#BookReview: Magic and Mischief at the Wayside Hotel by Elizabeth Everett

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B- Reviews> book reviews
#BookReview: Magic and Mischief at the Wayside Hotel by Elizabeth EverettMagic and Mischief at the Wayside Hotel by Elizabeth Everett
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: cozy fantasy, romantasy
Pages: 352
Published by Ace on March 10, 2026
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

When a magical hotel appears smack-dab in the middle of the most unmagical of worlds, the last thing the residents expect is to fall in love.

Manager of the Number Five Wayside Inn and World Travel Hub, Pax Nomen has one of the easiest jobs in all the known universes, unless you count the occasional plumbing disaster. When Number Five Wayside gets stranded on a non-magical world, even Pax's trusty Wayside Handbook can’t help him. How is he going to “reboot” the hotel and keep it on its magical journey?

Josie LaChusia is a single mom experiencing debt, having parenting doubts, and tipping dangerously toward depression when an ad pops up on her phone that an apartment is available in a building she’s never seen before.

Pax needs a new guest to restart his hotel, and Josie needs a nudge to restart her life. In a building occupied by faeries, gargoyles, and a gnome with a bad attitude, two souls from very different places come together to create a home like no other.

My Review:

The premise of this was just a teensy bit familiar, which is what made me pick it up. If you’ve read Ilona Andrews’ Innkeeper Chronicles, well, let’s just say that the Wayside Hotel and Gertrude Hunt, Innkeeper Dina DeMille’s Texas B&B, have more than a bit in common.

The Wayside Hotel finds itself very much by the wayside as this story opens. The quantumly entangled, multiverse-traveling, magically voyaging hotel comes to a stop on Earth because it’s run out of gas. Or whatever resource fills its tank. It’s literally dropped itself by the side of the intergalactic road because its ‘get up and go got up and went’.

The hotel’s manager, a retired paladin calling himself Pax Nomen, which more or less translates to “the name is peace”, doesn’t actually know what powers the Waysides, of which his is Number 5. What he knows is that magic is dying, that there used to be six Waysides but one is gone and that Number 5 has been on the blink for a while.

Earth has no magic, so if it’s magic that Number 5 needs, then there’s no help or hope in sight. But Pax just can’t let it go. And he can’t let the Wayside’s current crop of intergalactic travelers loose on magicless Earth. There must be something he can do.

The vampire lord Raphe, just one of the not-exactly-human travelers, is late for his own coronation and dead certain (all puns intended) that a blood sacrifice will top the Wayside’s tanks back up. But Pax has retired from the business of killing and wants to try something considerably less violent.

Which is where widowed single mother Josie LaChusia and her little boy Amos come in. Literally, through the front door with more than a bit of wish fulfillment – hers, Pax’s AND the Wayside’s. Josie and her boy need a safe place they can afford so that she can keep a roof over their heads, keep her underpaid job at the local college AND keep her grasping mother-in-law at bay regarding Amos’s custody.

Josie is sure that it’s all a bit too good to be true. The Wayside Hotel has transformed itself into an apartment building, so close to her job that she won’t need a car. The apartment is built out of her dreams for herself and Amos, and the rent is less than the last dump they lived in.

There has to be a catch – and there is. Very few of the Wayside’s residents can pass for human; all of them have magic and some of them still think it would be quicker and easier to just sacrifice the humans and be on their way.

But the Wayside makes it very clear that it wants Josie and Amos to stay. They might be just what is needed to get the tank topped up – not by dying – but by living and turning the place they live in into a community – with at least one happy ever after shining sunshine through all the windows.

Escape Rating B-: I have very mixed feelings about this book. At first, it was just delightful and charming and sweet. It’s very cozy and I felt cozy within it. But it just wasn’t grabbing me. I mean, I enjoyed it as it was reading it but it seemed like not much was happening. When I put it down I didn’t feel compelled to pick it back up – not even to see how the romance was going to work itself out. But when I did pick it up, it was like being wrapped in a cozy blanket.

Part of that is probably down to the concept being very familiar. The Wayside Hotel will remind readers a LOT of the Gertrude Hunt in Ilona Andrews’ Innkeeper Chronicles. But the Innkeeper Chronicles, which are also set in a magically powered inn with non-human travelers, AND also includes a romance between the innkeeper and a local resident, always seems considerably more compelling.

There’s stuff happening at Gertrude Hunt, there’s usually a crisis or three, the guests nearly break out into outright warfare on a regular basis, and the local police can’t keep their noses out of the outlandish or outright otherworldly things that happen in the inn’s proximity. Wayside Number 5 needed more of that spark.

The events at the Wayside Inn move slowly, almost as if the Wayside itself was being as careful as Pax is in his courtship of Josie – because the Wayside is courting Josie and Amos every bit as much in its own hospitable way. The big tensions get underplayed or carpet-swept; Pax’s powerful but distrusting and micromanaging assistant, Josie’s insecure and micromanaging boss, and especially Josie’s negging, grasping, overbearing and overreaching mother-in-law.

Someone needed to blow up somewhere about something, but instead all the issues fizzled out – even though Fairy Princess Naliti unintentionally blew up the planetarium.

This was a really terrific premise and I had high hopes for it. It sounded like what you’d get if the Innkeeper Chronicles, If Wishes Were Retail, and Hotel Transylvania had a book baby. There was a LOT of potential between the various not-quite-human species and stereotypes – I adored the cheerleading squad of fairies and the gargoyles dressed as sporting mascots – but not even that accidental explosion gave the story as much of a life as it needed.

This story had a lot of potential, but the sizzle turned out to be more like a fizzle. Color me disappointed, even though the fairy cheer uniforms were in some truly eye-popping color combinations. Your reading mileage may vary.

A- #BookReview: Hunter Squad: Marc by Anna Hackett

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A- Reviews> book reviews
A- #BookReview: Hunter Squad: Marc by Anna HackettMarc (Hunter Squad) by Anna Hackett
Format: eARC
Source: author
Formats available: paperback, ebook
Genres: action adventure romance, science fiction, science fiction romance
Series: Hunter Squad #3
Pages: 191
Published by Anna Hackett on March 24, 2026
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Amazon
Goodreads

We survived the invasion and beat the aliens. But they left something behind…
Killing monsters is what I do. Like my father before me, I fight side by side with my twin brother and my squad to protect our people.
Since the invasion, life is dangerous. I know how short it can be, so I live it to the fullest. I work hard on Hunter Squad, I party harder, I love a joke and a good time, and I never get tangled up in relationships. I watched my father’s grief at losing his brother. I almost lost my own twin. I’ll never let myself get in too deep.
Then our squad’s pilot crashes alone in monster-infested mountains.
Tiny, opinionated Colbie who’s the best pilot I know. A fierce redhead who never hesitates to stand up to me.
Everything changes. Every protective instinct I have is in overdrive. I have to find her and bring her home.
I’ll risk it all—monsters, raging rivers, dangerous terrain—but when the two of us are alone and fighting for survival, I realize that what’s most at risk is the one thing I’ve always guarded—my heart.

My Review:

This third book in the Hunter Squad series, after Jameson and North, takes a classic case of jeopardy and mixes it with an equally classic romance trope. Then it stirs the pot – and plot – by adding what appears to be the full reveal of the series’ overall big bad to create a pulse-pounding sci-fi adventure romance with a whole lot of heart at its, well, heart.

Colbie Erickson, the daughter of Hell Squad Hawk pilot Finn Erickson and Hell Squad drone pilot Lia Murphy, has followed in her dad’s footsteps – or perhaps that’s wings – to become the go-to pilot for Hell Squad’s successors, Hunter Squad. So when her quadcopter goes down in dangerous territory during a medical supplies run, Hunter Squad immediately deploys to find her.

Not that the whole squad doesn’t both respect AND care for her, but there’s something about Colbie that’s special to one Hunter Squad member in particular, Marc Jackson. Marc has never been able to stop thinking about Colbie, but he’s also never been able to stop thinking about the grief that his dad, Gabe Jackson, has lived with since the loss of his twin brother during the original Gizzida invasion. Marc keeps all his relationships one-night only and no strings attached because he’s afraid to get close to anyone.

He knows that Colbie deserves better than that. More importantly, so does Colbie.

But when Hunter Squad’s rescue of Colbie results in the discovery of a new Gizzida-Terran hybrid experimental base in the ruins of Hell Squad’s old Blue Mountain Base, the bond they have spent years trying to suppress flares to life. Because now, Colbie’s not just a squadmate he needles and teases and walks away from (to party with someone else), now she’s someone who has saved his life AND had his back in more than one firefight.

His head believes that he can’t risk the loss if something happens to her, but his heart has already taken that ride and isn’t coming back. The only question is whether he can get his head out of his angst enough to tell her how he feels before she walks away.

Or before the next time the monsters come out to play with them all. For keeps.

Escape Rating A-: So, I’m still not all that fond of the covers for this series. However, this third entry really hit a sweet spot for me and I’m very glad of it. I think that now that the ‘big bad’ has reared his ugly head (literally) in this follow up to the author’s Hell Squad series, the whole thing just reached back and grabbed that same set of vibes by the tail – and then set them on fire.

(Yes, I know I mixed my metaphors something fierce, but it worked for me. Just go with it.)

There are three elements that made this one work for me where the last one didn’t quite.

First is that the relationship between Colbie and Marc isn’t instalove or instalust. They’ve known each other forever, they’ve always been friends or at least friendly and have always gotten along. They tease each other, but it’s never mean-spirited and always done in friendship even if that friendship is also designed – by Marc – to keep Colbie at arm’s length.

Colbie may want more, but she wants more in a way that Marc obviously doesn’t. And she’s smart enough to know that and keep her heart safe as long as they maintain that slight distance.

The reasons they have kept to friendship feel real and organic to the story and their characters. The message she got from her parents’ relationship is just how terrific and supportive a forever love can be. The message Marc got from his dad is that grief never ends. Not that Gabe Jackson doesn’t love his wife and his family, but he’s never gotten over the loss of his twin and never will. Which doesn’t mean that he hasn’t had a fulfilling life, but that Marc has taken the wrong lesson from what he’s observed.

The relationship that develops between Colbie and Marc is a relationship of equals. The squad comes to get her, but she and Marc rescue each other. They’re not holding each other back AND they’re not pushing each other into places they don’t want to be.

And very much on my third hand, or claw, or whatever the Gizzida-Terran hybrids have, the new front in the old war heats up in this story in a fantastic way. In the first two books in this series, the fight was a bit, well, amorphous. It needed to happen, it was clearly happening, but to make it into a good story it needed a focus – and now it has one.

The potential is that it’s going to be even bloodier and more interesting this time around because the nature of the enemy has changed. The original Gizzida invaders could be kicked off Earth because they weren’t part of it. This new threat takes the worst of the old threat and makes it home grown in a way that’s going to make this fight harder and uglier and even more righteous when Hunter Squad wins.

Sooner or later. Probably later. Because there are just oodles of great story-telling possibilities, along with so many chances for steamy romance, just waiting to be told. In the end, it took TWENTY books for Hell Squad to get their job done. I wouldn’t be mad – at all – if Hunter Squad needs every bit as many.

#BookReview: Trace Elements by Jo Walton and Ada Palmer

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B Reviews> book reviews
#BookReview: Trace Elements by Jo Walton and Ada PalmerTrace Elements: Conversations on the Project of Science Fiction and Fantasy by Jo Walton, Ada Palmer
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, ebook
Genres: books about books, books and reading, fantasy, literary criticism, science fiction
Pages: 368
Published by Tor Books on March 24, 2026
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Better World Books
Goodreads

From two of the most acclaimed writers in the field today, a groundbreaking look at how SF and fantasy writing—and reading!
Jo Walton and Ada Palmer are two of the most innovative and insightful writers to emerge in the SF and fantasy genres in this century. As writers of fiction they’ve each won multiple awards. As commenters on SF and fantasy in print and in visual media, they’ve both sparked new conversations that expanded our imaginations and understanding of how SF and fantasy work, and what more it could be doing.
Now, in Trace Elements, Walton and Palmer have come together to write a book-length and supremely entertaining look at modern science fiction and fantasy, at how our genre is written and how it is read, that will join nonfiction works like Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Language of the Night, Samuel R. Delany’s The Jewel-Hinged Jaw, and Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud on the short shelf of titles essential to all readers of our genre.
Subjects covered include the nature of genre itself, the history of SF publishing, the implicit contract between author and reader, the ways SF and fantasy disguise themselves as one another, what SF&F can learn from outside influences ranging from Shakespeare to Diderot to anime, the role of complicity in reading, the need to expand our “sphere of empathy”, and finally the need for optimism, the importance of rejecting “purity” culture, and the fact that the human story for centuries to come will be composed of hard work.

My Review:

I picked this up because I loved two of Jo Walton’s previous books that looked into both the business of and the writing of science fiction and fantasy, What Makes This Book So Great and An Informal History of the Hugos, and was hoping for more of the same – except with different books.

What I got wasn’t like either of those first two, but it IS in dialogue with both of them, as well as the business of writing genre fiction in general AND an actual dialog between Walton and her co-author Ada Palmer.

I read it for two reasons, the first being a Library Journal assignment that I pretty much begged for. I mean that I seriously wanted to read this. I just didn’t expect it to lend itself to the kinds of in-depth reviews I usually write.

But I can’t stop thinking about it, and what it has to say about not just Fantasy and Science Fiction, but about genre fiction for adults in general. I’ve discovered it to be, not so much “What Makes This Book Great” because Walton has already written that book and it was awesome. Instead, I found this to be “What Makes This Book Great FOR YOU”, or NOT.

Not by talking about specific books – although yes, sometimes they do – but by addressing the blenderizing of genre – which is something I run into – and get run over by – a lot in the reading and reviewing that I do.

The part of Trace Elements that is sticking in my head are the discussions about genres that are settings vs. genres that are formulas vs. genres that are emotion driven. Which is all a ball of thoughts that I’ve been working through on my own.

What does that mean? What does it relate to specifically?

It gets into books like last year’s Orbital and The Ministry of Time, which were hugely popular with general readers but didn’t resonate nearly as much with SF readers even though EVERY single review labelled them as SF. Basically, it turned into a discussion of why “literary sf” doesn’t hit the right beats when it’s marketed to actual SF readers. Because it uses the furniture of SF but doesn’t follow the actual conventions of the literature itself. It’s not in conversation with what came before in SF because it’s not intended to be.

As more and more genres mix and mingle – those issues are becoming increasingly prevalent. It’s the issue that’s at the heart of any and all discussions of ‘romantasy’, but also the increasing amount of both science fiction and fantasy mysteries, about what tropes near-future and dystopian fiction are intended to follow, and about what audiences those books that ride a dividing line between two or more genres are intended to appeal to.

The above is not the only “trace element” of the discussion that’s still swirling around in my head, but it is the part that’s swirling the hardest.

Reality Rating B: This wasn’t a book to be read for pleasure, at least not exactly. I certainly did enjoy parts of it, and Walton in particular is someone I always enjoy listening to in person at Worldcon. She calls it like she sees it, or like she saw it when it happened, and it’s a perspective that works for me.

I haven’t read much of her co-author’s work, although it’s been recommended and I have quite a bit. I can see it wiggling up the virtually towering TBR pile out of the corner of my eye but it hasn’t made its way to the top yet. I’m particularly interested in her Inventing the Renaissance nonfiction book, which I bought and is also worming its way up that TBR pile as it’s likely to be on this year’s Hugo ballot in the “Best Related Work” category.

Like any collection of anything, not everything will work for every reader. I found the discussions on the business of genre, its history and the reasons for its appeal to be the most interesting from a personal perspective. And I always love good writing about how the sausage gets made – especially when it’s sausage that I enjoy.

But as a whole work, it didn’t draw me in and keep me glued to the page the way that Walton’s solo works on the genre did. This one just doesn’t gel into a whole the way that both What Makes This Book So Great and An Informal History of the Hugos managed to do. OTOH, parts of this one really made me think, even though others didn’t quite grab me. Your reading mileage will probably vary on which are which.

Anyone who reads genre broadly and is interested in what makes it work and not work and for whom and why will find the discussion fascinating. Many readers will be particularly taken with Walton’s comments about the author’s (unwritten) contract with the reader and how that works from each side.

Trace Elements is a difficult book to encapsulate, and I recognize that I’m struggling with that a bit here. However, I’m still thinking about a lot of what I read in this book, and will continue to do so. If you enjoy discussions about literature even half as much as you do reading the literature itself, Trace Elements is definitely worth a bit of your reading time.

It certainly informed my read of Walton’s forthcoming book, Everybody’s Perfect and made the experience that much richer. I kept looking for where she kept that contract between the author and the reader, and where she subverted the expectations and kept it anyway, and was just delighted all the way around.

A- #AudioBookReview: Tiny House, Big Love by Olivia Dade

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A- Reviews> audio reviews> audiobooks> book reviews
A- #AudioBookReview: Tiny House, Big Love by Olivia DadeTiny House, Big Love (Love Unscripted, #2) by Olivia Dade
Narrator: Joy Nash
Format: audiobook
Source: purchased from Amazon, supplied by publisher via Libro.fm
Formats available: paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: contemporary romance, romantic comedy
Series: Love Unscripted #2
Pages: 158
Length: 4 hours and 8 minutes
Published by Dreamscape Media, Hussies & Harpies Press on August 29, 2019
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads


On camera. Up close. In denial--but not for much longer...

After a relationship gone bad, Lucy Finch is leaving everything behind. Her old home, her old job, her old insecurities. Even Sebastián Castillo, her protective but intensely private friend of almost twenty years. Before she moves halfway across the country, though, she has one last request for Seb: She wants him to help her choose a tiny house on cable television. And maybe during the filming process, she can discover once and for all whether his feelings for her are more than platonic...
Sebastián would rather do anything than appear on HATV. But Lucy needs him, and he can't say no. Not when she's about to leave, taking his heart with her. Hiding how he feels with a television crew watching their every move will prove difficult, though--especially when that crew is doing their sneaky best to transform two longtime friends into a couple.
Tiny spaces. Hidden emotions. The heat generated by decades of desire and denial. A week spent on camera might just turn Lucy and Seb's relationship from family-friendly to viewer discretion advised...

My Review:

This is the follow-up to last week’s Desire and the Deep Blue Sea. I’ll admit that that first book didn’t work all that well for me, so I was hesitant about this second one. OTOH, I generally like this author’s work so I set aside my misgivings and dove right in.

While both stories are set in stories wrapped around a fledgling cable TV network and their stable of reality shows – hence that Love Unscripted series title – this second story worked a whole lot better for this reader than the first one did.

And that’s all down to the romantic trope that powers this story. The previous story was an enemies-to-lovers story that just didn’t deal with the way that only one of the enemies even recognized that they were enemies. He was just that clueless.

This time around we have a friends-to-lovers story that begins exactly where it should, with the ride or die nearly two decades-long friendship between Lucy Finch and Sebastián Castillo. They were both outcasts in high school, and they bonded together over being on the outside together. It’s a bond that hasn’t wavered in nearly 20 years, not even when they both temporarily left Marysburg for their respective colleges.

Now, Lucy is about to leave Marysburg again – and this time it’s likely for good. Her last relationship didn’t just  end, it ended after her ex pretty much cratered her confidence for nearly a decade. She’s WAY better off without him, but she’s having a hard time dealing with the memories AND the negging voice in her head that’s definitely his.

But she can’t leave without making one last try at getting the infamously taciturn Sebastián to open up about his feelings. Specifically, his feelings for her. If friendship is all he has to give, then that’s all she’ll ever ask for. But she has to KNOW before she leaves.

She also needs a home that she can carry away with her on her new job as a traveling representative for Massage Mania. She’s looking for a tiny house she can move with her as she travels. The cable TV network that sponsored Callie’s Caribbean vacation ALSO has a who about tiny house shopping. Lucy’s friend Allie is a real-estate agent looking for a leg up in a cutthroat real estate market. Lucy herself is hoping for one more chance to discover what Sebastian really feels, and sees her unscripted tiny house hunt to spend some quality time with her bestie AND get a clue about her next move – or theirs.

Either it’s the opportunity of a lifetime – or it’s a chance to burn the bridge on the most important, supportive AND frustrating relationship in her entire life. But one way or another, when the show is over, she’ll know whether her relationship with Sebastián is forever – or for never.

Escape Rating A-: This worked for me. I went into this one hopeful, and this time, that hope was fulfilled. It was also terrific in audio, and the narrator Joy Nash did a great job with all the voices.  As she did in that first book but I was just too bummed about the story to give her the shoutout she deserved. So this one goes double.

(The book is available now. The audio will be released on April 7 so if you want the audio you’ll need a bit of patience. But if this is what you’re in the mood for – and I was – it’s worth the wait.)

As I said before – and I’ll say again later this week in another review – friends-to-lovers is one of my favorite romance tropes because the tension is real and relatable. Lifelong friendships are precious whether they have the possibility of turning romantic or not. There’s nothing in this world as supportive and sustaining as having someone in your corner who knows you from the inside out and loves you anyway – even when you drive each other crazy.

But the tension in turning a friendship into romance is real and the stakes are always high. Because if it doesn’t work you’ve lost something equally precious that you know you’ll never get back. So it’s easy to feel for Lucy edging up to taking the risk of telling Sebastián how she really feels.

At the same time, it’s just as easy to understand Sebastián’s unwillingness to take that risk. He has family who do love him and vice versa, but Lucy is the only person he’s let into his core. She’s literally the sunshine in his life and he’s afraid to even take a chance on losing it. The only way he’d EVER risk himself that way is that the risk of losing her because he’s told her how he really feels is now equal to the risk that he’ll lose her because she’s leaving and not coming back.

His only way to win is to leap and hope that the net of Lucy’s love will appear. But he’s spent so much time pretending not to feel much of anything at all that he’s frozen in place until not just the bitter end but a little bit past it.

That Sebastián’s frozen emotional landscape is the result of being the recipient of some epic high school bullying is just another facet of tragedy in this story. Bullying inflicts terrible trauma on the recipients. It leaves lifelong scars and it does not make the sufferers stronger – it makes them brittle. (This is a huge soapbox for me and I felt for Sebastián a lot because of it. I sincerely hope your mileage varies on this part.)

As heavy as some of Sebastián’s inner thoughts and feelings are, the wild array of tiny houses that Lucy is shown and her laughably honest rejections of them add a delightful bit of lightness to a story that does need a bit more sunshine. (The school bus converted to a tiny house decorated in used chewing gum and magic marker dick drawings was a masterpiece of snicker-worthy giggles. Because REALLY…)

In the end – and honestly through all of the terrible tiny house showings – this romance was a lot of fun, did a great job getting Lucy and Sebastián from friends to lovers and wrapped up their story in a big, beautiful, happy ever after glow that felt delightfully earned.

And it left me hoping that we’ll get to see more of HATV and its hardworking interns Cowan and Irene, in Cover Me, a new book tantalizingly teased after the end of this one. But whichever of the author’s ongoing series Cover Me turns out to be a part of, I can’t wait to read it!

A- #BookReview: The Legend of the Nine-Tailed Fox by Katrina Kwan

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A- Reviews> book reviews
A- #BookReview: The Legend of the Nine-Tailed Fox by Katrina KwanThe Legend of the Nine-Tailed Fox by Katrina Kwan
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: Asian inspired fantasy, epic fantasy, fantasy, romantasy
Pages: 320
Published by S&S/Saga Press on February 24, 2026
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

From the author of The Last Dragon of the East comes a sweeping fantasy adventure with a dash of romance between a nine-tailed fox and the demon-hunter who captures her, banished to the underworld together and forced to form a reluctant alliance in order to escape the circles of Hell.

Yue may be the last of her kind. At night, she stalks the streets of the capital city of Longhao, luring in unsuspecting victims with the mask of a beautiful woman, then consuming them in her true form of the nine-tailed fox.

When she is captured by a powerful demon hunter named Sonam and banished to Hell, she manages one final act of dragging him—and two of his subordinates—down with her.

Now trapped in an abyss with unimaginable terrors, they’ll need each other’s help to navigate Hell and bypass the gods who preside over each circle, each of whom presents the group with a unique and deadly challenge. Forced to depend on one another as they claw their way out of the underworld, both demon and demon hunter discover that there might be more to the other than meets the eye.

My Review:

Yue is a demon. Not the horned and cloven-hoofed demon of Western mythology, but rather the nine-tailed fox of Asian legend, known as a kitsune in Japan, a kumiho (or gumiho) in Korea and, in this particular story, the Chinese húli jīng. Perhaps mixed with just a bit of the kumiho – or at least their signature nine tails.

She may be a demon, she may look like a monster – at least without her magical mask – but she’s not actually evil. She’s all alone after the deaths of her sisters, and she’s just trying to survive the best she can. She’s also an apex predator – at least in her demon form – whose primary diet is, well, us.

She’s alone and she doesn’t want to draw attention to herself so she only takes what she needs to live. And she only takes monsters in human form, the kind of people the world would be better off without. She doesn’t even play with her food – which honestly puts her a bit above her prey who can’t resist toying with their victims before moving in for the kill.

But there is a plague of demons killing and eating their mostly innocent victims all over the city of Longhao. Sonam, the princely ‘Demon-Hunter of Jian’ has promised his royal father that he will kill all the demons in the realm. Sonam hopes that his success will earn him the place at his father’s side that his mother’s lowly birth has kept out of his reach his entire life.

Sonam has never questioned what he’s been taught about demons and their rapacious monstrosity. Not until he meets Yue, both in her guise as a beautiful woman and in her true form as a burn-scarred, nine-tailed, fox. Because she’s not the monster he was taught she would be.

When he brings her before his father, magically caged and seemingly utterly trapped, it’s his brothers who act like monsters, while Yue waits for her opportunity to escape. Instead, his father’s mages open what they believe is a one-way portal to hell. But Yue is nothing if not resourceful. If she’s going to hell, she’s taking the man who captured her along for the ride.

The ride of a lifetime for them both. Because if they want to escape the trap they are now both in, they’ll have to do it together.

Escape Rating A-: It’s interesting how much better the books get when I’m in a better place to read them. Which may be another way of saying that Dorothy was right and “There’s no place like home.” Because I’ve finished three books since we got home and they were all better than most of last week. There’s a lesson there somewhere, but first, there’s a terrific, and terrifically surprising, book to start the week with.

In this Chinese myth-inspired fantasy, Hell doesn’t have a mere seven circles as it does in Dante’s Inferno. That would be too easy. Instead, it has TEN jade palaces, each presided over by its very own demon. A fallen god who represents one of the myriad ways that humans – and gods – can fall from the path of enlightenment. The kind of enlightenment that leads to a decent life in THIS life and a better position on the cycle of rebirth in their next.

So this Hell doesn’t have seven circles, it has 10 demon gods, mixed with a bit of The Fox Wife and wrapped – all nine tails – around horromantasy. Not so much because Yue is a monster, but because Sonam represents the monster in all of us. So, the story in The Legend of the Nine-Tailed Fox sits squarely at the crossroads between mythic retelling, epic fantasy, romantasy and horromantasy – with a touch of enemies to lovers for added depth and tragic potential.

There are so many ways to look at this story, and all of them just make it that much more fascinating. The hell that Yue and Sonam fall into does resemble Dante’s Inferno, but that’s because that’s my go-to-frame of reference. However, it’s really a mythic reinterpretation of Chinese legends of the “Ten Courts of Hell”, each of which is ruled by a judge, who are also based on figures out of legend.

At the same time, the story reads a bit like plenty of epic fantasy stories about battles between good and evil, because one of the judges in those Courts of Hell really is unquestionably evil and has perverted his duty as a judge into a test for recruitment to establish his evil empire – ON THE SURFACE.

But the story is also about the walk through dark places, the journey to get out of the underworld that recalls Orpheus and Eurydice and a whole bunch of other myths and fantasy stories – and tells a cracking adventure tale into the compelling bargain. And that’s the point where the story kicked into high gear and got this reader firmly in its grip.

What tripped this story from fantasy to romantasy, however, is the growing relationship between Yue and Sonam and the way it works out. It should have been tragic, a man falling in love with a monster he’s vowed to kill. But Yue only ‘looks’ like a monster. She isn’t actually monstrous. Instead, she’s rather like many vampires in paranormal romance, in that she doesn’t have to kill to feed AND when she does kill only kills those who deserve it. That Sonam recognizes the truth of her lack of monstrousness as well as the monster that lives within all humans, including himself, takes the romance out of horromance. It’s not like the romance in But Not Too Bold where both the reader and the protagonist know that someday the monster she loves will kill her, but instead turns it into a relationship of equals that neither of them expected at the start.

The Legend of the Nine-Tailed Fox ended up being both more and better than I expected. So much so, in fact, that I’ll probably pick up the author’s first fantasy, The Last Dragon of the East, the next time I’m looking for this combination of myth, adventure and romance.

The Sunday Post AKA What’s on my (Mostly Virtual) Nightstand 3-22-26

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | The Sunday Post> Virtual Nightstand> Winner announcement

No one at Chez Reading Reality had the best week this week, and the reviews definitely reflect that. I only had ONE book work for me, and there was even more flailing and bailing than seems evident from here. We were finally able to sleep in our own bed again Thursday night – and things are slowly getting back to normal although there’s a lot of clean up to do AND a whole lot of area rugs to decide on. But with the cats, hardwood is definitely a better option than carpet.

The humans were definitely NOT the only people in the house who were not best pleased with the work being done. The cats stayed in the basement while we decamped to a hotel. It took several hours on Thursday evening for most of them to emerge from what had clearly become their new ‘safe place’.

But if a picture is worth a thousand words, Tuna is just saying ‘DADDY I’M SCARED!’ over and over again. Even between the knees of a ‘security human’, Tuna was obviously petrified of all the changes. This was taken Friday morning just below the top of the stairs because he was just not coming up. He did finally join the rest of the fam late Friday evening. Everyone seems to be okay now, even Tuna, but they’re all still a bit clingy. And so are their humans!

Current Giveaways:

$10 Gift Card or $10 Book in the Chasing Rainbows Giveaway Hop
$10 Gift Card or $10 Book PLUS EVENT-WIDE AMAZON/PAYPAL PRIZE in The Spring Giveaway Event!
$10 Gift Card or $10 Book in the Spring 2026 Seasons of Books Giveaway Hop

Winner Announcements:

The winner of the Winter 2025-2026 Seasons of Books Giveaway Hop is Sherry

Blog Recap:

Chasing Rainbows Giveaway Hop
B- #AudioBookReview: Desire and the Deep Blue Sea by Olivia Dade
Grade A #BookReview: A Pretender’s Murder by Christopher Huang
C+ #AudioBookReview: And Now Back to You by B.K. Borison
Spring 2026 Seasons of Books Giveaway Hop
Stacking the Shelves (697)

Coming This Week:

The Legend of the Nine-Tailed Fox by Katrina Kwan (#BookReview)
Tiny House, Big Love by Olivia Dade (#AudioBookReview)
Trace Elements by Jo Walton and Ada Palmer (#BookReview)
Magic and Mischief at the Wayside Hotel by Elizabeth Everett (#BookReview)
Hunter Squad: Marc by Anna Hackett (#BookReview)

Stacking the Shelves (697)

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | Stacking the Shelves

Welcome to another interesting stack of “how the shelf stacks”. (And hopefully a stack where the linky works because last week’s didn’t.)

We’re back home. The flooring is just about done although Tuna’s high anxiety hasn’t come down yet and he hasn’t come up from the basement except for  stealth reconnaissance runs late at night. Just wait until you see tomorrow’s picture!

I do have some pretty covers, and some interesting covers, and some pretty interesting covers this time around. IMNSHO the prettiest covers are Lady Tremaine, Where the False Gods Dwell and surprisingly, The Girls Before. I think I just love that shade of blue because the image IN the blue is a bit creepy in a ‘someone is out to get me and this is where they’re waiting’ kind of way. Of course I love the cover of The Sisters of Book Row because books. Lots of books.

The book I picked up for the title is How to Find Love in the Cereal Aisle. The one I’m most curious about because I want to see how they manage it is The House of Boleyn. And the book I’m outright most looking forward to is Unpredictable Magic. I never got into the author’s Jane Yellowrock series, but I love her Junkyard Cats so I’m hoping that this one is going to work for me. We’ll see.

We’ll also see what you have to say about YOUR stack this week. Anything that you’re particularly looking forward to reading?

unpredictable magic by faith hunter
where the girls were by kate schatz
fridas cook by florencia etcheves
ruby falls by gin phillips
pink ink by avina st graves
blood relay by devon mihesuah
where the false gods dwell by denny s bryce
sisters of book row by shelley noble
determined by rachel rueckert
how to find love in the cereal aisle
girls before by kate alice marshall
open era by edward schmit
lost book of elizabeth barton by jennifer n brown
insomniacs by allison winn scotch
where the wildflowers grow by terah shelton harris
lady tremaine by rachel hochhauser
house of boleyn by tracy borman
molka by monika kim
marc by anna hackett
annie knows everything by rachel wood
it girl by allison pataki

For Review:
Annie Knows Everything by Rachel Wood
Blood Relay by Devon Mihesuah
The Determined by Rachel Rueckert
Frida’s Cook by Florencia Etcheves, translated by Beth Fowler
The Girls Before by Kate Alice Marshall
The House of Boleyn by Tracy Borman
How to Find Love in the Cereal Aisle by Alissa DeRogatis
The Insomniacs by Allison Winn Scotch
It Girl by Allison Pataki
Lady Tremaine by Rachel Hochhauser
The Lost Book of Elizabeth Barton by Jennifer N. Brown
Marc (Hunter Squad #3) by Anna Hackett
Molka by Monkia Kim
The Open Era by Edward Schmit
Pink Ink by Avina St. Graves
Ruby Falls by Gin Phillips
The Sisters of Book Row by Shelley Noble
Unpredictable Magic by Faith Hunter
Where the False Gods Dwell by Denny S. Bryce
Where the Girls Were by Kate Schatz
Where the Wildflowers Grow by Terah Shelton Harris

If you want to find out more about Stacking The Shelves, please visit the official launch page

Please link your STS post in the linky below:


Spring 2026 Seasons of Books Giveaway Hop

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | Blog Hops> Giveaways> Of Books Giveaway Hop> Seasons of Books Giveaway Hop

Welcome to the Spring 2026 Seasons of Books Giveaway Hop, hosted by It Starts At Midnight and Versatileer!

Once upon a time, this was the Month of Books Giveaway Hop, now it’s the Seasons of Books Giveaway Hop, with the hops starting on the days the seasons change. Today, March 20, is the first official day of SPRING for the 2026 season. In other words, today is the Spring Equinox, the day when the light catches up to the dark and the day and night are equal or would be if that pesky ‘atmosphere’ that keeps us all alive didn’t play with the light just a bit. Nevertheless, the season literally starts getting brighter from here on out – at least in the northern hemisphere.

Spring has officially SPRUNG!

Winter briefly stepped in early this week here in the ATL, but on this first day of spring the temperatures are supposed to be in the mid-70s, which certainly sounds like spring to ME! Although I just had to look up some of the other places I’ve lived, and it’s expected to be 62 in Chicago, 73 in Cincinnati (OH), 56 and rainy in Seattle and a still freezing 25 in Anchorage. I’d rather be here.

I’ve kind of given up on wondering if my reading tastes don’t match anyone else’s – because they clearly don’t match those of whoever created the hop graphic. This is yet another season where not a one of the books featured in the hop graphic are on my personal TBR pile for the season. But I still have plenty to choose from. Here are a baker’s dozen that have risen to the top of my list for this spring of 2026:

this kingdom will not kill me by ilona andrews
troubles turn to lose by susan m boyer
in the spirit of french murder by colleen cambridge
when the wolves are silent by cs harris
last contract of isako by fonda lee
long and speaking silence by nghi vo
stay for a spell by amy coombe
vampyre client by jeri westerson
deadly episode by anthony horowitz
i choose the bear by shiloh walker
like wafers in honey by leah eskin
first mage on the moon by cameron johnston
seasons of glass and iron by amal al mohtar

A Deadly Episode by Anthony Horowitz
The First Mage on the Moon by Cameron Johnston
I Choose the Bear by Shiloh Walker
In the Spirit of French Murder by Colleen Cambridge
The Last Contract of Isako by Fonda Lee
Like Wafers in Honey by Leah Eskin
A Long and Speaking Silence by Nghi Vo
Seasons of Glass and Iron by Amal El-Mohtar
Stay for a Spell by Amy Coombe
This Kingdom Will Not Kill Me by Ilona Andrews
Trouble’s Turn to Lose by Susan M. Boyer
The Vampyre Client by Jeri Westerson
When the Wolves are Silent by C.S. Harris

What about you? What books are you most looking forward to this season? Answer in the widget for your choice of either a $10 Amazon Gift Card or $10 in books so you can get one or two of the books on your list!

#AudioBookReview: And Now Back to You by B.K. Borison

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | audio reviews> audiobooks> book reviews> C+ Reviews
#AudioBookReview: And Now Back to You by B.K. BorisonAnd Now, Back to You (Heartstrings, #2) by B.K. Borison
Narrator: Max Meyers, Brittany Pressley
Format: audiobook, eARC
Source: purchased from Audible, supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, large print, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: contemporary romance, romantic comedy, workplace romance
Series: Heartstrings #2
Pages: 464
Length: 13 hours and 3 minutes
Published by Berkley, Penguin Audio on February 24, 2026
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

Two competing meteorologists are forced to find common ground in this opposites attract, When Harry Met Sally inspired romance, from New York Times bestselling author B.K. Borison.
Jackson Clark and Delilah Stewart have had their fair share of run-ins over the years, often ending in disaster. While Jackson thrives on routine and organization from the comfort of his radio booth, Delilah loves the spontaneity and adventure out in the field. When they’re partnered against their will to cover the snowstorm of the century, they find themselves scrambling to figure out how to work together.
Eager to be taken seriously as a journalist, Delilah offers Jackson a deal. If he can help her ace this assignment, she’ll help him rediscover his long-lost fun side. With an undiscovered chemistry burning beneath their clashes, the unlikely partnership quickly tumbles into an easy and surprising friendship.
But when other feelings start to enter the equation, can Jackson and Delilah withstand the storm? Or does what happens in the mountains, stay in the mountains?

My Review:

Readers of First-Time Caller, the first book in the Heartstrings series, have already met the radio station’s “weather boy”, Jackson Clark. But they haven’t really met his opposite number from the TV station that shares the parking lot, TV meteorologist Delilah Stewart. And honestly, neither has Jackson, even if they have been sharing passive-aggressive sticky notes via each other’s windshields for months.

So when this book begins, we only know Delilah through Jackson’s VERY uptight opinion, and he doesn’t know Delilah AT ALL no matter how many assumptions her truly terrible parking skills have caused him to make. And have, as Jackson discovers in this book, thoroughly handled his half of the ‘assume’ cliche. Because he’s certainly making an ass of himself when it comes to  Delilah.

Delilah, on the other hand, is already dealing with a much bigger asshole so she’s not all that bothered by Jackson’s relatively minor grumpy assholery in comparison. Her part of that particular equation is more of the sly, cutting dig variety than the rather excessive hate-on Jackson seems to have for her.

But they both report on the local weather in Baltimore. Or, Jackson certainly does, and Delilah does when her hateful asshat of a boss lets her do her actual job instead of demeaning, deflating and downgrading her at every turn.

Back to the weather – or as Delilah’s signature sign off goes, “and now back to you.” The you in this instance being the entire city of Baltimore, because the weather outside is about to get frightful even though the holidays are definitely over for the year.

It’s late March and a freak blizzard is barreling down on the city. Based on multiple weather models that both Delilah and Jackson are following, the storm is going to hit the mountains in Western Maryland with ‘the big one’ late in March with plenty of heavy, damp late season snow and gale force winds. It’s going to be the weather programming opportunity of both of their careers.

Because their respective stations need ratings and advertising dollars, her TV station and his radio station decide to team Jackson and Delilah up for a trip to tiny Deep Creek on the far western edge of the state to report on the storm as it hits. They are both excited by the opportunity but neither is thrilled for either the company OR the circumstances.

Jackson has EXTREME stage fright to the point of panic attacks. Delilah is certain that her evil, abusive boss intends to use this trip as an opportunity to do even further damage to her career – even if she can’t figure out how he’ll manage that at the distance. Jackson, for his part, is very afraid that his issues ARE the intended damage.

Once they are on the road to remote Garrett County, they have the chance to get to know the real person behind all those passive-aggressive post-its. A person who shares some of the same damage but took that trauma in utterly opposite directions.

Which means that they DO have an opportunity to meet in the middle. If they’re each willing to share the load AND step outside their respective – and opposite – comfort zones in order to get there.

With just a little bit of help from a big storm, a full hotel, and some truly evil connivance from Delilah’s boss that has some unintentionally excellent consequences for everyone involved who DESERVES a shot at a happy ever after.

Delilah’s evil boss DEFINITELY not included.

Escape Rating C+: I picked this up because I did, in the end, love the first book in the Heartstrings series, First-Time Caller. I’ll admit that that one opened with a bit of a rocky start, but it was a rocky start that was definitely a ‘me’ thing. Once Aiden and Lucie got into the radio booth, they made the kind of magic that just made the whole story shine.

And it was the hope of a similar turnaround in this second book that made me stick with it long after I might have otherwise bailed. Because I wasn’t seeing that chemistry no matter how much I wanted to. Instead, I saw a few too many similarities between Jackson and Delilah in this book and Callie and Thomas in Tuesday’s book. Which was itself a replacement review for an entirely different book that didn’t work all that well either although for entirely different reasons.

Even though I started And Now Back to You in audio, I finished in text because I was just done and needed to move on, but was still hoping that the magic would happen between Delilah and Jackson. Although I’m not sure it did.

The thing is that the start of this book reminded me a bit too much of First-Time Caller. They’re not the same situation but the situations were both very uncomfortable for me. Lucie’s situation involved an inner circle of well-meaning but overbearing and intrusive people. It was a bit of a personal nightmare but felt real and right for the story.

Delilah’s situation was outright triggering. Her workplace isn’t just toxic and her boss isn’t merely abusive although both things are certainly true. The way that he was abusing her, doing his damndest to tank her career PUBLICLY and make it so that she’d be forced out of a career that she’d worked so hard for and was so good at hit a bit too close to home. The way that she just kept sucking it up and being a mouse about the abuse, even inside the confines of her own head, wasn’t a situation I wanted to read about.

In short, her boss is an EVIL, abusive asshole, and she’s become the meat shield for the entire station through no actual fault of her own. The situation is terrible to the point of outright abuse (and let’s not forget the gaslighting) and she’s just taking it and I just wasn’t there for it even though I was, well, there in it by reading/listening to it.

OTOH the personal situations that Jackson and Delilah came out of were heartbreaking but very well done. It made both of their traumas understandable AND explained why their reactions to variations of the same damage went in such different directions. Coming out of childhood abandonment and chaos, he turned rule-bound while she turned sunshine  which are both plausible even though they’re caused by the same thing.

However, the way that we get to see the man behind the panicking mask more clearly long before we see what Delilah’s hiding under snarky sunshine made it easier to empathize with him – and made her continued digs at Jackson’s expense seem more mean-spirited for a bit too long. Their initial relationship as passive-aggressive frenemies did not work nearly as well as a road to romance as Aiden and Lucie’s first meeting.

In the end, I stuck with this in the hopes that magic would happen after all. And it kind of does, but only after the halfway point and even then it wasn’t nearly as magical as I hoped it would be. And I know I’ve been having a bad week this week, but I honestly didn’t see the purported resemblance between this book and When Harry Met Sally. Which is a real pity because a variation of the iconic scene in the diner might have been just what this story needed.

Of course, and I sincerely hope so, your reading mileage may vary.

Grade A #BookReview: A Pretender’s Murder by Christopher Huang

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A Reviews> book reviews
Grade A #BookReview: A Pretender’s Murder by Christopher HuangA Pretender's Murder (Eric Peterkin, #2) by Christopher Huang
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: historical fiction, historical mystery, mystery
Series: Eric Peterkin #2
Pages: 396
Published by Inkshares on February 24, 2026
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

Colonel Russell before the War had four sons; now he has four widowed daughters-in-law, each facing the aftermath in her own iconic way. Then an old friend of the Colonel’s dead sons resurfaces, reawakening tales of wartime espionage — enemy spies preying on the unwitting families at home — and is he really who he says? When the Colonel is thrown bodily through an upstairs window of his London Club, Eric Peterkin is once again called to investigate.
Eric Peterkin’s second mystery is about recognising that war impacts more than just the men who there are wheels turning behind the scenes and strings being pulled from afar, and the people we leave behind might ultimately leave us behind. Set in the 1920s and the aftermath of the Great War, the story honours the period by reflecting the changing social mores, the gradual emancipation of women, the questioning of tradition, and the illusion of innocence — the truth behind the facade, against a backdrop of ongoing war trauma.

My Review:

In the first book in this series, A Gentleman’s Murder, we were introduced to the rarefied world of the Britannia, one of Britain’s rarefied ‘gentlemen’s clubs’. The Britannia, with its particular long and storied history, is a bit different from the more famous, and occasionally infamous, White’s, Brooks’s and Boodle’s. Because prospective members do not merely need to be ‘gentlemen’ but need specifically to be gentlemen who have served in one of Britain’s many, many wars over the centuries since the Britannia was founded.

Eric Peterkin, the amateur detective of this series, is a member of the Britannia. In fact, his family is the last remaining founding family of the club, and Peterkin’s service as a Lieutenant in “the war to end all wars” more than meets the requirement for military service. But Peterkin’s membership was contested and very much in doubt at the beginning of that first book. His father may have been a direct descendant of one of the founders, but Eric’s mother was a Chinese woman who spent her life trying to ensure that her children, Erik and his sister Penny, would be British enough to truly belong in her adopted country.

Not that either of them is ever truly allowed to forget that they look ‘foreign’ no matter how British they act or how little of their mother’s heritage they even know.

After the events of the first book, Eric has moved from being an obvious outsider to an actual insider, at least within the confines of his own club. In the wake of that murder and catastrophe – and Eric’s successful investigation of it – Eric is now the club’s secretary.

Definitely a case of “no good deed going unpunished” as being the Club Secretary is a lot of real work – especially when your predecessor was murdered!

So when the club’s interim chairman is ALSO murdered, Eric has more than enough on his plate. And he has hope that Scotland Yard will do a decent job of investigating this time around – instead of taking the easy way out and accusing an obviously innocent staff member because none of the so-called gentlemen of the club could possibly have been so ungentlemanly as to murder one of their own.

But he’s tempted to try anyway. So the moment that it looks like the investigator in charge is taking the easy way out for a bit of quick glory, Eric finds himself back on the case. Because he still can’t let one of “his men”, which is exactly how he thinks of the club’s staff, be condemned for a crime they obviously did not commit.

Following the treacherous trail of who DID murder the late Colonel Hadrian Russell, and why, is going to drag Peterkin and company from a London that is just emerging from winter to a tuberculosis sanatorium in remote Switzerland that is still caught in its depths, as well as from the bloodless halls of power in London back to the mud and blood of the trenches of the late war,

Because the war is always with all the members of the Britannia, in the form of scarred bodies and burned lungs and sudden nightmares of shell-shock. But the truth of this murder will be the worst shock of all – and the worst betrayal.

Escape Rating A: I read A Gentleman’s Murder almost a year ago, and have been waiting for this book ever since. It was absolutely worth the wait and there are multiple reasons why that is so.

Let’s start with Peterkin himself. Part of the story in the first book was the way that Peterkin was constantly reminded that he was an outsider even though he should have been an insider by inheritance. In this second book, he’s moved towards the inside, so a piece of the story sets up a foil to remind him that he really still isn’t by giving that situation a bit of a different focus.

The investigator sent by Scotland Yard, Inspector Crane, has just returned to London after ten years in Hong Kong where he’s become very much a Sinophile. Crane deeply admires all things Chinese and it’s clear that Hong Kong is the home of his heart no matter where he might be. His first act is to address Peterkin in Mandarin, a language with which Peterkin has zero familiarity. Eric’s mother may have been Chinese but he and his sister Penny were born in Britain and raised in India. Their mother deliberately did not teach either of them about her side of their heritage. They are both British to their cores.

Which made it all the more fascinating that in his first big case as Club Secretary, a position that marks him as ‘veddy’ British indeed, Crane is disappointed because Peterkin is not Chinese enough. (A situation which has PLENTY of resonance to the present day for anyone who has ever been asked “Where are you FROM?” with emphasis on the FROM because someone doesn’t look in whatever way the questioner expects.)

So much of this murder, the history of the Britannia, and Peterkin’s own history and that of all of its members, is rooted in World War I. Other mysteries have dealt with the human cost of the ‘Great War’, including Charles Todd’s Inspector Ian Rutledge series and Dorothy L. Sayers’ classic Lord Peter Wimsey series, but the Peterkin series takes all of that a step further in Peterkin’s acknowledgement of his own PTSD and how much it still affects him, but also in the way their lingering injuries and PTSD haunt ALL the members of the Britannia. They’ve all served, and they are all still paying for that service.

The web of secrets and lies that Peterkin has to work his way through to solve the murder also has its roots in the war. So much of what Peterkin uncovers about the late Colonel is so utterly unthinkable that Peterkin literally cannot wrap his mind around it. He shies away from the obvious – to the reader – conclusion for as long as he can and much longer than he should. That internal angst with no reasonable outlet is also part of the cost of that war.

And last, but definitely not least, is the way that the victim’s true nature is revealed – not through his own words and deeds but through the perspectives of his four widowed daughters-in-law who all saw the man for who he truly was. And also, in their responses to him and to the loss of the sons he raised, manage to embody the archetypes of what middle-and-upper-class women faced before, during and after the war.

Even as the next war already looms on the horizon.

One (nearly) final note. Most mysteries begin with the upset of order and end with the re-establishment of order through the punishment of the guilty. This one kind of does but kind of doesn’t – and is all the more interesting for it. It’s not just that the truly guilty have already been punished, or even that the so-called ‘order’ of the time before the war can’t possibly be restored – and mostly shouldn’t – but that in this instance justice is best served by not coming within a whole, entire continent of any official version of it.

Returning to on that horizon, however, lies the question of when we’ll get to read Eric Peterkin’s next adventure. Because this inquiring mind would really, REALLY like to know.