, I listen; she’s yet to steer me wrong and she certainly didn’t with Thompson’s Little Wartime Library. (I link to her review.) Thompson’s historical novel is a book lover’s...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Historical Romance Review: Felicia Grossman’s WAKE ME MOST WICKEDLY (Once...
I enjoyed Grossman’s first Once Upon the East End romance, Marry Me By Midnight. It was original and historically rich, with Jewish Regency characters, a fairy tale retelling, and an adorably innocent,...
View Article
