Review: A Cowboy to Remember by Rebekah Weatherspoon

Review: A Cowboy to Remember by Rebekah WeatherspoonA Cowboy to Remember (Cowboys of California #1) by Rebekah Weatherspoon
Format: ebook
Source: purchased from Amazon
Formats available: paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: contemporary romance, western romance
Series: Cowboys of California #1
Pages: 357
Published by Dafina Books on February 25, 2020
Purchasing Info: Author's WebsitePublisher's WebsiteAmazonBarnes & NobleKoboBookshop.org
Goodreads

An Oprah Magazine Best Romance Novel of 2020
In this brand-new series from award-winning author Rebekah Weatherspoon, a charming cowboy and his sleeping beauty find their modern-day happily ever after . . .
With a headline spot on a hit morning show and truly mouth-watering culinary skills, chef Evie Buchanan is perched on the edge of stardom. But at an industry party, a fall lands Evie in the hospital—with no memory of who she is. Scrambling to help, Evie’s assistant contacts the only “family” Evie has left, close friends who run the luxury dude ranch in California where Evie grew up. Evie has no recollection of them—until former rodeo champion Zach Pleasant walks into her hospital room, and she realizes his handsome face has been haunting her dreams . . .
Zach hasn’t seen Evie in years—not since their families conducted a campaign to make sure their childhood friendship never turned into anything more. When the young cowboy refused to admit the feelings between them were real, Evie left California, making it clear she never wanted to see Zach again. Now he refuses to make the same mistake twice. Starting fresh is a risk when they have a history she can’t recall, but Zach can’t bear to let go of her now. Can he awaken the sleeping beauty inside her who might still love him?

My Review:

To open this happy week, I have the first of several books that are supposed to have happy endings. This one certainly did!

But it doesn’t have a happy beginning. At all. It’s going to take a lot of changes for celebrity chef Evie Buchanan to reach her happy place. Changes in attitude and changes in latitude.

I also just realized that this is a bit of a holiday romance. It’s not that the holidays turn out to be a big deal in this one, and certainly no one gets snowbound, but the holidays are occurring in the background as the story goes in in the foreground.

Let me explain…

The story here is a second chance at love romance with one hell of a twist. Amnesia stories are usually fodder for daytime soap operas, but after an “accident” at a holiday party, Evie Buchanan is living one. The amnesia story, that is, although possibly the soap opera as well.

She “fell” down the stairs, hit her head – badly – and can’t remember a damn thing about anything at all. Her roommate, her personal assistant and her agent all gather round, but can’t help her regain her memories – if she’ll get them back, all or even at all.

Evie’s been pretty close-mouthed about the details of her life before they all met her. All they know is that she’s an only child, her parents and other relatives are deceased, and she seems to have no life outside her work as a celebrity chef and star of The Dish, her daytime cooking show.

Evie doesn’t recognize them, and they don’t know any details of her previous life. Except for the name of her “only in case of deadly emergency” contact, Jesse Pleasant. Whatever their relationship might be or have been. His tangential presence in Evie’s contact list if seemingly not her actual life is all they have to go on.

And that’s where the second chance at love story comes into this story. Not with Jesse. Jesse is the big brother that Evie doesn’t otherwise have. Jesse’s brother, very much on the other hand, was the one that broke Evie’s young heart and sent her on her quest for fame, fortune and a lot of hard work as a chef.

The Pleasant family, with their exclusive “dude ranch”, hotel, spa and wedding venue in California, are the temporary answer to all of Evie’s problems. She can go back to where she grew up, be taken care of by the family who nearly adopted her, and stay out of New York City while her friends at home take a stab at figuring out whether Evie was just unlucky or the victim of something more sinister.

But as dangerous as NYC might be for a woman with a career to protect but no idea who she is or used to be, the risk to Evie’s unprotected heart is even greater in California, spending time with a man who has invaded her dreams like no one ever has. Zach Pleasant is either the key to bringing back Evie’s memory – or the reason she had so much to forget.

Escape Rating B+: I started this book because I was still looking for a happy ending. Not that Friday’s book didn’t admirably fill that bill – rather it did it so well that I wanted a little bit more.

So I turned, technically I returned, to A Cowboy to Remember – and just as it is for Evie and Zach, the second chance at romance was the winner. Also my second time picking up the book and giving it a second chance was a winner.

I had started this once but put it down the first time. Probably because I was looking for happy and didn’t find it in the story’s opening. When we first meet Evie, she still has all of her memories and doesn’t seem to be happy about either her past or particularly her present.

Picking the story up in the aftermath of her “accident” was just what I needed. It turned out that her life-changing injury was, in a perverse way, exactly what Evie needed as well. Not remembering her life gave her the chance to start over and look at herself from the outside. Just as I didn’t enjoy reading her unhappiness in the beginning, she didn’t like what she saw as she looked in the mirror at her old self.

There are several things going on in this story, and they all work together to bring that happy ever after home, not just for the holidays, but for always.

First, there’s that whole amnesia thing. It’s been the fodder for so many soap opera melodramas that it’s difficult to do it for real – or even for something real-ish rather than over-the-top. But in this story it lasts just long enough to not fall into anything stupid or silly and it does work to give Evie a once-in-a-lifetime chance to re-evaluate her life, the dreams she thought she had, and the dreams she believed she’d lost long ago.

The way that her relationship with Zach comes back to life turned out to be bittersweet rather than just sweet – and that feels like the way it should have been. The first time around, they were both young, they both screwed up, and neither of them ever got past those events or each other.

This is a do-over. Evie knows that they almost had it all the last time around, but screwed things up instead. But she doesn’t remember the details of what happened, so she isn’t still replaying in her head all the awful things they said to each other. Still, she hasn’t let them go so much as they’ve temporarily let her go. Zach remembers everything, is worried that someday there will be one hell of a reckoning, but can’t resist attempting to build the relationship they should have had long ago.

But they can’t have anything real until they catch up to each other, and the wariness of waiting for that other shoe to drop, the bitterness when it does and the difficulty of working through the past and the present provides the romantic tension in the story and gives it a surprisingly realistic chop of near-finality, making their eventual HEA hard earned and hard won.

A big part of the charm of this story was the way that Jesse and Zach’s family scooped Evie up and brought her back home to the place she’d grown up and the family that helped raise her. The relationships among the Pleasant family were beyond pleasant, and their re-adoption of Evie was heartwarming, particularly the re-kindling of the motherly/grandmotherly relationship between Jesse and Zach’s grandmother Leona and Evie. A relationship that Evie needed quite frankly even more than she needed the romance – and she needed that pretty damn bad.

It’s a good thing that Jesse and Zach’s family is so much more than merely “Pleasant” as the series looks like it follows the Pleasant sons. The next book in the series, If the Boot Fits, features Jesse and Zach’s youngest brother Sam, the one who followed Miss Leona into the acting business. I’m looking forward to reading it as it’s been praised to the skies everywhere, but the one I’m really hoping for is Jesse’s book. He’s kind of a quiet giant and it’s going to be fun to see him fall!

The Sunday Post AKA What’s on my (Mostly Virtual) Nightstand 12-20-20

Sunday Post

This is Xmas week. Which is making me feel like this should be a week for books with happy endings. Even if this holiday isn’t quite as upbeat as other years, it still feels like better things are on the horizon. Next week I’ll be back to my usual mix of aliens, evil, evil aliens, monsters, murders and historical drama – not necessarily all in one week. But this week feels like there should be some happy books at the tippy top of my towering TBR pile. Of course, I could change my mind in the middle!

But speaking of happy things, here’s a picture of an adorable cuddle puddle of Freddie and George. Either they are both trying to fit into a cat bed that is frankly too small now for either of them singly, or George just wants to be as close as possible to his “big brother” – at least until the inevitable rumble breaks out.

Happy Holidays!

Current Giveaways:

$10 Gift Card or $10 Book in the Winter is Coming Giveaway Hop (ENDS TOMORROW!!!!!)
$10 Gift Card or $10 Book in the Dashing Giveaway Hop

Winner Announcements:

The winner of the Holly Jolly Giveaway Hop is Jeanna

Blog Recap:

B Review: Cash in Hand by TA Moore + Excerpt
A- Review: A Hanging at Dawn by Charles Todd
Dashing Giveaway Hop
B Review: The Eighth Detective by Alex Pavesi
A- Review: Get a Life, Chloe Brown by Talia Hibbert
Stacking the Shelves (423)

Coming This Week:

A Cowboy to Remember by Rebekah Weatherspoon (review)
The Worst Best Man by Mia Sosa (review)
Spoiler Alert by Olivia Dade (review)
Take a Hint, Dani Brown by Talia Hibbert (review)

Stacking the Shelves (423)

Stacking the Shelves

I don’t know if this has happened to anyone else, but my Goodreads Challenge for 2020 went wonky. It said I’d read ZERO books. On its other hand, certainly not mine, the My Year in Books display showed 247 books read this year. I believe this is what is called a contradiction in terms. Either I’ve read zero books – highly unlikely and someone needs to look for the alien invasion – or I’ve read more than a few. Like 247.

And it’s back! Thank goodness. That was driving me bananas!!!!!

But on the good side of bananas, I got the eARC for The House of Always this week. I am SO TEMPTED to read it over Xmas. This year deserves a treat like no other. But, but, but, if I read it now I’ll have an even longer wait until book 5 – and hopefully the conclusion – for the series. Also, the audiobooks have been SO GOOD for this series. Decisions, decisions…

For Review:
Best Laid Plans (Garnet Run #2) by Roan Parrish
Defekt (Finna #2) by Nino Cipri
The Fall of Koli (Rampart Trilogy #3) by M.R. Carey
Folklorn by Angela Mi Young Hur
The House of Always (Chorus of Dragons #4) by Jenn Lyons
People We Meet on Vacation by Emily Henry
The Rehearsals by Annette Christie
The Secret Keeper of Jaipur by Alka Joshi
The Secrets of Colchester Hall by Sophie Barnes
Star Eater by Kerstin Hall
Stars Over Alaska (Wild River #4) by Jennifer Snow
A Trail of Lies (Jazz Ramsey #3) by Kylie Logan
Whisper Down the Lane by Clay McLeod Chapman



Review: Get a Life, Chloe Brown by Talia Hibbert

Review: Get a Life, Chloe Brown by Talia HibbertGet a Life, Chloe Brown (The Brown Sisters, #1) by Talia Hibbert
Format: ebook
Source: publisher
Formats available: hardcover, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: contemporary romance
Series: Brown Sisters #1
Pages: 373
Published by Avon on November 5, 2019
Purchasing Info: Author's WebsitePublisher's WebsiteAmazonBarnes & NobleKoboBookshop.org
Goodreads

Chloe Brown is a chronically ill computer geek with a goal, a plan, and a list. After almost—but not quite—dying, she’s come up with seven directives to help her “Get a Life”, and she’s already completed the first: finally moving out of her glamorous family’s mansion. The next items?
• Enjoy a drunken night out.• Ride a motorcycle.• Go camping.• Have meaningless but thoroughly enjoyable sex.• Travel the world with nothing but hand luggage.• And... do something bad.
But it’s not easy being bad, even when you’ve written step-by-step guidelines on how to do it correctly. What Chloe needs is a teacher, and she knows just the man for the job.
Redford ‘Red’ Morgan is a handyman with tattoos, a motorcycle, and more sex appeal than ten-thousand Hollywood heartthrobs. He’s also an artist who paints at night and hides his work in the light of day, which Chloe knows because she spies on him occasionally. Just the teeniest, tiniest bit.
But when she enlists Red in her mission to rebel, she learns things about him that no spy session could teach her. Like why he clearly resents Chloe’s wealthy background. And why he never shows his art to anyone. And what really lies beneath his rough exterior…

My Review:

Because yesterday’s book had a slightly higher, let’s call it “discomfort” factor than I was expecting from something promoted as a play on classic mysteries, I went looking for something a bit lighter in tone – or at least something I could reasonably expect to have a happy ending. My search led me to Get a Life, Chloe Brown, as I have the whole series in the virtually towering TBR pile but hadn’t quite been in the mood for it.

Until now. I was definitely in the mood for something light and maybe even a bit fluffy, and was hoping this would fill that particular bill. And even though the baggage that both of the protagonists are carrying is much too heavy to make this book either light or fluffy, it still gave me the happy ending that I was craving.

And all the better for dealing appropriately with that baggage.

Chloe needs to carve out a tiny bit of space from her loving, intrusive, extremely overprotective family. Not that Chloe doesn’t need a bit of help and protection, because she does. In the aftermath of a nearly deadly bout of pneumonia a few years ago, Chloe found herself living with both fibromyalgia and chronic pain.

It’s a situation that has forced Chloe to learn to manage her illness – with the help of the medical professionals she finally located who believed her and didn’t brush her off. Because if she doesn’t manage her health, the issues with it will manage her. And sometimes they still do, in spite of her efforts.

Along the way she’s lost friends and a fiance who refused to believe her, and her family, her parents, her grandmother, and her two sisters, have all stepped in to fill the gaps in Chloe’s social network.

But they’re smothering her with their good intentions, so after another near-death experience – this time with a drunk driver who swerves away at the last possible second – Chloe decides to go out and get herself a life without her loving family looking over her shoulder and swaddling her in cotton every single second.

She does find a new apartment, although the new social life is a bit harder to come by. What she does have is a new frenemy/obsession, the gorgeous, tattooed superintendent of the building. She sees him as a bit of a rough badass, and he sees her as a stuck up rich girl with a snooty attitude and her head up her very shapely backside.

When he discovers her rescuing a stray cat from a very tall tree, the ensuing mayhem allows them both to discover that neither is exactly who the other thought. And that each might provide the other with the kind of friendship that is forged not from what they have in common, but from the elements each needs and sorely lacks – but that the other has in abundance.

If only they can manage to get their own personal baggage out of the other’s way.

Escape Rating A-: As I said at the top, I was expecting fluff. What I got was a whole hell of a lot more nuanced than that, and I think I enjoyed it more because of that nuance. Not that fluff can’t be a wonderful thing if that’s what you’re looking for at a particular time, but this was just more than I expected and I was very happy with that.

The baggage that Chloe and Red are dealing with is both heavier than I expected and was handled so much better than I expected. The crap they’re carrying around isn’t easy and there are no quick solutions.

At the same time, they both recognize that they have a crapton of crap – even if it takes Red quite a bit longer to figure that out – and they both are coming to terms with their own shit. (I can’t be the only person in the world who had a relationship go to hell because both parties had their own crap and weren’t both willing to deal with it.)

And on my third hand, the stuff they each had to deal with was real and hard and not generally dealt with well or at all in romance. Chloe has a chronic illness. It’s something she has learned how to handle, but it will most likely never be cured. So her illness and her management of it and her health is part of what she has to deal with every single day. Even the good days, because it’s always lurking.

But there’s also the emotional baggage along with it. Not just her family’s overprotectiveness, which comes from a place of love but can be unintentionally belittling, but Chloe’s quite real fears of abandonment – because those feelings arose from reality. Her friends and her fiance didn’t believe her illness was real, so they treated her like she was a lying faker and left her to cope by herself.

The result is that she has walled herself away from people other than her family because everyone else has betrayed her trust when she needed them the most. So when her relationship with Red changes from disdain to friendship to flirting to love, she’s afraid he’ll leave because it’s happened to her before.

When he does leave she’s devastated but determined, because he leaves her not because of her crap but his own. His last girlfriend was a rich girl like Chloe, but she was abusive – something that you don’t see nearly enough in romance but does happen. He leaves Chloe because he panics and conflates her behavior with the ex, even though it isn’t so. But it’s something he has to work through and Chloe can’t do it for him anymore than he can deal with her abandonment issues for her.

No matter how much he can, and does, help her deal with the practical issues of her illness and the management of it.

So there was way more to unpack in this story than I was expecting – and it was all terrific stuff. Stuff that slid very nicely between the lines of this terrific, fun, flirty and very sexy romance – almost as nicely as Chloe and Red slid between the sheets – and eventually managed to stay there.

I loved Chloe Brown, and I liked her sisters Dani and Eve – along with the whole family – quite a lot. More than enough that I’m looking very much forward to reading Dani’s story next – and next week – in Take a Hint, Dani Brown!

Review: The Eighth Detective by Alex Pavesi

Review: The Eighth Detective by Alex PavesiThe Eighth Detective by Alex Pavesi
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: mystery, suspense, thriller
Pages: 289
Published by Henry Holt on August 4, 2020
Purchasing Info: Author's WebsitePublisher's WebsiteAmazonBarnes & NobleKoboBookshop.org
Goodreads

There are rules for murder mysteries. There must be a victim. A suspect. A detective. The rest is just shuffling the sequence. Expanding the permutations. Grant McAllister, a professor of mathematics, once sat down and worked them all out – calculating the different orders and possibilities of a mystery into seven perfect detective stories he quietly published. But that was thirty years ago. Now Grant lives in seclusion on a remote Mediterranean island, counting the rest of his days.
Until Julia Hart, a sharp, ambitious editor knocks on his door. Julia wishes to republish his book, and together they must revisit those old stories: an author hiding from his past, and an editor, keen to understand it.
But there are things in the stories that don’t add up. Inconsistencies left by Grant that a sharp-eyed editor begins to suspect are more than mistakes. They may be clues, and Julia finds herself with a mystery of her own to solve.

My Review:

This book is like one of those nesting dolls. It begins as a story within a story. Then it morphs into a bunch of stories within a story, only for that assumption to shift again into those stories, within a story, within two entirely different stories.

And they are all about detective stories. About classic mysteries. Until they’re not. And then, they are again.

The framing story, well, the initial framing story, involves the editor from a small, independent press that specializes in crime and mystery books, visiting the reclusive author of a single, privately published book of mystery stories that was released in VERY limited numbers over 30 years ago and it now nearly forgotten and completely out of print.

That editor comes to the author’s remote island hideaway to read through all those old stories and discuss the possibility of bringing the collection back into print. The stories, all wrapped around a mathematical exploration of the mystery genre, represent different takes on classic, so-called Golden Age, mysteries.

And the stories themselves are interesting enough. They’re all just a bit creepy, just slightly off-putting in one way or another. They all end with a kind of sick twist, where the character that the reader empathized with throughout the story turns out to be the villain after all.

Sometimes a sick villain, at that.

So all the stories from the collection are disturbing. But absorbing. And all illustrate the author’s original premise about the requirements for a book to be a mystery being mathematically quantifiable.

But as the editor probes the writer, the reader gets the sensation that there is more going on here than meets the eye. And then that there is even more going on here than that.

The mystery is wrapped, not in the proverbial enigma, but in yet another mystery. It’s only after the big reveal that we discover that there really was an enigma hiding underneath all along.

Escape Rating B: Once upon a time, a library I used to work at required that, in order for a book to be classed as a mystery, it had to have a body and a detective. In other words, someone had to be dead and someone had to be trying to figure out who made them that way. The mathematical foundation of the original book reads as an extension of that principle as well as a set of mystery stories in the classic mode.

There must be a victim. There must be a killer. There must be suspects. And there must be a detective. There may be more than one of any or all of the above. An individual may occupy more than one, or even all, of those possible slots.

And that’s the formula for the stories. Single victim, multiple victims. Single killer, multiple killers. The detective may be a suspect and may even be the killer. The detective may be the victim. The stories will remind the reader of some of the classic mystery stories, with homages in particular to Murder on the Orient Express, And Then There Were None and surprisingly, the movie The Sixth Sense. I’m sure there were others that I didn’t catch.

The individual stories were good to excellent, but they all had that touch of something being awry that generally came as a surprise to this reader. But the stories, while they occupy the bulk of the book, turn out not to be the main point of the whole thing.

And that’s where it just missed being something special. Your mileage, of course, may vary. But compared to just how good most of the individual stories were, the endings veered into melodrama rather than mystery, and felt just a bit flat. A little too much of the old deus ex machina there at the end.

So the framing story – and then the frame wrapped around the framing story – didn’t quite gel for me, but came oh-so-close. The individual stories, however, were great little homages to classic mystery fiction that were a lot of fun to read with just a shiver of creeping evil at the end of each.

Dashing Giveaway Hop

Welcome to the Dashing Giveaway Hop, hosted by Mama the Fox!

Dashing through the snow
In a one-horse open sleigh
O’er the fields we go
Laughing all the way
Bells on bobtails ring
Making spirits bright
What fun it is to ride and sing
A sleighing song tonight

It’s time for Jingle Bells, and every other holiday song ever sung. Admittedly, the only bells we hear jingling around here are the ones that are attached to the cats’ toys. Especially when they bring them to bed with us. Although the original Jingle Bells song seems to have way more verses than I thought. That first verse, quoted above, is the one that most everyone remembers.

And did you know that it wasn’t intended as an Xmas song? It was originally supposed to refer to Thanksgiving! But all that snow just makes it seem like it refers to a time a bit later in the year.

Just to jingle some bells for you, I’m giving away my usual prize in this giveaway hop; the winner’s choice of a $10 Amazon Gift Card or a book up to $10 in value from the Book Depository. So fill out the rafflecopter for a chance at making a few bells jingle of your very own!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

For more fabulous and possibly even jingling prizes, be sure to visit the other stops on this hop!

MamatheFox and all participating blogs are not held responsible for sponsors who fail to fulfill their prize obligations.

Review: A Hanging at Dawn by Charles Todd

Review: A Hanging at Dawn by Charles ToddA Hanging at Dawn by Charles Todd
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: historical fiction, historical mystery, mystery
Series: Bess Crawford #11.5
Pages: 176
Published by Witness Impulse on December 15, 2020
Purchasing Info: Author's WebsitePublisher's WebsiteAmazonBarnes & NobleKoboBookshop.org
Goodreads

Years before the Great War summoned Bess Crawford to serve as a battlefield nurse, the indomitable heroine spent her childhood in India under the watchful eye of her friend and confidant, the young soldier Simon Brandon. The two formed an inseparable bond on the dangerous Northwest Frontier where her father’s Regiment held the Khyber Pass against all intruders. It was Simon who taught Bess to ride and shoot, escorted her to the bazaars and the Maharani’s Palace, and did his best to keep her out of trouble, after the Crawford family took an interest in the tall, angry boy with a mysterious past.
But the Crawfords have long guarded secrets for Simon and he owes them a debt that runs deeper than Bess could ever know. Told through the eyes of Melinda, Richard, Clarissa, and Bess, A Hanging at Dawn pieces together a mystery at the center of Bess’s family that will irrevocably change the course of her future.

My Review:

A Duty to the Dead by Charles ToddFor those of us who are long-time fans of the Bess Crawford series (beginning with A Duty to the Dead), this story serves as an “origin story” for one of the series’ favorite characters, Sergeant-Major Simon Brandon. Through the course of the series, which details Bess Crawford’s service as a battlefield nurse in World War I as well as her outings as an amateur detective both at the front and back home, Brandon has been a familiar if more frequently talked about than seen character.

Brandon has often been the person to get Bess out of trouble that turns out to be too deep for her. Alternatively, he has just as often been the person getting her into that trouble by helping her to ferret out information that she shouldn’t have in pursuit of her unofficial cases.

But Brandon has also been a bit of an enigma throughout the series. From hints that are dropped within the series, while Brandon is older than Bess, it’s clear that he isn’t quite as much older as his rank and time in uniform would indicate. He’s been a part of Bess’ life as well as the life of her parents and her father’s regiment for much longer than he should have been.

This short story dives a bit into those mysteries. We still don’t know exactly who Simon’s people are by the end, but we do know how and why he managed to get into the Army at 14 and serve in India in the years before the Great War, as well as more than a bit about why he’s so attached to the Crawfords.

While this story does go into as much of Brandon’s background as has ever been shared, the heart of this story is a singular incident in India with dramatic repercussions for Brandon, for the Crawfords, and for everything that comes after.

Because that “hanging at dawn” of the title was very nearly Brandon’s. And for once, but certainly not the last time, he was saved from death by Bess Crawford, even though in this particular case she was over 4,000 miles away.

Escape Rating A-: For readers of the series, this story is fascinating and provides more than a bit of much needed background for the character. And we also get to understand why Brandon has been so reticent about the few details that we have had so far.

And I’ll confess that I wonder why anyone who is not already a fan of the series would be reading this story. Not that it’s not good, because it is, but because it’s not enough. It teases and and it torments, and it feels like it’s written with the assumption that most readers will already be familiar with the characters and find this bit of backstory fascinating – as I certainly did.

One of the things that gets more-or-less nailed down is the origin of the relationship between Brandon and the Crawford family, and it does answer a question that has been in the back of my mind from fairly early on. I’ve always wondered about the age difference between Bess and Brandon, because there’s always been a bit of romantic tension about their relationship. The answer seems to be “under a decade” making them well outside squicky territory for any possible romance after the war ends – not that any such ending has ever been hinted at by the author.

But still, one can hope.

In addition to the illumination about just how Brandon came to be part of the Crawfords, there is also a mystery, the mystery that nearly results in that hanging at dawn. I found myself of two minds about the whole thing.

On the one hand, readers of the series already know Simon Brandon as one of the “good guys”. That means we are predisposed to believe that he is innocent of the crime he’s accused of, making the Prince’s – or at least his representative’s – rush to judgment and execution seem immediately dodgy in the extreme – at best – and villainous at worst.

Very much on that other hand, it’s made very clear that the British Raj had subjugated the traditional ruling class in India and taken away nearly all of their traditional rights. And that, as a consequence, there have to have been entirely too many cases where a British soldier would have been whisked away by British authorities in order to avoid justice that was absolutely due for committing crimes against anyone Indian, including members of those same Princely Houses. Not that members of those Princely Houses didn’t also most likely get away with crimes against those they considered their inferiors back when they held all the power. Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely and that’s one of the ways it inevitably corrupts.

But as this story goes, we’re meant to be on Simon’s side from the very beginning, therefore there must be something dodgy about the accusation or at least the rush to judgement. But it feels impossible not to acknowledge that the Prince could have been trying to prevent a miscarriage of justice, even though he imposes that desire on the wrong party in this particular instance.

And even though, or perhaps especially because, in this particular case it’s the threat of the power of the Raj that brings justice for Simon, it’s also true that the same threat would have worked just as well if he’d been guilty. The only difference is that if he had been guilty the Crawfords would never have raised the threat in the first place.

So, an interesting case, a moral conundrum, and oodles of background information for a beloved character. A lot to pack in a relatively short story – but excellently done. And just enough to make my anticipation for the next Bess Crawford novel, An Irish Hostage, feel all that much keener.

Review: Cash in Hand by TA Moore + Excerpt + Giveaway

Review: Cash in Hand by TA Moore + Excerpt + GiveawayCash in Hand by T.A. Moore
Format: ebook
Source: author
Formats available: paperback, ebook
Genres: M/M romance, paranormal romance, urban fantasy
Pages: 202
Published by Dreamspinner Press on December 15, 2020
Purchasing Info: Author's WebsitePublisher's WebsiteAmazonBarnes & NobleKoboBookshop.org
Goodreads

The last monster died a hundred years ago. At least, that’s what the monsters want you to think.
Half-monster Cash just wants to keep his head down and raise his daughter, Ellie, to be an upstanding member of monstrous society. Even if she’d rather spend the summer with her human friends than learn the art of man traps at Camp Dark Hollow.
So the last person Cash wants to see is her uncle Arkady Abascal, who’s also Cash’s ex-boyfriend.
Arkady has more than Ellie’s summer plans on his mind. He’s there to enlist Cash to find out who’s been selling monster secrets. Cash hasn’t gotten any better at telling Arkady no, but it’s not just his weakness for Arkady that makes him agree. The Prodigium thinks an Abascal exposed them to humans, and now the whole family is at risk—including Ellie.
Recruited to help Arkady identify the culprit—or frame a scapegoat—Cash finds the machinations of monstrous power easier to navigate than his feelings for Arkady. At least, at first. But when things get bloody, he wishes romantic disasters were all he had to worry about….

My Review:

The monsters hanging out at the Abascal Hotel and Spa make the creatures in that old Halloween staple, Monster Mash, look like the population of the proverbial Sunday School picnic.

Most of us wouldn’t want to meet any of these folks in a dark alley – or even at the Summer Camp dropoff for their children. Monsters’ children, who are off to camp to make the friends and especially the enemies they’ll have for all of their lives. To learn how to be successful predators – or evasive prey, as the case might be.

No one in this story is completely human. But we root for them anyway.

Especially Cash, his little girl Ellie, and his on again/off again flirtation with Arkady Abascal. Arkady, who just so happens to be Ellie’s uncle, a member of the family at the top of the local monster society – and the love of Cash’ life whether he wants to admit it or not.

Usually not. Definitely not.

Which makes Arkady’s bargain with Cash, that Cash will pose as Arkady’s boyfriend for a weekend wedding at the family mansion in return for more protection for Ellie, a dangerous proposition all the way around.

It’s not just Cash’ heart that is at stake, but also what’s left of his human soul – as well as his half-human life. And Ellie’s. Definitely Ellie’s.

Because there’s someone out to get Ellie’s grandmother. And if Donna Abascal, the queen of the immortal monsters, goes down, she’ll take the entire family with her. Including Arkady. Including Ellie.

Whether she’s guilty – this time – or not.

Escape Rating B: It’s pretty clear from the outset – even without the author’s acknowledgement below – that this was originally supposed to have been TA Moore’s entry in the Bad, Dad and Dangerous anthology. But the story grew too many tentacles and other extra limbs to fit inside that particular skin, rather like the monsters and their too tight and wrong-shaped human guises.

(Consider that a monster-sized hint that if you like this story you’ll enjoy Bad, Dad and Dangerous and very much vice-versa. All the stories in that collection as well as this one are just a terrific mix of urban fantasy, paranormal romance and that extra touch of shivery monstrousness that make for a great read!)

This is a bit different from the usual worlds of urban fantasy or paranormal romance in that this is a world where, rather than magic being real – although it sort of is – it’s the monsters that we believe are myths and legends that are real.

Monsters who have their own society and their own laws – especially their own version of the Statute of Secrecy – as well as their own enforcers of those laws. At the same time, these are monsters. They are apex predators, and they hate having to bow to any authority – even one of their own making – even if it gives them things they want in return.

Like willing victims. And good wi-fi.

So the worldbuilding in this story is really neat and just a bit different. I wish we’d gotten a bit more of it, because there are a lot of politics in this story and figuring out who’s doing who and how their rank matters was occasionally just a bit confusing. (The short story that is serialized over the course of this blog tour should help with that, but I wish I’d had it before I read the book. It would have helped!)

As much as some of the politics and relationships confounded a bit, the relationships at the heart of this story are very clear and extremely easy to grasp – and to occasionally gasp at as we figure out just what’s at stake.

In the end, that’s what takes your breath away. The depth of Cash’ love for his daughter Ellie, in spite of everything he knows about both her origins and his own. The love that Cash and Arkady have never been able to get over for each other, no matter how much both of their monster sides tell them it makes them devastatingly vulnerable. Because that’s what love does.

And just how deep and how high the machinations go, to protect what needs protecting, to save who needs saving, and to deceive whoever and whatever needs deceiving to hold on to the most important things in life. Or death. Or undeath.

Whatever the case might be.

And now a word from TA Moore:

First of all, thank you so much for having me! I’m thrilled to be here with my new release, Cash in Hand by TA Moore. Any of you who read Bad, Dad, and Dangerous very nearly got to read this in there. Cash in Hand was the first story I wrote for the anthology, the only problem with it was that it was…a bit long. It was a novel. So I was told to write another novella immediately, and Cash in Hand became a thing in itself! Which I hope you guys check out and enjoy!

For the blog tour I’ve written a short story set in the Prodigium world. I hope you enjoy!

 

Chapter Four

The damask puddled on the ground in front of Grandmother as she worked, peacock green with darker blue patterns woven into the fabric. She clicked her tongue.

“The Left Hand of the Prodigium,” she mused. “In our designs.”

“He’s been in the shop once.”

She waved one leg at him, a gesture that simultaneously dismissed his protest and told him to hush.

“We could put a sign over the door,” she said. “By charter from the Prodigium.”

“He was on his own.”

She gave him a hard look out of one beady, black eye. “You sound like your father.”

Dim pulled a face. He supposed he did. It had been the one thing he’d always swore he’d never do, back when he was Van’s age, but the older you got the more you realised that pessimism was just optimists called reality.

“If we tell people Kohary shops here,” he said. “We’ll lose business. People won’t darken our door for fear they’ll run into him in his underwear.”

For a moment Grandmother stopped work and cocked her head to the side. “Do you think he wears underwear?” she asked. “I would have assumed he was….what’s the word Van uses…commando?”

That was the last thing that Dim wanted to think about. He was going to now, probably for a few restless, sticky hours tonight, but that wasn’t the point. The naked (almost) Kohary in his head — hotter with black briefs that clung to his thighs and outlined his cock? Or without? A question for later — gave him a look that said he knew what he was doing.

Fuck. He might, for all Dim knew. No one really knew what Kohary’s monster was or what it could do. Well, no one knew for long. It was kind of ‘just before you horribly die’ information.

“That’s not the point,” Dim said. “What am I meant to do? I already have a dozen commissions for the end of the month, now I’m meant to come up with an outfit that’s fit for a banquet and an insult?”

Grandmother reached out and patted him on the shoulder. “Is it beyond you?”

Shit. Dim clenched his jaw on the unnatural compulsion that pushed on the bones of his skull. “Grandmother, don’t.”

She tilted her head to look at him with amusement. The curse had left her enough of her face to see the human she’d been, her nose and cheeks and the soft curve of her jaw. It had taken her eyes, though, and replaced them with the black, seed-jewel eyes of a spider. Black mandibles distorbed her mouth, the pink flesh stretched tight and peeled back in places. The black, mitten-fuzzed paw on his shoulder squeezed.

“Can you not do it?” she asked.

Dim clenched his jaw from sheer stubbornness. It didn’t matter. His monster crawled up his throat and wrestled control of his tongue off him.

“I can do it,” he said, through his teeth. Arrogance that wasn’t his–and wouldn’t have to understand the fucking consquences when they got here–filled him. “Just watch me.”

Grandmother swung forward on her line and kissed his cheek. Her mandibles were rough, like a brillo pad that was almost worn out.

“Go and make me proud,” she said. “Grandmother is hungry.”

Gloves hid his bloody fingers. They didn’t help with the restless jitter of his knees and tight shoulders as his monster plucked at his nerves like they were puppet strings.

Stitch. Sew. Buttons. Get it done, prove you can.

He ignored the rant with the ease of long practice and dumped more sugar in his coffee.

“When you imagine going to the Abascal wedding,” he asked idly. “How does it end badly?”

Astrid adjust the fingers on the hand of glory she had in front of her and turned it so the long-dead murderer gave him the bony finger.

“What makes you assume it goes wrong?” she sniffed. “And do you think these need to be tinted a shade more grey? Remember, the banquet will be in the caves?”

Dim cocked his head to the side.

“Remember they’re going to be lit,” he said. “You don’t want them to look alive. And it wouldn’t be an anxiety dream if everything went right.”

Astrid sighed and wiped her waxy hands on her apron. She picked up a shaved off ring of wrist bone and chewed thoughtfully on it as she considered the question. 

“I’m dancing with Belladonna,” she said, her eyes dreamy.It lasted a second and then she sighed as she went on. “She compliments me on what an amazing spread I’ve done, then she apologizes for stepping on my toes. People laugh. I realise I’m naked.”

“Could be a power move.” Dim pointed out.

Astrid sucked the marrow out of the centre of the wrist bone and sighed. “Naked except for my period pants,” she finished.

They both grimaced at that thought.

“Why?” she asked.

Dim shrugged. The scratch in his brain had settled when it realised he was still at work. “Just a thought,” he said. “I see the police are worried about gang violence up in Chesapeake? Anything to do with you?”

She mugged modestly for a moment. “Just a quick test, to see if executing them myself works.”

“And?”

Astrid held her hand out and wobbled it back and forth. “Burns without being consumed and opens a few locks. Good enough for the lunch, and I’ll save the real ones for the big event. I’ve got feelers out ”

“Just be careful,” Dim said. She frowned at him and he shrugged. “The great and the not-so-good are in town, cross them and they’ll sell you out to the Prodigium in a second.”

She rolled her eyes. “Some of us are willing to take risks to get ahead,” she said. “We can’t depend on our family to back us up.”

Dim shrugged. The warning that Kohary was in town stuck in his throat. He liked Astrid, but not enough to cross Kohary. If he wanted a terrible death that left no corpse, he’d go and kick some of his less good-natured relatives awake.

Black Demetrius, his namesake, had slaughtered a dozen hunters and made half of the Prespes his lair. Until Grandmother had tracked him down and tucked him in to sleep so she could get the Prodigium’s permission to come to the New World. 

He’d probably put Dim out of his misery quick enough.

“I should get back to work,” Dim said as he got up. “Thank you for the coffee.”

She grinned at him, her broken, yellow fangs and Gila Monster thick spit on display. “Thank you for the goodie bags,” she said and clapped her hands girlishly. “It’s just the right touch for the fancies.”

For the rest of the story, check out the other stops on this tour!

~~~~~~ TOURWIDE GIVEAWAY ~~~~~~

a Rafflecopter giveaway

The Sunday Post AKA What’s on my (Mostly Virtual) Nightstand 12-13-20

Sunday Post

To tie this Sunday Post with a lovely ribbon, here’s a picture of my handsome house panther watching the leaves fall. He’s just such a beautiful boy, and so very sweet. He’s the first cat who has passed through our lives since Galen and I moved in together who considers me “his” person. (Galen is definitely the “cat whisperer” in our house. They nearly all love him best!) Lucifer’s affection is absolutely lovely if occasionally quite literally a bit crushing. He likes to sleep on my chest or in my face with his whiskers shoved up my nose. It tickles.

Current Giveaways:

$10 Gift Card or $10 Book in the Holly Jolly Giveaway Hop (ENDS TUESDAY!)
$10 Gift Card or $10 Book in the Winter is Coming Giveaway Hop

Winner Announcements:

The winner of the $20 Gift Certificate from Rhys Ford and Bound is Linda R.

Blog Recap:

A Review: When the Tiger Came Down the Mountain by Nghi Vo
B- Review: In League with Sherlock Holmes edited by Leslie S. Klinger and Laurie R. King
B Review: An Unexpected Temptation by Sophia Barnes + Giveaway
A+ Review: Fortune Favors the Dead by Stephen Spotswood
A- Review: The Jane Austen Society by Natalie Jenner
Stacking the Shelves (422)

Coming This Week:

Cash in Hand by TA Moore (blog tour review)
A Hanging at Dawn by Charles Todd (review)
Dashing Giveaway Hop
The Eighth Detective by Alex Pavesi (review)
Get a Life, Chloe Brown by Talia Hibbert (review)

Stacking the Shelves (422)

Stacking the Shelves

I actually sent something back this week. I’m tempted to add it to this week’s stack with an X across it, just to be thorough. But the reviews of Ready Player Two were just so awful that I returned the audiobook and got something different. Then I got a second something different to go with it!

For Review:
Black Water Sister (Sorcerer to the Crown #3) by Zen Cho
The Cape Doctor by E.J. Levy
For the Wolf (Wilderwood #1) by Hannah Whitten
The Girl in the Painting by Tea Cooper
Just Last Night by Mhairi McFarlane
The Light of the Midnight Stars by Rena Rossner
Questland by Carrie Vaughn
Requiem of Silence (Earthsinger Chronicles #4) by L. Penelope
Sorrowland by Rivers Solomon
When the Sparrow Falls by Neil Sharpson
Wilde Child (Wildes of Lindow Castle #6) by Eloisa James

Purchased from Amazon/Audible:
The Doors of Eden by Adrian Tchaikovsky (audio)
The Land Beyond the Sea by Sharon Kay Penman (audio)