Review: Whispers at Dusk by Heather Graham

Review: Whispers at Dusk by Heather GrahamWhispers at Dusk: A Novel (The Blackbird Trilogy, 1) by Heather Graham
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: hardcover, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: paranormal, romantic suspense, thriller
Series: Blackbird Trilogy #1
Pages: 320
Published by Mira on June 27, 2023
Purchasing Info: Author's WebsitePublisher's WebsiteAmazonBarnes & NobleKoboBookshop.org
Goodreads

When darkness falls, there’s nowhere to hide.
Four bodies have been discovered along Europe’s riverbanks, placed with care—and completely drained of blood. Pinpricks on their throats indicate a slender murder weapon, but DNA found in the wounds suggests something far more sinister. Tasked with investigating, the FBI recruits Agents Della Hamilton and Mason Carter to Blackbird, an international offshoot of the Krewe of Hunters. If you want to catch a vampire killer, you need agents who can speak with the dead.
The pair travel to Norway, where the shadowy forests of Lillehammer reveal a gruesome scene. The killer is thirsty for more victims, and the bloodless trail soon leads Della and Mason to a group that believes drinking blood is the key to immortality. To catch the culprit of such an intimate crime, the agents will have to get close. Mason’s already lost one partner; he’s not ready to risk Della as bait. But sometimes justice requires a sacrifice…

My Review:

Bram Stoker used every myth and legend of blood-drinking ghouls – and there were plenty of them – and added just a pinch of history (and a tiny pinch at that) to create his legendary blood-sucking monster, Count Dracula.

The vampire killer that the latest members of the Krewe of Hunters are chasing, on the other hand, just cribbed off of Hollywood to create his own version of that legendary villain. Which does not make him any less frightening or any less of a monster.

Perhaps even a bit more so, as he seems to have all the mesmerizing charm of those movie villains, as well as an uncanny ability to choose “apprentices” who can be persuaded to carry on his work with just the right promises of infamy and immortality couched in cult-like justification.

But this serial killer is absolutely not a “real” vampire – even if he is a blood-sucking fiend. He’s still only human – and crazy like a fox.

The Krewe of Hunters is a very special unit of the FBI, as established in the first book in the long-running series, Phantom Evil. As part of the FBI, the Krewe operates in the United States, based out of New Orleans. But this wannabe vampire killer is operating in Europe. Mostly. So far. But not for long.

With murders attributed to this madman scattered from London to Paris to Lillehammer in Norway – when this story begins – Interpol and the various local police agencies are in the hunt up to their necks – so to speak – when the FBI assigns two new members of the Krewe to the international team hunting the killer.

Or killers.

Although the Krewe often deals with supernatural crimes, there isn’t anything woo-woo about the vampire killer – no matter his method of draining the blood of his victims. But that doesn’t mean that the special abilities that the Krewe’s members have won’t come to excellent use in this hunt.

Agents Della Hamilton and Mason Carter, both new to the Krewe, are able to see – and speak to – ghosts. A talent that is going to help them catch this killer before any more of his victims join the dead.

Escape Rating B+: I picked this up because I was looking for something with more of a romantic suspense vibe, I had vague memories of having read at least a few of the early books in the Krewe of Hunters series, and this looked like a good place to jump back in.

And so it proved.

The Krewe of Hunters series is 38 books and counting, and I’ll admit I didn’t feel like starting back near the beginning. At least not right now, although I certainly liked this more than enough for the series to go into my comfort reads rotation. But I don’t remember any more of the setup than is provided in this first book in the new Blackbird subseries, so you don’t need to be familiar with the Krewe to start here.

Whispers at Dusk struck me as a combination of Jayne Ann Krentz’ contemporary entries in her Arcane Society/Harmony series, as the team has a mix of psychic or other special talents which are useful to solving the case without necessarily being integral to it. The quick flash and hot burn of the romance between Della and Mason also has a similar vibe to the romances in that series. At the same time it blends the putting the band together and police procedural aspects of Andrea Kane’s Forensic Instincts series (another series I need to get a round tuit to get back to!)

The case in this one is taut and chilling. While no one – at least on the police side – is fool enough to believe there’s a real vampire, the idea that a serial killer has chosen to strike fear by mimicking one is bad enough. That the killer is training others in his methods and leaving a cult of killers in his wake is enough to give anyone the heebie-jeebies, vampire or no.

What keeps the reader on the edge of their seat is the relentless pace of the story, as the killer leads the newly-formed team on a not-merry-at-all chase from one remote and historically significant location to another, from Lillehammer to the Orkneys to the swamps around Lake Pontchartrain, leaving clues and victims in their wake while dropping hints of their next kill and their intent to make Della their crowning achievement – either by turning her to their ‘dark side’ or leaving her drained corpse as a final monument to their twisted genius.

This one is a creeping, blood-sucking thrill ride from beginning to end. I will absolutely be back for the second installment in this suspenseful chase for next in this series of serial killers with in twist in Secrets in the Dark, coming next month!

Review: Cassandra in Reverse by Holly Smale

Review: Cassandra in Reverse by Holly SmaleCassandra in Reverse by Holly Smale
Narrator: Kristin Atherton
Format: audiobook, eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss, supplied by publisher via Libro.fm
Formats available: hardcover, large print, ebook, audiobook
Genres: Chick Lit, time travel romance, women's fiction
Pages: 368
Length: 13 hours and 15 minutes
Published by Harlequin Audio, Harlequin MIRA on June 6, 2023
Purchasing Info: Author's WebsitePublisher's WebsiteAmazonBarnes & NobleKoboBookshop.orgBetter World Books
Goodreads


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

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

My Review:

The problem with wanting to change things is that things change – including things we had no intention of changing. There’s that thing about the butterfly and its unintended wing flap to consider.

But when Cassandra Dankworth discovers, on her second repeat of the second worst day in her life, that she has the power to change her past, she quickly discovers that for every single thing she attempts to fix, there’s a journey down the road not originally taken that might be even worse than the one she originally took.

As difficult as that is for her to imagine. Because it really, truly was a terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad day. Tinkering with it isn’t going to make things any better. Tinkering with the worst day of her life, the day her parents were both killed in a car accident ten years ago, seems to be out of her reach.

The one thing she can do, the event that the universe seems to be pointing her towards with increasingly sharp, poking fingers, is the day that she met her boyfriend, Will. The boyfriend who began her terrible, horrible, etc. day by breaking up with her.

She can’t save her parents, but she can save her relationship. If she can use her seemingly endless ability to tweak time to fix things. And herself. All she has to do is learn the lessons that the universe seems determined to teach her.

Even if they are not the lessons she wants them to be.

Escape Rating C: I ended up with a whole lot of mixed feelings about Cassandra in Reverse. I flipped back and forth between the audiobook and the text, trying to find a way to make myself comfortable in the story.

Which was probably a mistake on multiple levels, because the way the story begins makes it abundantly clear that Cassandra Dankworth is just not a comfortable person to be with. In audio the listener is bombarded with Cassandra’s rapidly firing mental processes – and it’s impossible not to understand why the people around her find her so “difficult”.

Howsomever, because we’re in her neurodivergent head and her first-person perspective, we are also able to empathize with Cassandra in a way that the people around her most definitely do not.

So we get both sides with both barrels – which does not make either of them a comfortable read.

Which means that it is not a surprise that when Cassandra discovers her limited power to time travel, the thing she truly wants to change – and by that I mean “fix” – is herself. Considering all of the completely negative and utterly damning messages that she has received over her life, and how much she has internalized those messages, she’s convinced that everything that happens to her is her fault because she’s broken. She ends up rewriting and resetting her encounters with pretty much everyone in her life, over and over, in order to learn proper behavior so she can fix herself and be happy like everyone around her.

The hard lesson in this story is that she’s not going to ever be happy like everyone around her because she isn’t like everyone around her. The lesson she needs to absorb is about accepting herself, finding other people who accept her as she is and not as society expects her to be, and make a life that works for her.

It’s a very hard lesson, and one that most of us struggle with for all of our lives. And at the end of Cassandra in Reverse I’m not even sure that Cassandra has figured out that that’s the lesson she was supposed to learn. Although it is possible to interpret the story that she did, and that her journey involves resetting everyone else’s as she passes by.

So I’m torn by this one. It didn’t work well for me, and found the audio to be a particularly rough ride because the drumbeat of how much Cassandra does not fit into the world around her is so very loud and harsh. I felt for her too much to want to experience the way the world treated her from so intimate a perspective.

Your reading mileage may vary.

Review: A Rogue at Stonecliffe by Candace Camp

Review: A Rogue at Stonecliffe by Candace CampA Rogue at Stonecliffe (Stonecliffe, #2) by Candace Camp
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: historical fiction, historical romance
Series: Stonecliffe #2
Pages: 384
Published by Canary Street Press on June 27, 2023
Purchasing Info: Author's WebsitePublisher's WebsiteAmazonBarnes & NobleKoboBookshop.org
Goodreads

New York Times bestselling author Candace Camp invites you back to Stonecliffe, where an unwelcome reunion between a lady and a rogue calls up old feelings…and new dangers.
When the love of her life left without any explanation, Annabeth Winfield moved on despairingly, knowing she’d never have a love as thrilling as her first ever again. Sloane Rutherford was roguish and daring, but as Annabeth grew up, she realized that their reckless romance was just a passing adventure, never meant for stability. Twelve years later, Annabeth is engaged to someone new, ready to start her life with a dependable man.
That’s when Sloane returns. And he brings with him a serious warning: Annabeth is in trouble.
After spending the past dozen years working as a spy, Sloane thought he’d left espionage behind him. But now a dangerous blackmailer is after Annabeth. Sloane offers to hide his former lover at Stonecliffe, the Rutherford estate, but stubborn Annabeth demands to be part of the investigation. As the two embark on a dangerous and exciting journey, memories of their past romance resurface. Sloane and Annabeth aren’t the wide-eyed children they used to be, but knowing they’re wrong for each other makes a nostalgic affair seem very right…
A Stonecliffe Novel
Book 1: An Affair at StonecliffeBook 2: A Rogue at Stonecliffe

My Review:

Fictionally speaking, the Napoleonic Wars are a gift that just keeps on giving. And taking, as happens in this second book in the Stonecliffe series, after last year’s An Affair at Stonecliffe. (Which I have not read – yet – but am now looking forward to!)

The Napoleonic Wars are long over when that rogue of the title returns home to Stonecliffe, but that is not when this story begins. It began twelve years earlier, in 1810, when the war within the war known as the Peninsular War was still going hot, and the cold and chill war of spies and smugglers was complicating progress on both sides of the Channel.

Sloane Rutherford and Annabeth Winfield were young, in love, and expecting to marry as soon as Anna attained her majority at 21. As the children of somewhat spendthrift second sons of the aristocracy, they’ve been raised on the fringes of the ton without ever being truly part of it. They can marry for love – and that’s exactly what they intend to do.

At least until the seemingly endless war interferes with their hopes and dreams, in the person of Britain’s spymaster, Asquith. Asquith needs someone to pose as a disaffected spy and smuggler, and has decided that Sloane is the perfect man for a job that the younger man has no desire to do.

But Asquith has leverage. Not against Sloane himself, but against Anna’s beloved father, who has turned traitorous spy because someone in France has leverage on him. Sloane is faced with an impossible choice, whether to give up Anna, let everything think he has turned his back on his own country, and steal back the incriminating documents that keep her father in thrall, or let Asquith expose her father’s treachery and let the ensuing scandal fall on Anna and her family.

Sloane is damned if he does – literally – and equally damned if he doesn’t. So he does, because his choice is always going to be action over inaction. He leaves Anna in the painful lurch, and pretends to be everything that the ton ends up believing, that he’s a rogue, a smuggler, and a spy.

Even after the wars are over, and Sloane is back in England running the shipping empire that was his well-earned pay for a deadly and dangerous game, he and Anna stay far, far away from each other.

Until that incriminating paper that was once held over her father’s head puts Anna’s life in danger. So Sloane does what he always does – he acts. He’s the only one who takes the danger seriously enough to protect Anna at any and all costs – especially to his own heart.

Escape Rating B: The story in A Rogue at Stonecliffe reads like a combination of the chickens coming home to roost and an old truism about it not being the original crime that gets someone in trouble nearly half so much as it’s the coverup that does them in.

Mixed with a second chance at love story whose tension isn’t “will they, won’t they” because they already did, or even “should they or shouldn’t they”, because it’s obvious early on that they should, but much more about whether they can manage to get past all the damage that they’ve already done to each other.

Or more to the point, all the damage that Sloane has already done to Anna. Because he seriously effed up by taking solely unto himself a whole heaping helping of decisions that should rightfully have been shared. And that’s something they’re going to have to work on together in order to have any kind of future.

And it’s not easy to do that when bullets are flying and people are trying to kill one or both of them and there’s a dangerous secret at the bottom of the dirty barrel that neither of them knows the full depths of until it’s nearly too late.

There’s more than a bit of romantic suspense in this, as Sloane and Anna are searching for a secret that once damned her father and has the capacity to take the rest of the family down with him now that he’s dead. All the while, Sloane is trying to keep both of them a few steps ahead of a traitor who has been hiding in plain sight for over a decade.

But what makes this one so much fun is Anna and her relationship with Sloane. Not the hazy dream they had in the past, but the real, and increasingly honest and equal one they have in the present. Sloane wants to keep her safe. Anna has the right to know all the truths and make her own decisions. Navigating that minefield is even more of a threat to any possibility of their future happiness than any sharpshooters taking potshots from the woods.

The Stonecliffe series has proved to be a fascinating mix of historical romance and romantic suspense, at least based on this second book in the series. So I’ll be reaching back for that first book, An Affair at Stonecliffe, and looking forward to the third, A Scandal at Stonecliffe, coming next year.

Guest Review: Chef’s Choice by TJ Alexander

Guest Review: Chef’s Choice by TJ AlexanderChef's Choice (Chef's Kiss, #2) by T.J. Alexander
Format: ebook
Source: purchased from Amazon
Formats available: paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: contemporary romance, queer romance, romantic suspense
Series: Chef's Kiss #2
Pages: 336
Published by Emily Bestler Books on May 30, 2023
Purchasing Info: Author's WebsitePublisher's WebsiteAmazonBarnes & NobleKoboBookshop.orgBetter World Books
Goodreads

A fake dating arrangement turns to real love in this deliciously delightful queer rom-com from the author of the sweetly satisfying Chef’s Kiss.
When Luna O’Shea is unceremoniously fired from her frustrating office job, she tries to count her blessings: she’s a proud trans woman who has plenty of friends, a wonderful roommate, and a good life in New York City. But blessings don’t pay the bills.
Enter Jean-Pierre, a laissez-faire trans man and the heir to a huge culinary empire—which he’ll only inherit if he can jump through all the hoops his celebrity chef grandfather has placed in his path. First hoop: he needs a girlfriend, a role that Luna is happy to play…for the right price. She’s got rent to pay, after all! Second hoop: they both need to learn how to cook a series of elaborate, world-renowned family recipes to prove that Jean-Pierre is a worthy heir. Admittedly, Luna doesn’t even know how to crack an egg, but she’s not going to let that—or any pesky feelings for Jean-Pierre—stop her.
Another swoon-worthy and heartwarming queer love story from a charming new voice in romance.

(More chefs! More queer folk!  Now I just need the sci-fi. Marlene’s recommendation in a comment on my last post has been added to my reading list, so look for a review on that once conference season is over for me.)

Guest Review by Amy: The opening chapter of this book hit me like a shovel to the face; Luna O’Shea gets fired, abruptly, for no other apparent reason than for being transgender. This is something that is unfortunately common among gender non-conforming people in the United States, and  that sort of discrimination is not even prohibited  by law in much of the country. Having had a number of friends this has happened to, I found the chapter very triggering and unpleasant, and I had to put the book down and sleep on it, complete with nightmares of me being treated that way.  I was tempted to tell Marlene this was a “DNF,” a book that I simply could not finish. But I knew deep in my soul somewhere that author TJ Alexander would not do us dirty like that, and there was something good right behind that painful setup. Turns out, I was right, and I’m glad I kept reading. Once you’re past the rocks and shoals of that first chapter, there’s a lovely, fun story to be had here.

Escape Rating: A+. “Wealthy heir-apparent must appear to be in a relationship to inherit, so he gets a fake girlfriend” is a tried-and-true plot; the romance industry has made use of it for decades, and it’s a great venue for some really comedic scenes. TJ Alexander gives us a slight twist on it here; the wealthy young Frenchman Jean-Pierre isn’t simply an idling playboy, he’s also a transgender man, so there’s some family-acceptance issues in his life, too. His famous chef grandfather has set him a challenge:  recreate a pretentious, difficult nine-course meal that he is famous for, and he’s the heir. Fail, and he’s out of the will.  He needs a fast cover story for why he’s in New York, instead of talking to his (also famous chef) grandmother from the other side of the family, and transwoman Luna takes the bait – money, of course – and finds herself embroiled in family drama.  They’re going to take Papi’s challenge…but neither of them have a clue how to cook.

Our story begins a few months after the end of the companion story, Chef’s Kiss, and Simone and Ray figure in heavily, along with some of the other supporting cast from the earlier novel. I was delighted to see this, as I had really enjoyed the development of their relationship, and seeing what it looked like some months later as an established relationship was nice for me. It gave me a sort of Nora Roberts-esque wish that there was a third story to tell here somewhere, that could be plugged in around these two.

Meanwhile, back to the future in Chef’s Choice…as simply must happen, the not-couple is forced to act like a couple by circumstance way too early, when Luna’s mom shows up, drawn to town by the paparazzi pictures of her daughter with the young man, and a visit to Luna’s weekly friends-gathering at the local pub. Smooth, urbane Jean-Pierre handles all this with a healthy dose of Gallic stubbornness, but when Luna points out that their arrangement is little different from sex work, he loses his cool for a bit. There’s some back and forth – these two complicated people are trying really hard to make it look like they’re the perfect couple, and the challenges pile up fast.

The pair spend a weekend at his grandmother’s lavish condo being taught to cook by Simone and Ray, and we get some of the first hints that something more might be afoot for Luna and her “JP.”  Ray is non-binary, and when introduced, Jean-Pierre takes some time to make sure he has their pronouns right in both French and English. Luna finds that sort of caring unspeakably hot – she wants to “shove JP against the labeled shelves and grind like a freaking pepper mill.” That particular statement had me laughing loudly. The book is liberally garnished with fantastic one-liners and in-jokes like that, and it helps make the well-trodden plot a light, fun read, even through all the trials and tribulations.

I shan’t ruin the ending for you. In my review of Chef’s Kiss, I gigged the book slightly for its abrupt ending. I have no such complaint here; Jean-Pierre and Luna go to France for the cook-off, and the various threads of the story come together into a smooth, satisfying end. Along the way, Alexander grasps the question of “what makes a man, a man?” in their development of Jean-Pierre’s character, and touches on how gender non-conforming folks may struggle with the choice of how to interact with the world around them. Both questions are handled in a most gentle way, giving the reader space to consider these matters for themselves without struggle or pain.

Normally, in a book review, we don’t spend much time on the author’s acknowledgements, but this bit at the very end stuck out to me:

So if you’re reading this, you beautiful, powerful, tired trans person, please know that this was my love letter to you. I hope it brought you a little joy; you deserve every bit you can get.

Both of the tales in this series absolutely did. TJ, if you ever read this: thank you, from the bottom of my non-binary transgender heart.

TJ Alexander writes with mandoline-sharp wit, a clever eye for details, and a deep understanding of queer life and culture. This work, like its predecessor, gets my strongest possible recommendation.

Review: War Cry by Brian McClellan

Review: War Cry by Brian McClellanWar Cry by Brian McClellan
Format: ebook
Source: purchased from Amazon
Formats available: paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: fantasy, military fantasy, military science fiction, science fiction
Pages: 96
Published by Tordotcom on August 28, 2018
Purchasing Info: Author's WebsitePublisher's WebsiteAmazonBarnes & NobleKoboBookshop.orgBetter World Books
Goodreads

Brian McClellan, author of the acclaimed Powder Mage series, introduces a new universe, new armies, and new monsters in War Cry
Teado is a Changer, a shape-shifting military asset trained to win wars. His platoon has been stationed in the Bavares high plains for years, stranded. As they ration supplies and scan the airwaves for news, any news, their numbers dwindle. He's not sure how much time they have left.
Desperate and starving, armed with aging, faulting equipment, the team jumps at the chance for a risky resupply mission, even if it means not all of them might come. What they discover could change the course of the war.

My Review:

I picked this up because I adored the author’s In the Shadow of Lightning and was looking for something else by him but didn’t quite have the spoons to get started on his Powder Mage series. At least not yet. Nor does the sequel to In the Shadow of Lightning seem to be on the horizon. Although I just learned there’s a prequel (Montego) and I just picked it up. And, honestly, I was looking for something short.

Leading me to War Cry.

William T. Sherman is the American Civil War general famous for the rather pithy comment that “War is Hell”. War Cry is a story deep into just that kind of hell – and it’s a gut punch of a story.

The world of War Cry exists in that nether region between science fiction and fantasy, as well as the hellish netherworld of war. Teado and his clandestine unit have a battered airplane, an equally battered pilot, an illusion mage and a shapechanger. Teado is the shapechanger.

Their tiny little unit is nearly out of everything, food, supplies, ammunition, and most especially, hope. They started out being near the front but the front has swept by them and now they are behind enemy lines and waging a guerrilla war from the shadows.

They’re listening to enemy propaganda while they are on watch, each wondering which of the others is going to be the first to break and run for the enemy-offered amnesty. Or whether they will be the first one to give up and just go.

But the powers that be haven’t forgotten them – nor have they quite let go of a hope of peace.

Which is where Teado, his unit, and this story come in. They have a crazy chance of striking a blow against the enemy’s new forward base and stealing an entire cargo plane full of desperately needed supplies.

If they are successful, there might be a chance at the peace talks to actually get a little. If they fail, at least their own war will be over.

Unless they are all just part of something much, much bigger and way, way, way above all their pay grades.

Escape Rating B: What made this work is that it isn’t about building up one side as the “good guys” and the other as the “bad guys”. We don’t really get much of a sense of what the two sides are fighting over beyond the obvious motivations of resources and territory.

It’s never all that clear that the two sides are truly all that different, or that one is all that much better or worse than the other.

This turns out to be a story that embodies, not just Sherman’s “War is Hell” quote, but more especially a less often seen quote from G.K. Chesterton that goes, “The true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is behind him.” Or in the case of Teado and his company, because he loves what is beside him.

Teado is fighting, not for himself, but for his friends and comrades. And so are they. Which is what makes this story cut deep, as the powers that be only see the big picture and which pawns they need to move to change that picture.

Where Teado sees, and we experience through him, the real cost of those pawns being moved.

The Sunday Post AKA What’s on my (Mostly Virtual) Nightstand 6-25-23

Here I am, attempting to predict the future. We’re actually away at the American Library Association Annual Conference in Chicago, where the books are hot and the weather is supposed to be gorgeous. I’m working more than a bit ahead on this, so it could all fall apart by the time this week comes to pass – but I hope not.

Speaking of hopes, this weekend’s cat picture is Lucifer giving me his best grumpy face, which is probably exactly what he is doing and will most definitely be doing when we get back!

 

Current Giveaways:

$10 Gift Card or $10 Book in the Hello Summer Giveaway Hop
$10 Gift Card or $10 Book in the Come Out & Play Giveaway Hop
$10 Gift Card or $10 Book in the Dad-O-Mite Giveaway Hop
$10 Gift Card or $10 Book in the Summer 2023 Seasons of Books Giveaway Hop

Blog Recap:

Juneteenth 2023: Cooperatives (Guest Post by Galen)
A- Review: Hex by Anna Hackett
Summer 2023 Seasons of Books Giveaway Hop
B Review: Hiss Me Deadly by Miranda James
A- Review: Beach Read by Emily Henry
Stacking the Shelves (554)

Coming This Week:

War Cry by Brian McClellan (review)
Chef’s Choice by TJ Alexander (Guest Review by Amy)
A Rogue at Stonecliffe by Candace Camp (blog tour review)
Cassandra in Reverse by Holly Smale (audiobook review)
Whispers at Dusk by Heather Graham (blog tour review)

Stacking the Shelves (554)

I have a pretty short stack this week because I’m putting this together fairly far ahead, because reasons, and well, this is what I’ve got so this is what you get!

For Review:
Calamity (Uncharted Hearts #1) by Constance Fay
Cursed at Dawn (Blackbird #3) by Heather Graham
Dearborn by Ghassan Zeineddine
Innards by Magogodi Oamphe Makhene
A Market of Dreams and Destiny by Trip Galey

Borrowed from the Library:
Sacred Evil (Krewe of Hunters #3) by Heather Graham


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:

Review: Beach Read by Emily Henry

Review: Beach Read by Emily HenryBeach Read by Emily Henry
Format: ebook
Source: purchased from Amazon
Formats available: hardcover, paperback, large print, ebook, audiobook
Genres: Chick Lit, contemporary romance, relationship fiction, women's fiction
Pages: 358
Published by Berkley on May 19, 2020
Purchasing Info: Author's WebsitePublisher's WebsiteAmazonBarnes & NobleKoboBookshop.orgBetter World Books
Goodreads

A romance writer who no longer believes in love and a literary writer stuck in a rut engage in a summer-long challenge that may just upend everything they believe about happily ever afters.
Augustus Everett is an acclaimed author of literary fiction. January Andrews writes bestselling romance. When she pens a happily ever after, he kills off his entire cast.
They’re polar opposites.
In fact, the only thing they have in common is that for the next three months, they're living in neighboring beach houses, broke, and bogged down with writer's block.
Until, one hazy evening, one thing leads to another and they strike a deal designed to force them out of their creative ruts: Augustus will spend the summer writing something happy, and January will pen the next Great American Novel. She’ll take him on field trips worthy of any rom-com montage, and he’ll take her to interview surviving members of a backwoods death cult (obviously). Everyone will finish a book and no one will fall in love. Really.

My Review:

Beach Read has been in the virtually towering TBR pile ever since I read – and fell in love with – Book Lovers early this year. I’ve been “playing along” with the Kindle Achievements every quarter, so when the list of possible titles to fulfill that last badge included Beach Read, it seemed like the universe was telling me that now was the time. So here we are.

Both January Andrews and Augustus Everett are best selling authors – but most definitely NOT in the same genre. January writes women’s fiction (not all that different from the author herself), while Augustus Everett is famous for his dark and gritty literary fiction.

Their characters and worlds do not even begin to intersect – but they do. They are both graduates of the same University of Michigan Creative Writing Program. In fact, they attended together and graduated at the same time, spending four years competing for every single award and critiquing pretty much every single one of each other’s works.

Saying they are familiar with each other is hardly a stretch – even if they have nothing in common. Or believe they have nothing in common. At least not until they find themselves next door neighbors in a northern Michigan beach community, wanting nothing to do with each other.

But needing each other all the same.

They’ve each fallen into some really deep ruts, and they are separately having a damn hard time crawling out of those ruts. January has stopped believing in happy ever afters, after the one she believed her parents had found turned out to be based on a lie. A year after her dad’s death, she has a book due, an empty bank account, and a severe case of writer’s block.

Leading her to her dad’s old home town and the house he shared with his childhood sweetheart at a point considerably after either of their childhoods.

Gus has never believed in happy ever afters. Or even happy for nows. He’s always looked on the dark side and is in the throes of his third book, this time about death cults and their few survivors. But he’s going through his own case of writer’s block, for reasons that he isn’t willing to share with January. Because sharing isn’t something that Gus does easily. Or at all.

Still, they’re both writers and they’re both stuck and they have a whole lot of common ground to build on – even if that ground is more than a bit shaky on both sides. So they challenge each other as a way of breaking their writer’s block.

And it turns into the making of a happy ending for everyone – including sorta/kinda – the protagonists of not one but two surprising new books.

Escape Rating A-: I enjoyed Beach Read, but not quite as much as Book Lovers, because it’s a bit too much like Book Lovers. Which isn’t fair to Beach Read, as it was published first even though I read it second. Still, if you like one you’ll like the other – although it probably isn’t a good idea to read them too close together.

Like Nora and Charlie in Book Lovers, January and Gus are not just both in the book business, but in the same end of the book business as each other. (Nora and Charlie were both editors, January and Gus are both authors). Which means that both books, in addition to being just the kind of stories that January writes, are steeped in the book business – merely different aspects of that business.

And both stories begin when the protagonists meet when both parties are in the midst of a “terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.” What makes both stories fun to read is the way that they get themselves and each other past the horribleness.

We’re in January’s head in this story, so we know what she’s been through, what she’s thinking, and what she’s feeling. Because she and Gus knew each other fairly well – and very nearly better than that – once upon a time, we are also aware of all of her pre-conceived notions of who Gus is and what he thinks of her and in both of their situations.

Which gives Beach Read a very strong sense of “assume makes an ass out of ‘u’ and ‘me’” because January’s assumptions about Gus were and are too frequently wrong, wrong, wrong. But this steers clear of misunderstandammit territory because Gus has a damn hard time communicating his thoughts and feelings in any way other than expiating the worst of them through his writing.

While it was a given from the outset that January and Gus were going to reach at least the kind of happy for now that both the character January AND the author usually write, what made this book interesting and different was the books that January and Gus each produced on their way to it, and how those books managed to be both a departure from their usual styles while still expressing the core parts of their personalities and their reasons for becoming writers in the first place.

So a good reading time was definitely had in Beach Read. Because it was most definitely a good reading time, and because one of the other possible titles for that last achievement was the author’s People We Meet on Vacation, I bought that too. I’m pretty sure I’ll be picking that up and meeting those people the next time I’m looking for a feel-good read!

Review: Hiss Me Deadly by Miranda James

Review: Hiss Me Deadly by Miranda JamesHiss Me Deadly (Cat in the Stacks Mystery) by Miranda James
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, ebook, audiobook
Genres: cozy mystery, mystery
Series: Cat in the Stacks #15
Pages: 320
Published by Berkley on June 27, 2023
Purchasing Info: Author's WebsitePublisher's WebsiteAmazonBarnes & NobleKoboBookshop.orgBetter World Books
Goodreads

Charlie and Diesel must catch a killer before he strikes another deadly note in this latest installment of the New York Times bestselling Cat in the Stacks Mysteries.
Charlie Harris remembers Wilfred “Wil” Threadgill as one of the outsiders during high school in Athena. Although Wil was a couple of years ahead of him and his friend Melba Gilley, Melba had a big crush on Wil, who dropped out after his junior year. An aspiring musician, Wil hit the road for California and never looked back. Wil eventually became a star, fronting a band and writing award-winning songs.
Coming back to Athena to work for two weeks with students in the college music department, Wil is now the big man on campus. Not everyone is happy to have him back, however. His entourage have been the target of several acts of petty harassment. At first they are easy for Wil to shrug off, but the incidents escalate and become more troubling. When one of the band members is killed Charlie worries that Melba, now deeply involved with the man at the center of the attacks, could be in deadly danger. It is up to Charlie and Diesel to find out who hates Wil Threadgill enough to silence his song . . . forever!

My Review:

I’m on my way to the American Library Association Annual Conference this week, which makes this the perfect time for another Cat in the Stacks cozy mystery. Why? Because both amateur detective Charlie Harris and his author, Miranda (Dean) James, are both librarians! The college in Charlie’s hometown, Athena, Mississippi, where Charlie works part-time as an archivist and rare books cataloger, probably doesn’t ever send him to the Annual Conference, but I’d say it’s a sure bet that when Charlie worked at the much larger Houston Public Library that they occasionally did – particularly on those occasions when the conference touched down in the Lone Star State – as it sometimes still does.

50something Charlie has an unfortunate – or fortunate for the readers of this series – tendency to find himself involved in murder. Not perpetrating it – as his large and in charge Maine Coon cat Diesel would never permit his human to ever fall to the dark side. Rather, Charlie all too frequently finds himself in a position to solve murders, or at least to make the attempt.

A fact which ALWAYS makes Detective Kanesha Berry wish he’d mind his own business, as he’s all too frequently working in parallel to her and very much without her sanction. His family and friends also wish he’d do a better job of letting sleeping dogs lie, as his willingness to stick his nose in where it doesn’t belong – at least when it comes to murder in his hometown – all too often put Charlie (and even Diesel) directly into the line of fire.

And so it proves in this case of one of Athena’s prodigal sons returning home to both a hero’s welcome and a twisted version of Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None, with Charlie’s sister-from-another-mister, Melba Gilley, caught in the crossfire along with Charlie, Diesel, and the man she’s been pining over for entirely too long.

Escape Rating B: I’ve missed Diesel, although now I have Tuna and he’s about half a Diesel in size, intelligence and purr volume. Diesel is always the best part of the Cat in the Stacks mystery series, even though he is not the detective like Joe Grey and is merely (although merely can’t truly encompass a cat Diesel’s size) a big, sweet cat.

Howsomever, Diesel frequently serves as an emotional support cat during Charlie’s adventures – and not just for Charlie. A LOT of the characters in this entry in the series need more than a bit of feline TLC to get them through the trauma.

The starting point is a deadly take on “small town child makes good” as Wilfred “Wil” Threadgill is coming back home to Athena after 40 years of musical success, both as the leader of his own band and an Oscar-worthy movie soundtrack composer.

But Wil didn’t simply leave Athena and never look – or come – back over the years. He ran away – from town, from home, from his senior year in high school, and especially from the musical group that had formed around him and his friends. A musical group that was starting to see a fair amount of local success, and had a promising future – until Wil, the driving force behind that success bailed on Athena and left them high and dry and in the lurch.

It’s clear from the outset that someone in town isn’t exactly happy to see Wil, but their method of attack is to start attacking people around the man, and not the man himself. As the injuries mount and the bodies continue falling, Melba tries to protect her old flame, Charlie stays on the case to look out for Melba, while Detective Berry searches for a killer who seems to be holding an old grudge while hiding in plain sight.

I had a lot of fun reading this one – as usual. Charlie Harris is authentically one of us librarians, and Diesel is just as authentically a very big cat. Charlie’s life reads like a comfortable slipper that produces a sigh of relief whenever I put it on, because so much of his work and career is so familiar and rings true. Very much on the other hand, he has a tendency to find himself in interesting trouble, much like Jessica Fletcher in Murder, She Wrote.

This particular entry in the series relies on a bit of prior knowledge of Charlie’s life to date and the family of both birth and choice that he shares it with, as the ‘B’ plot of the story involves both Charlie’s attempts to get his fiancée to set a date for their wedding as well as a bit of trouble in the paradise of his son’s marriage. It’s not necessary to have read the entire series to get stuck into this entry, but one or two would be helpful – and the whole thing is a lovely, cozy read.

The case itself, while it isn’t a fair play mystery as there aren’t nearly enough clues to figure it out until very late in the game, is still more than interesting enough to follow between the story of the local boy makes good returning, the very old, very deep and very justified grudge, and the second set of crimes that just makes solving the puzzle that much more complicated.

So if you like small town cozies with engaging amateur detectives assisted by diverse ‘Scooby gangs’ accompanied by really adorable and personable animals, the Cat in the Stacks series might be your reading catnip. It certainly is mine!

Summer 2023 Seasons of Books Giveaway Hop

Welcome to the Summer Seasons of Books 2023 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. (One of the hosts has changed, too!) Today is the first official day of Summer no matter how hot it might already be where you are. I’m in Atlanta and I’m not sure whether Hades is this hot or not. Comparisons could certainly be drawn- not that I ever want definitive data on the question!

But the question this season is the same question it’s always been for one of these particular hops. What book or books are you most looking forward to this season?

I’m never looking forward to just one thing when it comes to books. Here are a few that are at the top of my list for this summer of 2023:

Blind Fear by Brandon Webb and John David Mann
Ebony Gate by Julia Vee and Ken Bebelle
The Ghosts of Trappist by K.B. Wagers
Hiss Me Deadly by Miranda James
Jade Shards by Fonda Lee

What about you? What books are you most looking forward to this summer? Answer in the rafflecopter for you 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!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

For more bookish prizes, be sure to visit the other stops on this hop!