Category: B+ Reviews

#BookReview: The Hungry Gods by Adrian Tchaikovsky

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B+ Reviews> book reviews
#BookReview: The Hungry Gods by Adrian TchaikovskyThe Hungry Gods by Adrian Tchaikovsky
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, ebook, audiobook
Genres: dystopian, post apocalyptic, science fiction
Series: Terrible Worlds
Pages: 176
Published by Solaris on August 12, 2025
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

The Gods have returned to the world.
Amri was a Rabbit, one of a tribe of survivors scratching out an existence in the blasted landscape of a shattered, poisoned world. The Seagull fight, the Pigeon trade and the Cockroach scavenge, but the Rabbit had one rule: If you want to see tomorrow, you run.
But they didn’t run fast enough when a weapon fell from the sky and consumed their home, and now Amri is alone, in the company of a fallen god named Guy Vesten. A god who promises revenge against the three gods who turned against him, and who killed her tribe.
But gods don’t kill easily. Guy will need followers, like any god, and warriors to aid him in his quest. And if Amri is to find a place in the world that is to come, she may as well be standing at his right hand, as his priestess…

My Review:

They are the leftovers. They may look like dregs, but what they are are survivors. They’re what’s left of humanity generations after the climate apocalypse turned runaway and poisonous, after Earth’s self-described best and brightest fucked off to create utopia somewhere else because their home planet was simply too far gone.

Which means that Amri has spent her life doing what the gods themselves did. She runs. And she survives because she runs. Not that she knows that – at least not yet.

But that utopia wasn’t all it was cracked up to be – or wasn’t as self-sustaining as they believed it would be. Or their visions weren’t quite enough after all.

Perhaps all of the above. Not that Amri knows that either.

What Amri does know is that the self-proclaimed gods have returned to Earth in a rain of fire – or at least that’s the story that one of those gods, Guy Vestren, claims. Then again, Guy claims to be the one good god, the only one of the gods who intends to raise what’s left of humanity alongside him.

So that he has cannon fodder to throw at his fellow gods – the ones who are not good. Or at least not good for humanity – according to Guy. Bruce Mayall wants to cover the world in plants, Matthias Fabrey wants to cover the world in ants, and Padreig Gramm just wants to watch automatons play at being human because humans are much too messy. (He’s not wrong about that last bit as humans are what got the world into this mess in the first, long ago, place)

But Amri is a survivor, and so are what remains of the rest of humanity. They’ve been tempered, generation after generation, on a forge that Guy and his fellow gods can’t even begin to imagine. They’re all too focused on each other to see what’s happening at their feet.

Amri and her people don’t need gods. What they need is a chance. And the gods have provided the biggest one of those they’ll ever have on this blasted heath of a world. All they have to do is reach out and take it.

And run with it.

Escape Rating B+: I didn’t quite know what I was getting myself into when I picked this one up. I’ll fully confess that I grabbed it because it was short, and because the author was top of mind because his work is all over this year’s Hugo Ballot. (As much as I want to dive back into the Tyrant Philosophers, that series is nearly all doorstops)

I got two things that I was not expecting at all. I wasn’t expecting this novella to be part of a loosely connected series, but not only is it part of the author’s Terrible Worlds series, I’ve read bits of the series (Ogres, One Day All This Will Be Yours, And Put Away Childish Things) without realizing they were even loosely part of the same thing.

And I really wasn’t expecting how much the story in The Hungry Gods resembles the plot of the videogame Horizon Forbidden West. But it seriously does, which meant that I did know where the story was going long before it got there.

Even though it did start in a burned out world that was a lot more like Premee Mohamed’s Annual Migration of Clouds series. Meaning a blasted Earth suffering from a runaway climate apocalypse while humanity clings to survival wherever and however they can even though their environment is killing them.

What made The Hungry Gods work, what made all of the above listed stories work and maintained the reader’s interest, is, of course, the characters. In the case of The Hungry Gods, it’s not the gods that keep the reader turning pages, it’s Amri and her fellow survivors.

The people that Guy believes are his worshippers, but are, in fact, following Amri – even if they don’t know it yet. Or possibly even if they do.

Because Amri is the one who matters. Not because she’s necessarily anything all that special, and she’s certainly never thought of herself as such. But because her whole life has been about squeezing another day out of nothing at all. She sees Guy for the human he is underneath the powerful armor and high-tech toys, and she’s prepared for him to cheat her and all her people at the first opportunity.

Because that’s what humans do. And she’s had way more practice at being merely and only human than the ‘good god’ Guy Vestren will EVER have.

The ending turned out to be both chilling and righteous, and a good reading time was absolutely had by all. Except the gods.

Now that I know this is sorta/kinda a series, I’m going to have to get the ones I haven’t read (Ironclads, Firewalkers, Walking to Aldebaran and Saturation Point) for the next occasions when I need a short, punchy, reading pick-me-up!

#AudioBookReview: Five Views of the Planet Tartarus by Rachael K Jones

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | audio reviews> audiobooks> B+ Reviews> book reviews> Short Story Review
#AudioBookReview: Five Views of the Planet Tartarus by Rachael K Jones“Five Views of the Planet Tartarus” by Rachael K Jones in Lightspeed Magazine Issue 164 January 2024 by Rachael K. Jones
Narrator: Justine Eyre
Format: ebook, podcast
Source: podcast, supplied by publisher via Hugo Packet
Formats available: magazine, podcast
Genres: science fiction, short stories
Series: Lightspeed Magazine Issue 164 January 2024
Pages: 10
Length: 5 minutes
on January 1, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo
Goodreads

LIGHTSPEED is a digital science fiction and fantasy magazine. In its pages, you will find science fiction: from near-future, sociological soft SF, to far-future, star-spanning hard SF-and fantasy: from epic fantasy, sword-and-sorcery, and contemporary urban tales, to magical realism, science-fantasy, and folktales.

Welcome to issue 164 of LIGHTSPEED! Our science fiction shorts kick off with a story ("Shadow Films") from Benjamin Peek about the film industry and a conspiracy theory sprouting from an unsettling truth. In the very poignant tale "We Shall Not Be Bitter at the End of the World," David Anaxagoras captures an unusual group trying to cope with an incipient apocalypse. We also have a flash story ("Five Views of the Planet Tartarus") from Rachael K. Jones, and another ("Night Desk Duty at the Infinite Paradox Hotel") from Aimee Ogden. Our fantasy shorts include a fascinating meditation on sacrifice and inter-species understanding in Sloane Leong's "A Saint Between the Teeth." Adam-Troy Castro returns to our pages with a new story about an irresistible offer in "Farewell to Faust." We also have two terrific flash pieces: "In the Tree's Hollow, a Doe" by Lowry Poletti and "To Be a Happy Man" from Thomas Ha. Of course we've got our usual array of nonfiction: book reviews from our review team (what should you be reading when you're not reading Lightspeed?), and spotlight interviews with our authors. And our ebook readers will enjoy an excerpt from Amy Avery's new novel THE LONGEST AUTUMN.

My Review:

I listened to the final three Hugo Short Story nominees in a single evening. In the practical sense, that wasn’t hard as they are all, indeed, short. So now that I have finished the lot, I can say unequivocally, IMHO, that there’s definitely a divide in the set. The first three I read/listened to weren’t terrible, but they either weren’t special or didn’t grab me or were so experimental they didn’t land or didn’t have enough room to work or all of the above.

The three I listened to, all on the same night, all did interesting things, told their stories in interesting ways, grabbed me hard or used their experimental structure to its utmost AND remained comprehensible. AND they used every word at their disposal to great effect.

“Five Views of the Planet Tartarus” was short, bitter and ended in an absolute gut punch of a reveal – and only needed 549 words to wreck my brain in the process.

First, the title is a big, freaking huge, ginormous hint that this is not going to be a comfortable story. If the name “Tartarus” sounds familiar, that’s because you’ve heard it before in other contexts that are all intended to invoke the original. In Greek mythology, Tartarus is the deep abyss that is used as a dungeon of torment and suffering for the wicked. It’s the place where souls were judged after death and where the wicked received divine punishment.

In other words, Tartarus is HELL. Figuratively and literally. The Tartarus of this story may be inverted, in that this Tartarus is a planet and its version of hell is the ‘asteroid’ belt around the planet instead of a deep, dark chasm ON the planet, but hell is, well, still hell.

The story follows a simple pattern, one that is seen often in fanfic, where there are X times that something happens and often (but not always and not in this case) one time it doesn’t. Each of those times – or in this case views – are short and usually disastrous in one way or another – but not THIS disastrous.

In this story it’s a ship filled with prisoners on its way to Tartarus, viewing the planet from afar, those same prisoners being tried, then processed for sentencing, the sentence carried out, and then their incarceration. Which is where the story goes full circle and all the things that were foreshadowed in the first part hit home at the end.

Which, to return to an earlier statement as the story itself does, hits like a gut punch, leaving the reader wet-eyed and breathless.

Escape Rating B+: The story is a bit of a tease in that we know nothing about the crimes committed or the reasons this system evolved the way we see in the story. Howsomever, it certainly does stick the dismount, while the story itself is so simple that the reader isn’t really braced for it and it sticks harder than it otherwise might.

It also sticks harder because this story just does so much more with its brief length and its experimental nature than those first three stories. I was hoping for something better or more interesting or both and was happy as well as a bit winded from that gut punch that I got exactly that.

This story didn’t so much fall into the middle of my Hugo voting as rise above it. Then the final two stories topped that, as you’ll see in my final two reviews in this ‘series’.

#BookReview: Copper Script by KJ Charles

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B+ Reviews> book reviews
#BookReview: Copper Script by KJ CharlesCopper Script by K.J. Charles
Format: ebook
Source: author
Formats available: paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: historical fiction, historical mystery, historical romance, M/M romance, queer romance, romantic suspense
Pages: 255
Published by KJC Books on May 29, 2025
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org
Goodreads

Detective Sergeant Aaron Fowler of the Metropolitan Police doesn’t count himself a gullible man. When he encounters a graphologist who deduces people’s lives and personalities from their handwriting with impossible accuracy, he needs to find out how the trick is done. Even if that involves spending more time with the intriguing, flirtatious Joel Wildsmith than feels quite safe.
Joel’s not an admirer of the police, but DS Fowler has the most irresistible handwriting he’s ever seen. If the policeman’s tests let him spend time unnerving the handsome copper, why not play along?
But when Joel looks at a powerful man's handwriting and sees a murderer, the policeman and the graphologist are plunged into deadly danger. Their enemy will protect himself at any cost--unless the sparring pair can come together to prove his guilt and save each other.

My Review:

The very first scene of Copper Script lays pretty much everything bare; family ties and expectations, the assumption that people will bow down to their “betters”, the frenetic surface gaiety of the post-World War I period, the corruption of the police, the damage the war left behind, the terrors and abuses of the English ‘public school’ system and just how much and how often an upright man has to fight his own internal battles to hang onto his soul in the face of destruction.

That’s a lot, isn’t it?

And yet, the story opens with one of society’s Bright Young Things, Mr. Paul Napier-Fox, putting pressure on Detective Sergeant Aaron Fowler of the Metropolitan Police, his cousin, to put the frighteners on the man who convinced his former fiancee to become his former fiancee by informing her that he, Napier-Fox, was cheating on her by analysing his handwriting.

The problem for Napier-Fox is that the truth isn’t slander or libel. He doesn’t care, he expects that his family’s position in society will allow him to lie and get away with it. He expects Fowler to make the case go away. He expects that his position in both society and their family gives him carte blanche to use his cousin to do his dirty work.

Because in addition to being Fowler’s ‘better’ in society, Napier-Fox knows Fowler’s secret. Fowler is homosexual at a time when simply being who he is is still very much illegal. Napier-Fox can take EVERYTHING away from Fowler at a moment’s notice, and they both know it.

Which is where graphologist Joel Wildsmith comes into the picture – and possibly the frame as well. Wildsmith has a preternatural gift for analyzing handwriting. He doesn’t claim to tell the future, he doesn’t pretend he knows the person whose handwriting he is studying, he doesn’t ask for anything beyond a fee for his time that isn’t nearly enough.

But Fowler convinces himself – as he often does – with the twisted logic that what Wildsmith does isn’t possibly by any legal means. He’s either defrauding his clients or he’s practicing magic. Both of which are illegal and so the man is worthy of investigation.

And that’s where this queer historical mystery/romantic suspense story goes off to the races at a very fast clip.

Fowler tries to prove Wildsmith is a fraud. Instead, Wildsmith proves that he’s the real deal – whatever that deal might actually be. Then he goes on to show Fowler that one of his police superiors is rotten to the bone.

Together, they hatch a hare-brained scheme to get the man bang to rights before he can get to them. All the while, they’re trying – and failing – to resist the temptation to bang each other. They don’t need to put an even bigger target on their backs, but the heart wants what the heart wants – even when on the trail of a bastard with no heart at all.

Escape Rating B+: This has been a ‘mixed feelings’ kind of a week as far as reading goes, and this book is no exception. Dammit.

Very much on the one, and much happier, hand, I fell straight into Copper Script, loved the characters, and pretty much read it in one sitting. I just plain liked Fowler and Wildsmith, liked even more that they liked each other AND their very witty banter on the way to a relationship.

At the same time, I couldn’t help but wonder how the hell this was going to get to anything remotely near a happy ending. The story is set in the very much real 1920s, meaning that even the hint of their relationship has the potential to send them to jail. It paints a huge target on their backs, all the bigger because Fowler is charged with enforcing the law while he’s personally disobeying it.

That Fowler is personally a mess as a result of his internal conflict isn’t a surprise at all. The man is so brittle that the reader expects him to break – and he does.

The other issue with this being the historical 1920s and not a fictional or fantastical version is that graphology is a pseudoscience at best. Scientific handwriting analysis compares handwriting to determine whether documents were written by the same person – it doesn’t psychoanalyze the person who wrote the documents.

In other words, what Joel Wildsmith does slips over the border into magic, but the story treats it as science. He’s a fascinating, fantastic, wonderful character, but a big chunk of the story hinges on him having an ability that doesn’t exist in the real world where this story purports to be set.

Admittedly, slipping this story over the line into fantasy or magical realism would have solved the potential happy ever after problem as well. There’s a gossamer hint of at least a happy for now, but it would have felt a LOT more plausible in a fantasy setting because the rules could be changed to make it so.

As I keep saying, I fell straight into this one and didn’t emerge until the end. As much as I enjoyed this while I was in it, looking back at what I’d just finished left me with a curious feeling. The story combines two elements that often go great together, a historical mystery and a historical romance. So the story has to push both things forward, the romance and the investigation.

Which it does. But the scenes that move the romance forward – all the banter between Fowler and Wildsmith as well as the sex scenes – are all onscreen. There’s a lot of conversation – as there should be as they do talk and angst each other into bed – but the progress of the relationship is SHOWN and not just TOLD.

With the mystery/investigation, it’s the opposite. Most of the scenes that push the investigation forward occur offscreen. The reader, along with Fowler himself – is TOLD what happened but generally doesn’t see it happen with his own two eyes until the crisis point.

We all do learn enough, we still get caught up in the tension and the danger, but, well, it’s a big but in my thoughts now that I know how it all turned out.

One final thing – I facepalmed when I thought about the title afterwards, because the title is a pun. Fowler is a ‘copper’ and Wildsmith studies ‘script’. Ouch.

If you liked Copper Script, or even liked the sound of it or the description, an excellent – and more plausible – readalike is Lavender House by Lev A.C. Rosen and the entire Andy Mills series that follows it. The next book in that series, Mirage City, is coming this fall and I can’t wait.

Howsomever, and back to Copper Script, I did fall straight into it. I had a great time reading it. The niggles all came after – albeit with a bit of a vengeance. KJ Charles is an author who has been recommended to me on multiple occasions, and I did enjoy her Gentle Art of Fortune Hunting a few years back. So I’ll certainly keep her in mind the next time I need something to break a reading slump – as Copper Script absolutely did this time around!

#BookReview: Esperance by Adam Oyebanji

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B+ Reviews> book reviews
#BookReview: Esperance by Adam OyebanjiEsperance by Adam Oyebanji
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: hardcover, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: mystery, science fiction, science fiction mystery
Pages: 432
Published by DAW on May 20, 2025
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

The history-bending speculative fiction from Adam Oyebanji, award-winning author of BRAKING DAY.
An impossible death: Detective Ethan Krol has been called to the scene of a baffling murder: a man and his son, who appear to have been drowned in sea-water. But the nearest ocean is a thousand miles away.
An improbable story: Hollie Rogers doesn’t want to ask too many questions of her new friend, Abi Eniola. Abi claims to be an ordinary woman from Nigeria, but her high-tech gadgets and extraordinary physical abilities suggest she’s not telling the whole truth.
An incredible quest: As Ethan’s investigation begins to point towards Abi, Hollie’s fears mount. For Abi is very much not who she seems. And it won’t be long before Ethan and Hollie find themselves playing a part in a story that spans cultures, continents… and centuries.
An extraordinary speculative thriller about the scars left by the Atlantic slave-trade, by a master of the genre.

My Review:

Lake Michigan is a freshwater lake. There are no bodies of saltwater closer than the Gulf of Mexico or the Atlantic Ocean, hundreds of miles away. Unless you’re counting the gigantic saltwater tank and the Shedd Aquarium, which Chicago Police Detective Ethan Krol is forced to think about in this puzzle of a case.

The double homicide that he’s been called to utterly defies explanation. But as the lead investigator, he’s going to be required to both explain it and solve it, regardless.

A man and his baby son have been murdered, at home in their luxury apartment. Along with a barracuda. The two humans died by drowning – in seawater, while presumably the barracuda died from lack of the same. The man’s wife, the mother of the little boy, was in a profound coma in a nearby room. There are no marks or wounds on either of the bodies, but the man has plaster dust under his fingernails.

It’s a mystery – and it’s only the first of many.

When Krol reaches out to his fellow cops in the U.S. and even Interpol looking for any similar cases ANYWHERE he feels like he’s ‘casting his bread upon the waters’ or perhaps leaping and hoping the net will appear. Both turn out to be apt metaphors.

In either case, he’s successful – at least in discovering that there are other cops with similar cases who have been left just as puzzled as he is. A case in Nigeria a few years ago involving the dead man’s brother. A similar case in Rhode Island the next day. Meanwhile, a black woman of Amazonian proportions arrives in Bristol, England out of absolutely nowhere, with a mission to find the descendants of the captain of one very, very old shipwreck for reasons that she keeps very much to herself even as she eludes the police on what seems like a criminal rampage.

As information trickles and then pours in, it becomes obvious that all these events are linked – but to what? Something that combines Sherlock Holmes’ aphorism that “When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth” with Occam Razor’s “simplest explanation is usually the best one,” (for really wild and improbable definitions of ‘simple’) and plugs the whole thing straight into Clarke’s Law that “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”

Escape Rating B+: This is one of those ‘mystery wrapped in an enigma’ stories that’s very much a part of the rising wave of SF mystery, and it does an excellent job of being both by starting the story from both sides of that SF + mystery equation.

It’s not like murder in Chicago is a new thing – not even among, let’s call it the upper, upper middle class. Which puts the frame directly around the wife, because the odds are that if a spouse is murdered, the other spouse had something to do with it.

Krol knows how to do his job, figures out that the frame doesn’t fit, and keeps on with dogged police work. (I do love me a good, solid, police procedural, and this is certainly that even as the procedures lead Krol straight into SFnal territory.)

At first, it’s the SFnal side of the story that is more than a bit, well, ‘out there’. So to speak. When Abidemi Eniola appears out of nowhere outside Bristol, she’s clearly a fish out of water. She’s dressed like an extra from a gangster movie, and talks like one as well. All her words are in English but they are combined in ways that don’t make sense. Or don’t make sense anymore, like she learned the language somewhere very isolated or very much behind the times.

(She talks like an extra from the Star Trek: Original Series episode “A Piece of the Action”.)

Abi needs a guide to the world in which she has found herself, and finds that guide – as well as a surprisingly loyal friend, in Hollie Rogers. Hollie helps her navigate while never knowing what she is leading – and being led – towards.

As Krol follows the trail by discovering the victims after the fact, Abi follows the same trail by researching who those victims will be. Of course they meet in the middle.

Which is where the truth comes out. A truth that is a huge spoiler, but also a truth that asks some equally huge questions about justice vs. vengeance, acknowledgement vs. reparations, and especially about what is owed and who should pay it.

I found the winding, twisted paths of this story’s mystery utterly fascinating, even as the SFnal aspects recalled Rivers Solomon’s historical fantasy, The Deep. And I adored the historical research that led to the ultimately very SFnal conclusion.

Howsomever I have to admit that the bittersweet parting at the end threw me off just a bit. OTOH, its conclusion is utterly right for the story and ties a perfect bow around the friendship between Abi and Hollie. But the way it reaches that perfect conclusion doesn’t quite make logical sense – unless, as has been true for their entire relationship, there’s something that Abi isn’t telling Hollie because she’s afraid that the truth will be too hard to bear.

#AudioBookReview: Wooing the Witch Queen by Stephanie Burgis

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | audio reviews> audiobooks> B+ Reviews> book reviews
#AudioBookReview: Wooing the Witch Queen by Stephanie BurgisWooing the Witch Queen (Queens of Villainy, #1) by Stephanie Burgis
Narrator: Amanda Leigh Cobb
Format: audiobook, eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss, supplied by publisher via Libro.fm
Formats available: hardcover, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: fantasy, fantasy romance, gaslamp, romantasy
Series: Queens of Villainy #1
Pages: 304
Length: 8 hours and 34 minutes
Published by Bramble Romance, Macmillan Audio on February 18, 2025
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

In a Gaslamp-lit world where hags and ogres lurk in thick pine forests, three magical queens form an uneasy alliance to protect their lands from invasion…and love turns their world upside down.
Queen Saskia is the wicked sorceress everyone fears. After successfully wrestling the throne from her evil uncle, she only wants one thing: to keep her people safe from the empire next door. For that, she needs to spend more time in her laboratory experimenting with her spells. She definitely doesn’t have time to bring order to her chaotic library of magic.
When a mysterious dark wizard arrives at her castle, Saskia hires him as her new librarian on the spot. “Fabian” is sweet and a little nerdy, and his requests seem a little strange – what in the name of Divine Elva is a fountain pen? – but he’s getting the job done. And if he writes her flirtatious poetry and his innocent touch makes her skin singe, well…
Little does Saskia know that the "wizard" she’s falling for is actually an Imperial archduke in disguise, with no magical training whatsoever. On the run, with perilous secrets on his trail and a fast growing yearning for the wicked sorceress, he's in danger from her enemies and her newfound allies, too. When his identity is finally revealed, will their love save or doom each other?

My Review:

They say that eavesdroppers never hear anything good about themselves, and that’s certainly true when Archduke Felix of Estarion arrives, in the dead of night, at the castle belonging to Saskia, the Witch Queen of Kitvaria. He’s hoping for a sanctuary that he desperately needs. She’s in conference with her allies, Queen Lorelei of Balravia and Queen Ailana of Nornne, the other two so-called Queens of Villainy, and they’re all making some pretty villainous comments – about him.

The thing is, the queens may know each other – however reluctantly at least on Saskia’s part – but they don’t really have a clue about Felix. They think they do, because his chief minister, former guardian, ex-father-in-law and torturer of long standing has been committing plenty of greedy, grasping, outright rapacious moves in his name, but Felix has had no voice and no say. He’s been a prisoner in his own castle, under constant guard and equally constant torment as well as honest-to-badness torture, ever since his “dear guardian” got himself proclaimed Felix’ Regent and took control of, well, everything.

Felix managed to escape, and planned to throw himself on Saskia’s mercy, only to discover – there’s that eavesdropping again – that there is no mercy to be found. He has no one to turn to and nowhere else to run. However, while his uncle may not have allowed him to be educated in anything useful, he has let him study useless things like literature, letting Felix lose himself in libraries for hours on end. Felix isn’t stupid – and he’s very desperate.

Which is why he decides to take advantage of Saskia’s distraction and hide himself in plain sight – not as either the Witch Queen’s prisoner or her hostage – but as her dark wizard librarian. In spite of being, well, technically, neither of those things. But dark wizards are allowed to hide their faces behind a mask – or deep in their dark cloaks. Librarians can hide in their libraries. Saskia needs a magical cataloger and is happy to hire the mysterious stranger who has just wandered into her castle, seemingly as the answer to ALL her prayers.

As it turns out he actually is – even the prayers that she never even thought to utter – or believed she was worthy of even thinking about voicing.

Escape Rating B+: Definitions of villainy are clearly in the eye of the beholder, making the title of both the book and especially the series a delightful bit of irony. Because there’s nothing wrong with witchcraft, unless calling it that is an attempt to make the magic that women practice lesser than that of men. Which is exactly what labelling Saskia the “Witch Queen” of Kitvaria is intended to do.

But the Queens of Villainy of the series, including Saskia the Witch Queen of Kitvaria, are only villainous in the eyes of all the men who are frightened by their power and offended by their ability and are desperate to find a way to knock those queens down so they can step all over them.

Something that’s not going to happen as long as they stick together and OWN their power. Once they ALL figure that out, the story is utterly glorious. But it takes a bit to get there.

Because at the beginning, the “Witch Queen of Kitvaria” is not exactly the “Queen of All She Surveys”. She’s not even the “Princess of Quite a Lot”. As the story opens, Queen Saskia acts more like Mistress Doormat in spite of her ascension to the throne.

Which is the point where I need to reveal that I began this book in audio. I thought it would be fun. And it eventually is. Howsomever, the wonderful thing about audiobooks, particularly when the story is told in the first person singular and the reader gets to sit inside the protagonist’s head, is that when the story is told well, when the narrator is a good match for the character, and, most importantly, when it’s a head that the reader enjoys being in, the experience is fantastic. This particular audio hit two out of three. The story is told well, and the narrator, Amanda Leigh Cobb, was an excellent narrator for Saskia – but Saskia’s head, particularly for the first third of the story, was a place that I didn’t want to be. I wanted to see how things worked out, I adored the premise of the story, but Saskia let everyone push her around to the point where being in her head did not work for me AT ALL. I needed her to just put on her big witch panties and DEAL WITH IT. And that took a while.

So I switched to text at the quarter, Saskia found at least one leg of those big witch panties at the one third point, and from then it was off to the races and the story got totally glorious.

This was even one of those rare cases where the misunderstandammit at the heart of the romance actually worked. Felix couldn’t reveal himself to Saskia until they trusted each other – even though he was all too aware that telling the truth would break that trust. By the time he felt compelled to unmask, he was in a position where she might, deservedly so, break his heart, but was considerably less likely to take his life.

After all, one of Saskia’s magically adorable scene-stealing crows had made Felix “HIS” librarian whether he was actually a librarian or not.

As much as Saskia drove me, well, batty at the beginning (complete with actual, magical, bats) I still felt for her. Not only is she in a really difficult position doing a damn hard job she never really wanted, she also does a terrific job of portraying the dilemma of an introvert stuck in an extrovert’s job – and being caught between the things she wants to do that she’s always been good at, and the things that have to be done that she hates and is terrible at. While everyone around her tells her over and over that she has to become someone she’s absolutely NOT in order to succeed.

The slow-burn romance between Saskia and Felix is utterly lovely, especially because it’s marvelous to see the way they work towards a relationship that is built to be unequal – because she outranks him – and because the story does NOT flip things to make him the leader of their partnership just because that’s the way it’s usually done. Nothing about Saskia or her relationship with Felix is “the way things are usually done” and that’s one of the points of the whole thing.

As is the still developing sisterhood between those three Queens of Villainy. A sisterhood that is already strong enough that they still have each other’s backs – even when one of them massively screws up ALL their plans.

In the end, this worked for me, even if it began in some places I really didn’t want to go. Once Saskia started taking charge of her own life and destiny, in spite of the forces arrayed against her and the voices inside her head telling her that she was doing ALL the wrong things, the Queens of Villainy reminded me a lot of two other stories of women having or seizing power and the little men around them throwing really big, bloody temper tantrums as a result. So if you like the idea of the Queens of Villainy you might also enjoy Fear the Flames by Olivia Rose Darling and The Women’s War by Jenna Glass.

And they might help tide you over while you’re waiting – as this reader will be – for the second book in the Queens of Villainy series, Enchanting the Fae Queen, coming in January 2026.

#BookReview: Last Chance to Save the World by Beth Revis

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B+ Reviews> book reviews
#BookReview: Last Chance to Save the World by Beth RevisLast Chance to Save the World (Chaotic Orbits #3) by Beth Revis
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: hardcover, ebook, audiobook
Genres: science fiction, science fiction romance, space opera
Series: Chaotic Orbits #3
Pages: 133
Published by DAW on April 8, 2025
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

The explosive, satisfying conclusion to the Chaotic Orbits novella trilogy sees Ada and Rian breaking into a high-security facility to give Earth a fighting chance at survival

Sexy, fast, fun and funny, this happily-ever-after ending is perfect for fans of the Murderbot novels and the Wayfarers series

After a few weeks trapped on board a spaceship with Ada (and, oh look, there’s only one bed), Rian has to admit that maybe Ada’s rebels have a point. The nanobots poised to be unleashed on Earth are infected with malware that will ultimately leave the residents of Earth in a worse position than they’re in now. But is it too late?

Ada and Rian arrive on Earth with little time to spare. Together, they have to break into a high-security facility and infect the nanobots with a counter-virus before they’re released in order to give Earth a fighting chance. And if Ada happens to notice some great tech laying around in this high-security facility she shouldn’t have access to and then happens to steal a bunch of it when Rian’s not looking? Well, he knew who she was before he teamed up with her. And if he wants it back, he’s going to have to catch her first.

With countless twists and turns, this enemies-to-lovers slow-burn and high-tension romance plays on a Sherlock and Moriarity character dynamic rooted in science fiction with a heavy romance and mystery angle.

My Review:

Ada Lamarr’s caper-and-heist riddled ‘chaotic orbit’ of the galaxy is on its way back to a corporate controlled, pollution ravaged Sol-Earth when this third entry in the series opens. Ada and her reluctant passenger, government agent Rian White, have finalized their plans to thwart an evil corporate kingpin who planned to hold Earth’s environmental recovery for ransom for the next, well, forever.

Of course, no plan survives contact with the enemy. The second biggest problem with this plan is that the first enemies it has to survive are each other, because Ada and Rian, no matter how much they might be on the same page when it comes to Earth’s potential recovery – are enemies in every other way.

They might both wish that they were enemies-with-benefits, but they are also both smart enough not to get that deeply involved – all puns intended – with someone they can’t trust. Particularly when they know that said enemy ALREADY has plans to betray them at the first available opportunity.

But the real problem, at least from Ada’s perspective, is that the first enemy that her plan has to survive isn’t the uptight government agent she’s been lusting after since they crashed into each other in Full Speed to a Crash Landing.

The first enemy Ada’s plan has to get passed isn’t Rian, it isn’t the government, it isn’t even the squadrons of corporate security drones and goons her target has stationed to protect his ‘investment’.

First, foremost and with way less prep than Ada ever likes to have, Ada has to get her crazy, convoluted scheme past her mother.

Escape Rating B+: A HUGE part of the fun of the Chaotic Orbits series in both Full Speed to a Crash Landing and How to Steal a Galaxy is that the story is told from the inside of Ada Lamarr’s, wheels-within-wheels, lies-hiding-lies and misdirections all around very intelligent and utterly snarky head.

Which means that we’re aware that Ada is pulling some kind of con – but not necessarily the same con – on every single person around her. Including herself. So even though we’re in her very own skull there are still secrets that aren’t revealed until the very end of the caper – if not a bit after – because there are plenty of things in Ada’s mind and heart that she doesn’t want to think about. Possibly ever.

The biggest thing she’s not willing to think about is her sure and certain knowledge that Rian is going to betray her in the end – if he hasn’t already. It’s only fair, because her plan to betray him has been baked into this caper from its opening gambit back in that first book.

The part that she’s not willing to think about is that she wishes the situation were otherwise. He’s Mister Law-and-Order. He can’t live the chaotic, one-step-ahead-of-the-authorities, the ends-justify-the-means-as-long-as-there’s-a-big-payday, next-heist-please life that Ada thrives on.

And those natures are much too baked into both of their psyches for either of them to ever change. So in addition to her many, many thoughts and concerns about her plans for this particular caper, Ada also spends a lot of her internal energy veering away from the heartbreak she tried to avoid but knows, deep in her heart, is coming anyway.

So, on the top level of this story, the takedown of the stupid evil villain/greedy corporate monster, the thing that Ada has been working on from before the beginning of the series, and every single lie and misdirect since – all of that is absolutely righteous. And it’s a win all the way around. Earth has a chance to get better – if we don’t screw it up again.

But the catharsis of that HUGE win is blunted because we’re pretty much all on Team Ada, we’re all shipping Ada and Rian – and their relationship takes a HUGE, messy hit in this story. They’ve both been forced to realize that what they feel for each other, as totally ill-advised as it might be, is also absolutely real. And that they can’t both be themselves AND have each other.

That part of the story ends on a note of possibility, both for Ada and Rian finding each other again and for that finding to be part of another caper/heist of some sort. Whether that means another book in the series, or was just a way to end things with a hint of will they/won’t they/can they/should they is something we’ll hopefully see in the future. Which means that the HEA promised in the blurb is still some ways off – at best.

As for this reader, I want to keep right on shipping Ada and Rian, but I can’t see a way to make it work. I hope the author can, and that we ALL get to see it!

#BookReview: Rebellious Grace by Jeri Westerson

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B+ Reviews> book reviews
#BookReview: Rebellious Grace by Jeri WestersonRebellious Grace (A King's Fool mystery, 3) by Jeri Westerson
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: hardcover, ebook
Genres: historical fiction, historical mystery
Series: King's Fool #3
Pages: 224
Published by Severn House on January 7, 2025
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads


Henry VIII's court jester Will Somers turns reluctant inquisitor once again when a grotesque murder within the palace walls is linked to the Pilgrimage of Grace rebellion in this gripping Tudor mystery.

1536, London. The gruesome murder of a servant in the king's palace, his throat savagely cut, has brought fear to the court of Henry VIII. When the man's body is then dug up from the churchyard and disembowelled two weeks later, Will Somers, the king's jester, is horrified. What terrible mischief is now afoot under the king's roof?
With Henry VIII distracted by The Pilgrimage of Grace, the religious revolt led by Robert Aske in protest at the king turning his back on the Catholic faith, Will becomes reluctant inquisitor once again. As he attempts to unmask a murderous knave, Will uncovers a chilling link between one of Queen Jane Seymour's precious jewels, the rebellion and the dead man. Is a shocking act of treachery behind a grotesque killing?
Perfect for fans of stunning Tudor mysteries and historical dramas featuring witty and tenacious sleuths, and bursting with betrayal, politics and passion from the likes of Paul Doherty Michael Jecks,, C.J. Sansom and Philippa Gregory.

My Review:

Will Somers, the King’s Fool of this series, finds himself hoist on his own petard in this particular case. After his success at investigating murders on his own in the two previous books in this series, Courting Dragons and The Twilight Queen, this time around his king has ordered him to look into the death of one of Will’s fellow royal servants.

Not as a result of the original murder, but because some ghoulish or desperate person disinterred the corpse of the late Geoffrey Payne in order to disembowel the man two weeks after his burial. Someone seriously had it out for the victim, and King Henry VIII has tasked his fool, Will Somers, with discovering who would do such a terrible thing – and especially why.

Finding out who might have wanted the man dead is one thing, figuring out who hated him so much that they desecrated his corpse is something else altogether.

Evidence from the murder has long been washed away, but Will knows THAT is where he must begin, with a trail long grown as cold as the winter winds whipping through the palace. But Will, as the king’s own, personal, fool, has permission to poke his nose in anywhere and everywhere at court. With his king’s commission, he has the warrant to ask all the questions he wants, as well.

Even as every single noble he even attempts to talk with makes him all too aware that they will remember this slight and take it out on him whenever the first opportunity arises. Because even if they’re guilty they know they can’t be punished – but sooner or later, Will Somers most certainly can.

But Will can’t resist the puzzle – no matter how much he wishes that he could. The more he digs into the problem, the more it seems like that problem is much bigger than the ‘mere’ death of one of the queen’s own royal servants – not that Will Somers, a royal servant himself, would ever see it so.

That his best witness is unreliable by their very nature only adds to the conundrum, as each clue he teases out takes his investigation one more rung up the ladder of people that Will knows he cannot touch – even if they are guilty.

Especially if they have involved a member of the court so high that they cannot even be questioned, let alone touched, at all.

Escape Rating B+: Historical mysteries like this one, and the King’s Fool series of which it is the third entry, have to walk a tightrope over the historical era they portray. That’s especially true in this case, as Will Somers, the ‘King’s Fool’ of the title, was a real person in the court of Henry VIII, and his position and duties are known to history – if not the details of his days and nights.

At the same time, as an integral part of the court, Will was, by definition of his duties, in a position to literally see all and know all about the doings of the high and mighty among whom he served.

Which is very much where that tightrope comes in. His job, not as a ‘court jester’ but as the king’s own fool, required him to be in the rooms where Henry VIII’s reign happened – while at the same time being ignored as beneath the notice of the courtiers in that room with him.

The conceit of this series has put Somers in the sort of position that modern detectives would envy. He is intimately aware of all the ‘goings on’ in court, and he has been part of the court more than enough years to know how things work, where the nobility stash the skeletons in their personal closets and where the metaphorical and occasionally physical bodies are buried.

At the same time, he’s an outsider. He’s not himself a noble and he never will be. He’s a servant and all too frequently reminded of that fact. He’s beneath notice – and yet, he has the ear of the king. He can go everywhere and see everything and continue to slither out of trouble as long as he doesn’t go too far for the king to allow him to keep both his position and his head.

The story gets told, and the mystery gets solved, through Will Somers’ intimate perspective on the court and the people in it. It very much feels as if the mystery is second to the detailed and loving portrait of the court and its denizens. Not that Will doesn’t manage to solve the mystery while getting into as much danger as any contemporary detective, but that both the solution and the danger are tightly wrapped in the historical period.

I enjoy this series a LOT because this is a period that has always fascinated me. The history that it dives into so deeply is recognizable and familiar and the ‘you are there’ feeling is one that I’m eager to be a part of. I hope it works just as well for readers who are experiencing this era for the first time.

The series continues to move through the reign of Henry VIII based on that old doggerel about his wives, “Divorced, beheaded, died. Divorced, beheaded, survived.” The next book in the series, tentatively titled Beloved Sister but recently changed to Devil’s Gambit, will be set during Henry VIII’s brief marriage to Anne of Cleves, which she survived in style.

In the meantime, I’m also looking very much forward to Six Wild Crowns by Holly Race coming in June, the start of an epic fantasy series that also takes its inspiration from the court of Henry VIII and his wives.

I am eagerly anticipating both of these upcoming books!

#BookReview: Art in the Blood by Bonnie MacBird

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B+ Reviews> book reviews
#BookReview: Art in the Blood by Bonnie MacBirdArt in the Blood (Sherlock Holmes Adventure, #1) by Bonnie MacBird
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: historical fiction, historical mystery
Series: Sherlock Holmes Adventure #1
Pages: 300
Published by Collins Crime Club on August 27, 2015
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

London. A snowy December, 1888.
Sherlock Holmes, 34, is languishing and back on cocaine after a disastrous Ripper investigation. Watson can neither comfort nor rouse his friend – until a strangely encoded letter arrives from Paris. Mademoiselle La Victoire, a beautiful French cabaret star writes that her illegitimate son by an English Lord has disappeared, and she has been attacked in the streets of Montmartre.
Racing to Paris with Watson at his side, Holmes discovers the missing child is only the tip of the iceberg of a much larger problem. The most valuable statue since the Winged Victory has been violently stolen in Marseilles, and several children from a silk mill in Lancashire have been found murdered. The clues in all three cases point to a single, untouchable man.
Will Holmes recover in time to find the missing boy and stop a rising tide of murders? To do so he must stay one step ahead of a dangerous French rival and the threatening interference of his own brother, Mycroft.
This latest adventure, in the style of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, sends the iconic duo from London to Paris and the icy wilds of Lancashire in a case which tests Watson's friendship and the fragility and gifts of Sherlock Holmes' own artistic nature to the limits.

My Review:

“Art in the blood” has a nice ring to it, doesn’t it? It also might sound just a bit familiar – as well as in keeping with this first book in the author’s Sherlock Holmes Adventure series. The quote is from Holmes himself in the original canon, specifically The Adventure of the Greek Interpreter.

In that story, Holmes attributes both his own and his brother Mycroft’s skill in and facility with the ‘Art of Detection’ to the “art in the blood” inherited from their grandmother, “who was the sister of Vernet, the French artist.”

(There were several members of the Vernet family who lived at approximately the right time and were artists, Claude Joseph Vernet, Carle Vernet and Horace Vernet. Which Vernet Holmes referred to is one of the MANY things about his origins that can be speculated about but is never definitely stated.)

As this story begins, the art in Sherlock Holmes’ blood, combined with an utter dearth of interesting cases and possibly owing more than a bit to the absence of his friend and chronicler, Dr. John Watson, has dropped the ‘Great Detective’ into a slough of despond, causing Holmes to resort to entirely too many applications of his ‘seven-per-cent solution’ of cocaine.

Holmes is a bigger mess than even his usual depths and the generally unflappable Mrs. Hudson is at her wits’ end. She can’t help Holmes but she knows just who can.

So she calls Watson, in both of his capacities – as Holmes’ friend AND most definitely as his physician, because she can’t tell which her lodger needs more.

As it turns out – both. But what Holmes needs above all – is a case that will test him to his utmost. A case that is presented to him, literally on a silver salver, from several directions at the same time.

Brother Mycroft blackmails him into investigating a violent art theft at the Louvre. A beautiful French chanteuse begs him to discover the location of her missing child. Children are being kidnapped and murdered from a silk mill in Lancashire.

One seemingly untouchable aristocrat is at the center of all three cases. The silk mill is his. The chanteuse’s child is also his. And the statue at the center of the art theft is on its way to him in Lancashire even as Holmes and Watson dash from London to Paris and back in an attempt to put all the pieces together before it is once again too late for another poor child.

Or for themselves.

Escape Rating B+: This book has had a place deep in the virtually towering TBR pile for almost a decade – which is kind of embarrassing. I usually say that I read about 50% of the books I get – EVENTUALLY. This is apparently what that eventually looks like. To be fair, I liked this one more than enough to BUY the rest of the series that’s out so far and pick up the eARC for the forthcoming entry, The Serpent Under.

I spelunked into that TBR pile because I was looking for another comfort read after Old Scores. In fact, I was looking for something ‘like’ Barker & Llewelyn that wasn’t actually them. Which is what led me around to this series, as Barker & Llewelyn may not be Holmes but it is in dialogue with the ‘Great Detective’ so I decided to approach that dialogue from a different angle.

Cyrus Barker & Thomas Llewelyn are variations on Sherlock Holmes & John Watson in the sense that they are set in the same time period and feature a detective duo where one is clearly the genius and the other a follower, BUT, they also change the formula and speak to our time even more than their own by exploring and empathizing with the people of London – and elsewhere – who were outsiders in the city they called home. Barker is Scots, Llewelyn is Welsh, Barker’s business partner is Chinese, Llewelyn’s fiance is Jewish, as is his best friend – and the list, as well as the cases that are involved – goes on and on and into neighborhoods that the original Holmes would have looked down upon and only considered while stereotyping the people within.

The Holmes & Watson of this set of adventures, reads as though it is not so much the child of the original as the grandchild of the original canon, filtered through an intermediate generation of TV interpretations, notably Jeremy Brett’s Victorian-era Holmes, the more modern Sherlock and Elementary – with a touch of Robert Downey Jr.’s manic movie Holmes as well.

(I think I spy just a bit of Laurie R. King’s Holmes from her Holmes & Russell series too, but your reading mileage may vary.)

So, very much on the one hand, the Holmes of Art in the Blood is a bit more, not so much emotional as demonstrative. He’s more of a romantic hero in the small ‘r’ sense of romance, more self-sacrificing, more likely to put himself in harm’s way – and more likely to get there on his own – more likely to have an obvious soft spot for small children in need of rescue.

It’s not that the original Holmes doesn’t have most of those characteristics, more than he hides them better.

The case in Art in the Blood, while every bit as convoluted – and then some – as some of the original stories, displays a lot more confusion on Holmes’ part and frankly a lot more competence on Watson’s – a competency that calls back to Edward Hardwicke’s Doctor Watson, the partner of Jeremy Brett’s Holmes.

In other words, I had as much fun figuring out which ways this resembled other interpretations of these characters that I have seen or read as I did following along with the multiple mysteries in this story as they wound their multitude of ways into one dastardly whole. A whole that was quite a bit deeper and darker than one expects from a Sherlock Holmes story – but every bit as chilling, thrilling AND deadly.

I had fun reading Art in the Blood, and it certainly distracted me at a time when that’s exactly what I was looking for. Which means that I picked up the whole rest of the series so I’ll be back with Unquiet Spirits the next time I need a mysteriously comforting read.

#BookReview: One Big Happy Family by Susan Mallery

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B+ Reviews> blog tours> book reviews
#BookReview: One Big Happy Family by Susan MalleryOne Big Happy Family by Susan Mallery
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss, supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: hardcover, large print, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: contemporary romance, holiday romance, relationship fiction, women's fiction
Pages: 320
Published by Canary Street Press on October 1, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

Please don’t come home for Christmas…
Julie Parker’s kids are her greatest gift. Still, she’s not exactly heartbroken when they ask to skip a big Christmas. Her son, Nick, is taking a belated honeymoon with his bride, Blair, while her daughter, Dana, will purge every reminder of the guy who dumped her. Again. Julie feels practically giddy for one-on-one holiday time with Heath, the (much) younger man she’s secretly dating.
But her plans go from cozy to chaotic when Nick and Dana plead for Christmas at the family cabin in memory of their late father, Julie’s ex. She can’t refuse, even though she dreads their reactions to her new man when they realize she’s been hiding him for months.
As the guest list grows in surprising ways, from Blair’s estranged mom to Heath’s precocious children, Julie’s secret is one of many to be unwrapped. Over this delightfully complicated and very funny Christmas, she’ll discover that more really is merrier, and that a big, happy family can become bigger and happier, if they let go of old hurts and open their hearts to love.

My Review:

That phrase is often said ironically, with a bit of a smirk instead of a smile, even an eye roll – as if somehow it’s a contradiction in terms like ‘jumbo shrimp’. When someone says “One big happy family” there’s usually a bit of a caveat to the ‘happy’ part. That something – or perhaps a whole lot of somethings or even someones – aren’t nearly as happy as things appear on the surface.

If they’re even bothering to pretend, that is.

But the Parker family is, at least, generally happy with each other – even if that’s leavened with just a bit of sadness this particular holiday as it’s their first without one of the family’s integral members. Julie Parker may have gotten over her marriage and her divorce from Eldon years ago, but he remained her friend and co-parent if not her spouse, and their adult children, Nick and Dana, miss him a LOT this first Christmas without him. The family holiday traditions just aren’t the same without him, because Eldon was really big on Christmas and he was at the center of a lot of those traditions.

Even if Julie was the person who put in the work to make them all happen. Which is the story of both her marriage AND her life. Julie gets things done, and isn’t good at relying on anyone else in the doing. The family Christmas traditions were a LOT of work – work that ALL fell on Julie’s strong but slightly tired shoulders.

She’s REALLY looking forward to this Christmas, a holiday where her big, generally happy, family is scattering to the four winds. She’s planning on two weeks of bliss and peace – not necessarily in that order – in the coziness of her own house WITH the boyfriend that she hasn’t told her kids about yet.

The only reason Julie has been keeping Heath a secret is that she’s much too worried about her family’s judgment of their relationship. Her kids know she’s dated in the decade plus since her divorce, and they’re fine with that. But she hasn’t let those relationships become serious enough to warrant the boyfriend meeting the family.

Heath is different. On paper, they match up well. Both divorced, both with two children, both owners of successful businesses, both strong and independent and capable. Heath’s a catch, and there’s no catch to the relationship, except for one thing that Julie can’t get out of her head. Heath is 42, and Julie is 54. There’s a lot of living between those twelve years, they are at different places in their lives, and people will judge them – because that’s what people do.

It may be a bigger problem in Julie’s mind than it is in the world at large or certainly among her family – but it is a real problem or at least it certainly can be.

Julie’s not sure their relationship is ready – or more to the point, that she is ready – to make Heath a part of her one big happy family. She’s happy to be able to put that off until after the holidays – possibly indefinitely.

Which is the point where all those plans refuse to survive first contact with the rest of that family, as Christmas turns into one last almighty grab at all their holiday traditions, all at once, with extra added family and a whole entire herd of drama llamas in tow.

Heath turns out to be more than willing to roll with all the punches. The question is whether Julie is, too.

Escape Rating B+: Julie’s issues over this family holiday are far, far, far from the only ones that rear their heads this holiday – but they are the ones that tugged at my heartstrings the most because they are oh so familiar and Julie is right, society will judge her relationship with a younger man. Some will judge harshly and some will say, “You go, girl!” but there will be judgment either way. And they are at different places in their lives and always will be – but that’s true of any couple with an age gap no matter which direction it goes – even if society usually glosses over those differences when the age gap is in the ‘expected’ direction.

But Julie and Heath’s issues together, along with Julie’s need to be in control and in charge at all times and not need anyone else, are not the only snow-covered hill to climb this holiday season. Every single member of this extended family has brought their very own, personal, drama llama to this Christmas feast.

The family isn’t entirely happy – as no family ever is all of the time – but there are a lot of them and the result is a lot of family dramas in a house with such wonderfully wonky acoustics that everyone can hear everything that happens everywhere outside of a closed door, even in a house big enough for SIX bedrooms and all the communal spaces that six bedrooms full of people might possibly need.

So it’s Julie and Heath, her son Nick, Nick’s wife Blair, the uncle who actually raised Blair AND her sourpuss of an estranged mother who didn’t – as well as Nick’s secret plans to NOT take over the family business after all. Julie’s daughter Dana and the man who keeps breaking her heart, over and over again – who is also Julie’s employee. Heath’s children, Madeline and Wyatt,who are ten and eight and no problem at all, but their mother, Heath’s ex Tiffany, got dumped for Christmas so Julie invites her, too. That’s not even everyone but it’s a bit past enough even before Julie ends up in the hospital after an accident.

All that’s missing is the partridge in the pear tree!

I love a good age gap romance – particularly when the woman is the older half of that relationship – when it’s done right. Which it very much is in One Big Happy Family. Howsomever, as an only child myself, the sheer number of family members and the craziness each of them brought to the holiday table – simultaneously – was the stuff of which nightmares are made. I found plenty to empathize with in most of their relationships – but I also found myself wishing there was one less of them – although I recognize that’s a ‘me’ thing and may not be a ‘you’ thing and your reading mileage may definitely vary.

All in all, if you’re looking for a happy ever after portrait of a chaotic family holiday with a family that loves each other completely and is going to stick together no matter what and get through this mess, One Big Happy Family does turn out to be a charming holiday portrait of, in the end, really, truly, one big happy family.

#BookReview: Follow the Stars Home by Diane C. McPhail

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B+ Reviews> book reviews
#BookReview: Follow the Stars Home by Diane C. McPhailFollow the Stars Home by Diane C. McPhail
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, ebook, audiobook
Genres: historical fiction, U.S. history
Pages: 304
Published by Kensington on August 20, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

A captivating reimagining of the intrepid woman who – 8 months pregnant and with a toddler in tow – braved violent earthquakes and treacherous waters on the first steamboat voyage to conquer the Mississippi River and redefine America. 
The acclaimed author of The Seamstress of New Orleans brings to life Lydia Latrobe Roosevelt’s defiant journey of 1811 in this lush, evocative biographical novel for fans of Paula McLain, Gill Paul, Allison Pataki, and stories about extraordinary yet little-known female adventurers…
It’s a journey that most deem an insane impossibility. Yet on October 20th, 1811, Lydia Latrobe Roosevelt—daughter of one of the architects of the United States Capitol—fearlessly boards the steamship New Orleans in Pittsburgh. Eight months pregnant and with a toddler in tow, Lydia is fiercely independent despite her youth. She’s also accustomed to defying convention. Against her father’s wishes, she married his much older business colleague, inventor Nicholas Roosevelt—builder of the New Orleans—and spent her honeymoon on a primitive flatboat. But the stakes for this trip are infinitely higher.
If Nicholas’s untried steamboat reaches New Orleans, it will serve as a profitable packet ship between that city and Natchez, proving the power of steam as it travels up and down the Mississippi. Success in this venture would revolutionize travel and trade, open the west to expansion, and secure the Roosevelts’ future.
Lydia had used her own architectural training to design the flatboat’s interior, including a bedroom, sitting area, and fireplace. The steamship, however, dwarfs the canoes and flatboats on the river. And no amount of power or comfort could shield its passengers from risk. Lydia believes herself ready for all the dangers ahead—growing unrest among native people, disease or injury, and the turbulent Falls of the Ohio, a sixty-foot drop long believed impassable in such a large boat.
But there are other challenges in store, impossible to predict as Lydia boards that fall day. Challenges which—if survived—will haunt and transform her, as surely as the journey will alter the course of a nation . . .  

My Review:

Lydia Latrobe Roosevelt clearly did not believe that adventures were things that happened to other people. Because she absolutely had her own adventures for her very own self, in spite of her gender, the times she lived in, the overwhelming number of naysayers, and that she was pregnant. On her second trip, she was, in fact, very, very pregnant.

Follow the Stars Home is a reimagining of her story, fictionalized so that it can be told from her perspective, as she accompanied her husband Nicholas Roosevelt on not one but two history making journeys from Pittsburgh to New Orleans, down the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers. On her first journey in 1809, she traveled by barge and by flatboat, finishing up in a rowboat after a series of mishaps and outright disasters.

That trip was merely a scouting mission for the trip yet to come, the one that we get to take with her in 1811. The first successful attempt to conquer the Mississippi River with steam power. If their journey was successful – and it was – steamboats plying the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers would change the face of the fledgling United States with the speed of passage both down and UP the rivers against the current, for both passengers and especially – and profitably – cargo.

But the Roosevelts have to succeed to make that future possible. This is the story of that fantastic journey through territory the U.S. had yet to claim, on the way to a Manifest Destiny – for good and ill – that the Founding Fathers could only imagine.

All they have to do is keep the boat, their finances and their marriage off the rocks.

Nicholas J. Roosevelt, wife Lydia Latrobe Roosevelt, and their grandson J. Montgomery Roosevelt Schuyler, ca. 1848

Escape Rating B+: Follow the Stars Home is a story about being in the rooms where it happened – even if those rooms are powering down the Mississippi at the then astonishing rate of 12 miles per hour – and then steaming back up again.

Lydia Latrobe Roosevelt is the kind of unsung heroine whose accomplishments should have been shouted to the skies, but who is instead reduced to merely ‘Nicholas Roosevelt’s wife’ in the accounts of their history making journeys.

Instead, at least according to this fictionalized account – and it’s the version I WANT to believe in – she was as much of a full partner in this venture as the times and social conditions allowed – if not just a bit more. She’s certainly a real-life historical figure that it would be fascinating to know more about. Because she didn’t just marry into history, she was born to it. Her father, Benjamin Latrobe, was the architect of the U.S. Capital and many other buildings in the new capital of the newly formed United States.

A father who did not approve of his daughter’s marriage to his own friend and fellow engineer, a man more than 20 years her senior. (It’s not so much the age gap that gives this reader pause, but rather that they became engaged when Lydia was only 13.Your mileage and your judgment on that subject may definitely vary.)

The story in Follow the Stars Home is one that should be wider known, and I was certainly thrilled to learn about Lydia and her place on both epic journeys and in history.

That being said, her perspective on the events as they happen – at least her fictional perspective on her current situation, past experiences and her misgivings about them both – was a bit more domestically focused than I would have preferred. I was there for the adventure, the journey itself, and for the changes that happened after.

I fully recognize that’s a ‘me thing’ and may not be a ‘you thing’. In fact, I believe that a LOT of readers will be all in on that domestic perspective, because it was clearly damn difficult to manage a household, keep her toddler Rosetta occupied and more importantly out of trouble, AND give birth to her second child – at a scheduled stop in Louisville and NOT actually ON the steamboat – as history was being made.

I came to Follow the Stars Home for the history, but I stayed for this terrific portrait of a female adventurer who just plain isn’t as widely known as she ought to be. I sincerely hope that this marvelous story helps bring Lydia Latrobe Roosevelt to the more prominent place in the historical record where she truly belongs.