Category: book reviews

A+ #BookReview: In the Spirit of French Murder by Colleen Cambridge

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A+ Reviews> book reviews
A+ #BookReview: In the Spirit of French Murder by Colleen CambridgeIn the Spirit of French Murder (An American In Paris Mystery, #4) by Colleen Cambridge
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: hardcover, ebook, audiobook
Genres: culinary mystery, foodie fiction, historical mystery, mystery
Series: American in Paris Mystery #4
Pages: 272
Published by Kensington on April 28, 2026
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

After moving to France, Tabitha Knight has a new friend in fellow expat and Cordon Bleu student Julia Child, whose culinary tips can come in quite handy. But something’s cooking in postwar Paris, and it isn’t just cheese soufflé…

Tabitha has enjoyed an entertaining afternoon in Julia’s kitchen, but her return home is a bit jarring. As she arrives at her grandfather’s rue de l’Université mansion, a woman bursts out the door babbling about messages from spirits and a warning Grand-père must heed. Oncle Rafe angrily sends the woman on her way, and neither man will answer Tabitha’s questions.

It’s not the last she sees of the mysterious visitor. While she’s on a date that evening, she’s accosted by her again—and learns that Madame Vierca is a medium who claims to have visions of a dark fate that awaits Grand-père and Oncle Rafe. The very next night, Tabitha’s messieurs host a soiree at their new restaurant, inviting fellow Resistance fighters from the war known as the Nine Bluets. To commemorate the work of the Resistance network, the vase on the dinner table sports nine of the pretty blue flowers.

But shortly after the revelers leave the restaurant, one of Grand-père’s old friends is found dead on the street . . . and one of the nine flowers is missing from the vase. When a second member of the Nine Bluets is found poisoned the next day, and a bluet flower is left with the body, Tabitha cannot ignore Madame Vierca’s frightening predictions about her dear messieurs. She has no choice but to share her suspicions and fears with the enigmatic and unruffled Inspecteur Merveille.

Tabitha soon finds herself caught up in an investigation that takes her and Merveille to the seediest, most dangerous parts of the Left Bank—home of strange, fantastical legends, disquieting events, and unusual people. As she and Merveille desperately try to find a killer, they know they don’t have much time before the rest of the Nine Bluets are targeted . . . including Grand-père and Oncle Rafe.

My Review:

Five years hasn’t been nearly enough time for Parisians to heal from the devastation of World War II and the brutal occupation of their city and country by the Nazis. As this fourth story in the American in Paris series begins, American expat Tabitha Knight hopes that the re-opening of her messieurs’ restaurant, Maison de Verre, is at least a sign that the healing has begun.

Or that at least it heals something for her beloved grand-père and his life partner ‘Oncle’ Rafe, as well as the gang of their old colleagues from the Resistance who are gathering to celebrate their new but well-loved and well-remembered old haunt. It’s just one link in the chain of Paris reclaiming her nickname as the “City of Light” they all love.

But the first complete gathering of their Resistance cell, “Les neuf bleuets”, after the war tragically turns out to be their last. The evening ends with the murder of one of these old clandestine warriors, the man’s throat slit just down the street where the party is still winding down.

The murder is not as much of a surprise to Tabitha as she wishes it were – and not only because she has an unfortunate tendency to trip over dead bodies. This time, it’s not just her penchant for discovering death, it’s that a creepy but rather formidable old fortune teller visited her messieurs just the day before, attempting to warn them that death was coming for all of their old comrades. Very, very soon.

Once the prediction is proven true, Tabitha, along with her best friend and sometime sidekick, the larger-than-life, not-yet-famous, soon-to-be chef Julia Child, hunt down that fortune teller near the old – and infamous – rue des Maléfices. The street of witches.

Madame Vierca may not actually be a witch, but her predictions are frighteningly accurate. So accurate that the killer eliminates her along with as many of the original members of the old Resistance cell as they can get their hands on.

It eventually becomes clear that the killer is re-enacting Agatha Christie’s 1939 classic, And Then There Were None. Which means that one of the supposed early victims is most likely the killer. It’s up to Tabitha, with the able assistance of Inspecteur Étienne Merveille of the Paris police – or the other way around – to unmask the murderer before Tabitha’s beloved messieurs are numbered among the victims.

Escape Rating A+: The title is more apt than it first appears. In the Spirit of French Murder is a story about hauntings. Not ghosts – well, not exactly ghosts – but the haunting of the spirit. And possibly, haunting by spirits.

And all of that is intriguing and fascinating, making this a, pardon the pun, haunting fourth entry in the American in Paris series.

From the outset, this story is about the way that World War II and the Occupation still haunt both the city and the people within it. Everyone was touched by the Occupation. Everyone did things they regret. Everyone lost people they deeply miss. Ultimately, the murder spree in this story is wrapped around one person who survived but lost everyone they loved along that terrible way. A person who, as people often do, assigned blame to those who were still available for retribution instead of the vast anonymous machinery of the war and the dark souls of those who enabled its brutality.

Alongside the murders and the investigation that stalks Tabitha, her messieurs and all the remaining members of ‘les neufs bleuets’ there’s another type of haunting. The story is also haunted by the spirits that both hide and embody the soul of a place where the veil is thin and porous to both memory and the disturbing myths and legends of the weird and the wonderful that can’t be explained – only told and re-told until they become part of the, well, spirit of the place.

As part of her investigation, Tabitha is exposed to many of those old legends, as they loom over the story every bit as much as the late war. One of those myths even comes to life, right before her eyes, and then vanishes in the smoke. As all the best legends do.

I initially picked up this series with Mastering the Art of French Murder for Julia Child. As, I’m sure, did a LOT of readers. She was a fascinating figure, and even more so after the records of her wartime exploits with the OSS were declassified. In this series, she serves as a terrific introduction to life in post-war Paris as an American in Paris.

But if Julia is the bait, Tabitha Knight and her messieurs are the hook that keeps the reader coming back for more, from A Murder Most French through A Fashionably French Murder and now into the dark haunting of In the Spirit of French Murder.

Tabitha Knight is a fascinating amateur detective. On the one hand, she is very much an outsider, an American expat coming to Paris for a fresh start as the city is itself experiencing the same. OTOH, she has connections both to the city’s past and present through her messieurs and an introduction to her new home through Julia.

Between Julia’s friends at Le Cordon Bleu and her messieurs’ wide circle of friends and colleagues, Tabitha is well-within those six degrees of separation to anything and everything. And yet she’s still just a bit outside and sees things through fresh eyes. So she’s both charmed and scared by those Parisian spirits, and yet determined to keep her loved ones safe – even from themselves and their dangerous assumptions about their old friends.

The case is as twisted as the narrow rues and alleys of the old quartiers of Paris. The red herrings are as tasty as anything served up by Julia Child. Julia herself is a marvelously fluting addition to every scene in which she appears – particularly as she introduces Tabitha and the reader to the delights of post-war Paris, especially its open-air markets, its tiny kitchens, and its delicious food. But Tabitha’s quest is dark and dangerous and pokes into shadows that someone does not want to have exposed. That she has a police Inspecteur at her side – or he has her – for the nearly deadly denouement makes the whole misadventure just that much more captivating – and even more impossible for this reader to put down until the last page was turned.

Hopefully, Tabitha will eventually manage to find a way into the heart of that handsome police Inspecteur,  who often sees her as an infuriating nuisance. This series cannot stop until they figure themselves out. After all, as much as Paris is the “City of Light”, it is also the “City of Love”.

A- #BookReview: On a Rogue Planet by Anna Hackett

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A- Reviews> book reviews
A- #BookReview: On a Rogue Planet by Anna HackettOn a Rogue Planet (Phoenix Adventures) by Anna Hackett
Format: eARC
Source: author
Formats available: paperback, ebook
Genres: science fiction romance
Series: Phoenix Adventures #3
Pages: 334
Published by Anna Hackett on April 21, 2026
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble
Goodreads

Unlucky-in-love salvage mechanic, Malin Phoenix, didn’t intend to get caught up in a coup and kidnapped by a sexy cyborg. But she finds herself swept into an adventure to help the deadly, emotionless CenSec, Xander Saros, retrieve an ancient Terran artifact and save his planet.
Soon she’s racing across uncharted space and is magnetically drawn to the cyborg whose strong arms and muscled body ignite a desire that burns brighter than a supernova. But Mal can never let herself forget that she can’t fall in love with a cyborg who can never love her back.
The crowning glory of the Centax Security program, Xander is heavily enhanced, his emotions dampened to nothing to allow him to be the most efficient, lethal killer in the galaxy. As he and Malin hunt for the remnant of the galaxy’s first computer, the Antikythera Mechanism, their quest leads them into the lair of a dangerous technomancer. But Xander can’t identify his greatest threat—the enemy or the fascinating woman who’s making him feel.

My Review:

Eleven years ago I fell hard into this book, and the same thing happened again in this reread. I mean that completely. When the Phoenix Adventures series originally began in 2015, I loved them all and remembered them very fondly, but eleven years is a LONG time and a lot of books ago.

However, I must confess, this was probably a case of the right book at the right time, as I needed a guaranteed escape from reality, and this author and especially this series has always delivered.

And did it again.

The first time around, I said this book combined bits of Firefly, Deep Space 9, Babylon 5 and Linnea Sinclair’s truly excellent science fiction romance Games of Command, all of which weren’t all that distant in the rearview mirror at that time.

Those antecedents still hold, although the world has changed. Ace scrapper/engineer Malin Phoenix is still Kaylee’s sister-from-another-galactic-mister, the jumpgates that help the Phoenix cousins/brothers are a well-used and VERY convenient bit of tech also featured in DS9, B5 and Mass Effect, while unfortunately Linnea Sinclair seems to have stopped writing some years ago. (If you love SFR and can find her books, they are ALL excellent).

I’d also throw the Marvel Cinematic Universe into the pile, as the Technomancer in On a Rogue Planet and the Grandmaster in Thor: Ragnarok are brothers-from-another-galactic-mother – who they probably murdered along their evil way.

There’s a big part of me that’s gobsmacked at just how long ago 2015 feels from a real-world perspective, how many of those references that were current then are dated now, and just generally how much the world has changed in the intervening years.

What hasn’t changed, not one little itty-bitty bit, is just how good of a story this was then – and is now.

Escape Rating A-: That’s the same grade I gave On a Rogue Planet back in my original review, and it earns that grade again today. On the one hand, it’s even a bit better than it was before, in that as a long term fan of the author I can see the seeds of some of her (then) future SFR and Action/Adventure Romance series, especially Eon Warriors, Oronis Knights and (literally in this particular case) Treasure Hunter Security.

On my two other hands, I have to admit that I liked the original cover better. More importantly, and this is a “me” thing, the background plot twist about saving the women of Centax from being sold into slavery for breeding purposes is starting to ring a bit hollow. It works in the story, and it provides one hell of a motivation for throwing the evil usurper OFF Centax, but the whole “women in the fridge in jeopardy” is just getting old for me. He was plenty evil without that added incentive to remove him from his stolen power. But, as I said, that’s a “me” thing.

What I loved about this story, then and now, is the way that Malin Phoenix knows just who she is and what she’s capable of, and isn’t willing to compromise those things or make herself smaller or lesser because she doesn’t fit the box that so many men want to place her in.

And, that instead of Xander being the stereotypical uncommunicative and unemotional alpha male, he is who and what he is for a reason that makes SFnal sense. He’s been trained and programmed to be unemotional because emotions are inefficient and get in the way of his duty. Whether the way that was done began as tradition or child abuse depends a LOT on perspective in a way that is thought-provoking rather than judgmental. (Although I’d have loved more about Centax because THAT would be a fascinating discussion in its own right.)

All of that being said, I had another fantastic reading time with the Phoenix brothers and cousins. So much so that I’m looking forward eagerly to the next re-release in this series, In a Dangerous Orbit, as well as the author’s next contemporary romance, Never and Always, in her Langston Hotels series.

But the Phoenix Adventures have always held a special place in this reader’s heart, and I’m beyond thrilled at this opportunity to experience all of their adventures again!

Grade A #BookReview: A Long and Speaking Silence by Nghi Vo

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A Reviews> book reviews
Grade A #BookReview: A Long and Speaking Silence by Nghi VoA Long and Speaking Silence (The Singing Hills Cycle, #7) by Nghi Vo
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, ebook, audiobook
Genres: Asian inspired fantasy, fantasy
Series: Singing Hills Cycle #7
Pages: 144
Published by Tordotcom on May 5, 2026
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

From USA Today bestselling author Nghi Vo comes a beautiful new tale in the Hugo Award-winning Singing Hills Cycle, drawn from the earliest days of Chih's career as a wandering cleric.
"Nghi Vo is so good."—NPR on The Brides of High Hill
Every story begins somewhere.
On the banks of the Ya-lé River, the town of Luntien gathers to celebrate the start of the rainy season, but the celebration is marred by the arrival of refugees from the sea. Everyone has a story about the foreigners newly in their midst—lazy, violent, unwanted—while the refugees themselves grieve the loss of the home they loved.
Cleric Chih, very recently still Novice Chih, is also a stranger in Luntien. A moment of carelessness and bad luck leaves them waiting tables as they struggle to establish themself as a real cleric. A cleric’s job is to listen and record, but the stories emerging in Luntien are ugly and violent, as hard to predict as the river itself. With their hoopoe companion Almost Brilliant by their side, Chih must help the refugees while also unraveling a mystery that may have roots in their own faraway home in the abbey of Singing Hills.
In the seventh entry of the award-winning Singing Hills series, we meet Chih and Almost Brilliant just beginning their journey together as Chih assumes their place on the road and in the world.
The novellas of the Singing Hills series are standalone stories linked by the Cleric Chih, and may be read in any order.

My Review:

This review is a bit early, as it won’t be out for another couple of weeks. But that’s fitting as this story takes place early in Cleric Chih’s career. Not just before the events of The Empress of Salt and Fortune, but before Chih became the more-or-less, usually, mostly, polished and above all experienced Cleric readers of the series have come to know and love.

A Long and Speaking Silence is a portrait of Chih as a young, naive and inexperienced Cleric, so wet behind the ears that they still look for an elder standing beside them when someone calls them “Cleric Chih” when they still mostly think of themselves as “Novice Chih”.

Chih’s circumstances in this story make that point extremely clear to everyone – especially Chih. Not that their companion, the neixin Almost Brilliant, will ever let them forget what an idiot they’ve been. Or are being.

Chih is stuck in the town of Luntien waiting tables at a busy restaurant during the town’s busiest season. Chih was robbed of the packet carrying their expense money, so they’ve been forced to earn their own keep until their pay packet catches up to them.

It’s a learning experience for Chih in more ways than one. Certainly, they learn how to wait tables and serve customers while being run off their feet – and without breaking half the crockery along the way. They learn to live by their own wits. They learn how to make friends and be part of a group that is made up of all sorts of people from all kinds of backgrounds with all sorts of interesting stories.

And they learn that the collection of those stories that is the mission of the Singing Hills Abbey will go a whole lot more smoothly if they let the stories come to them instead of pestering people to tell those stories at a time and circumstance of Chih’s choosing instead of their own. It’s a difficult lesson for Chih, one that they’ve learned by the time we met them in that first book. In this story we get to see how that lesson began to take root.

Mostly, however, they learn the beginnings of patience, as well as the hard lesson that a closed mouth gathers no feet. Or fists.

Escape Rating A: This story, and the whole Singing Hills Cycle of which it is but the latest – and earliest – chapter, is a story that grows upon the reader and in its telling at the same time. But even though this is a very early story in Chih’s career, it continues the trend of the series as a whole – that Chih has moved from being outside of each story, a mere chronicler, to being the central character.

The story that Chih is the center of may be their work waiting tables, but it’s not the important bit except in its effect on Chih. Although it certainly is part of the lesson they need to learn in Luntien.

The greater story in the town is a refugee crisis. And if those parts of the story sound familiar, they should because they are universal in the broader canvas even if they are different in the details. Luntien is flooded with refugees from the Verdant Islands, displaced by weather and war.

The refugees are more than willing to work, but there are more of them than the town can absorb. There’s nowhere for them to go, they’re forced to live on charity while being resented on all sides. It’s a familiar pattern, and it’s happening all over the world.

It’s turning Luntien into a powder keg. Chih only wants to help, but most of what they do is make things worse by jumping in too fast and putting their foot – both their feet – into their mouth. They mean well but they’re mostly not doing well at it.

(It’s a bit like a training montage in many stories, in that Chih thinks they see what’s wrong, tries and fails to fix something, makes a mess of it, retreats to try again, and slowly learns their own lesson. That they need to listen before they talk. That it’s not about them, it’s about the people who need their help – even if that help is just to get their stories told.)

Chih is also trying to fulfill their own mission, to collect stories. And it’s only once they stop talking and start listening – after carving out a bit of space to do their own work – that they discover the bittersweet ending to a story they never imagined would be waiting for them.

In the end, this seventh entry in the long-running Singing Hills Cycle novella series was an absorbing story of youthful impatience, painful lessons and hidden heartbreak. The series as a whole has been a thoughtful and thought-provoking delight. I’m just sad that I’ll have to wait another whole year (if not more) for Cleric Chih’s next story.

A- #BookReview: Trouble’s Turn to Lose by Susan M. Boyer

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A- Reviews> book reviews
A- #BookReview: Trouble’s Turn to Lose by Susan M. BoyerTrouble's Turn to Lose (Carolina Tales, #3) by Susan M. Boyer
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: hardcover, large print, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: cozy mystery, mystery, relationship fiction, Southern fiction, women's fiction
Series: Carolina Tales #3
Pages: 334
on April 7, 2026
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

"A cozy mystery with a Southern accent—heartwarming characters, a coastal setting, and a surprise ending you won't see coming makes this a book for everyone's reading list!"
— Karen White, New York Times Bestselling Author
✦ ✦ ✦
Private Investigator Hadley Cooper has a knack for finding trouble—and this time, it's wearing pearls.
Life on Sullivan's Island is about as close to bliss as it gets—bike rides at sunrise, cases that don't make headlines, and a romance with SLED agent Cash Reynolds that's finally on solid ground. They have one ironclad rule: never work the same case.
When a wealthy Charleston socialite turns up dead, Cash charges her housekeeper, Bridget Donovan, with murder. But the young single mother has a formidable ally in Carolyn Talbot, a local matriarch who implores Hadley to help. Hadley's heart overrides her head, and her agreement with Cash is gone like confetti in a hurricane.
Soon she's wading through a tangle of suspects—blue bloods with deadly secrets, her client's scheming ex-monster-in-law, and the greatest unknown country singer in Nashville. But Hadley's also grappling with a mystery closer to home—one that will shake everything she thought she knew about her family.
To find justice for Bridget, Hadley will have to risk her heart, her life—and maybe her grip on reality.

My Review:

P.I. Hadley Cooper and her significant other, SLED (South Carolina Law Enforcement Division) Agent Cash Reynolds, promised each other NOT to get involved in each other’s cases. (Even though that’s EXACTLY how they met in the first place in Big Trouble on Sullivan’s Island) Which REALLY meant that Hadley promised not to take clients involved in Cash’s cases, as he has much less choice in what he gets assigned than she has in what cases she chooses to take.

But sometimes, the cases choose her, and that’s merely the first problem Hadley faces in this story.

Not exactly the first, just the first that she’s willing to admit to. Because the first real problem that Hadley faces might not be real at all. It’s the conversation she has with her mother’s ghost. (Not that there aren’t others on Sullivan’s Island and nearby Stella Maris who see – and don’t merely imagine – ghosts. But Hadley doesn’t know that -YET.)

What Hadley knows, or believes, or is afraid she just hallucinated, is that her mother came back to tell her three important things. “I’m so sorry”, Help her” and “I love you.” A message that seems so cryptic as to be hallucinatory right up until one of the island’s grandes dames, Caroline Talbot, convinces Hadley to talk with a young woman who is being railroaded to prison – by Hadley’s beau, Cash.

Cash is just following the evidence – evidence that ALL points to Bridget Donovan having murdered her employer Patricia Gaillard. But Hadley’s bullshit detector says that Bridget isn’t shoveling any manure, and that the frame around her is WAY too neat and tidy. And that, perhaps, the very obviousness of the whole thing is leading the police to an easy conclusion instead of beginning a thorough investigation.

An investigation that Hadley decides that she MUST take – in spite of her promise. No matter how much trouble and heartbreak it might – will – cause for her personally. Because her momma told her to “Help her”, and her momma was always right – sooner or later or, as in this case, both.

Escape Rating A-: I looked for comfort reads this week, and so far I’ve definitely found them! Admittedly, my search combined the list of “guaranteed good reads” in the back of my mind with the list of what’s just come out or is coming soon that I KNEW would be just what I was looking for.

Which led me back to Sullivan’s Island, P.I. Hadley Cooper and even back to the heroine of the author’s earlier cozy mystery series, Liz Talbot. I came into this new book in the Carolina Tales series, after Big Trouble on Sullivan’s Island and The Sullivan Island Supper Club, expecting a gorgeous setting, an interesting protagonist in Hadley, a dead body and a clever investigation.

And that’s precisely what I got. The opportunity to catch up with old friends like Liz was a delightful bonus to a terrific mystery.

One of the things I love about a good mystery, cozy or otherwise, is the way that even though the reader KNOWS that the cops have arrested the wrong person, that doesn’t mean that there aren’t plenty of other plausible suspects and oodles of tasty red herrings to get led down the primrose path by.

(Just because the cops are already down a false trail doesn’t mean that the reader can’t find plenty of others on their own.)

Which is exactly what happened to this reader.

Unlike so many mysteries with this kind of start, the police aren’t doing anything wrong and aren’t deliberately taking the easy way out. The evidence they have requires Bridget’s arrest. It’s not personal, it’s not prejudiced, it’s not laziness. They’re doing their jobs the way they are supposed to be done.

But Hadley doesn’t have to do THAT job. She can dig and keep digging until something in this case makes sense. Because the evidence that points to Bridget only makes sense if you don’t look too hard at where it doesn’t make sense at all.

Which is where Hadley’s search begins. And serves up all those red herrings for the reader. Not a one of which fries up into the real deal when it comes to this particular tangled case, making for a delightfully twisted mystery.

Speaking of twisted, the twist that this case puts into Hadley’s love life feels real and not a misunderstandammit OR added just for romantic tension. Hadley and Cash are on opposite ends of the same profession. Or opposite perspectives. He’s looking for guilt, she’s searching for innocence, and their professional lives are guaranteed to intersect – and badly. The thing that brought them together looks like it might tear them apart.

Which is where that blast from the author’s past series, in the form of P.I. Liz Talbot and her husband and partner Nate come in. Liz and Nate were once in a similar quandary (in Liz’s terrific series which starts with Lowcountry Boil), and solved the issue by working together. Liz gets more involved than she should in Hadley’s case because she misses her old job, but in the process shows Hadley a) that she needs someone to watch her back when cases get dangerous – and they do – and b) that there’s an obvious solution to the conflict of interest with Cash if they’re willing to take that leap.

That Liz ALSO has the answer to the first of Hadley’s momma’s cryptic instructions was a delightful way of pulling that opening scene into a lovely circle.

I loved the first book in the Carolina Tales series, Big Trouble on Sullivan’s Island, thought that the second book was a bit of a mixed bag, but I fell head over heels into Trouble’s Turn to Lose – and not just because the cats that Hadley adopts are adorable – and sound a lot like my own Luna and Tuna. I’m hopeful that Hadley will have more mysteries to solve – and that Goose and Nala will find more laps to sit in, in future books in the series, whenever they appear!

Grade A #BookReview: Fierce Poison by Will Thomas

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A Reviews> book reviews
Grade A #BookReview: Fierce Poison by Will ThomasFierce Poison (Barker & Llewelyn, #13) by Will Thomas
Format: ebook
Source: purchased from Amazon
Formats available: hardcover, large print, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: historical fiction, historical mystery
Series: Barker & Llewelyn #13
Pages: 304
Published by Minotaur Books on April 12, 2022
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

London, 1893, there is poisoner loose in the city, with deaths piling up, and private enquiry agents Cyrus Barker and Thomas Llewelyn are apparently his next target in Fierce Poison by Will Thomas.
Private Enquiry agent Cyrus Barker has just about seen it all—he's been attacked by assassins, his office has been bombed, and evil-doers have even nearly killed his dog. But never before has a potential client dropped dead in his office. When Roland Fitzhugh, Member of Parliment arrives to consult Barker and his partner Thomas Llewelyn, he falls to the floor, dead, upon entering. As they soon learn, he's been poisoned with a cyanide laced raspberry tart, and the adulterated tarts also take out an entire family in the East End. Labelled the Mad Pie Man by the press, Barker and Llewelyn are hired by former Prime Minister William Gladstone to find out who has targeted the House of Commons's newest member.
But before they can even begin, they find themselves the latest target of this mad poisoner—with Barker's butler poisoned with digitalis and dozens of diabolic traps discovered at their home. On the run from their unseen adversary, Barker and Llewelyn must uncover the threads that connect these seemingly random acts and stop the killer before they and their closest friends and family become the latest casualties.

My Review:

A man drops dead at Cyrus Barker’s feet. That’s happened before, even occasionally because Barker has caused the death. But he’s never had it happen in his office before. Mostly because his reputation proceeds him into every room and back alley of London, and no villain who is good enough to get that close is stupid enough to try it in Barker’s own stronghold. At least not in a face-to-face confrontation.

(That’s actually important later, in more ways than seems remotely obvious at first.)

But Roland Fitzhugh, MP, did not come to Barker’s Private Enquiry Agency to kill Barker. He came for help to prevent his own murder after Scotland Yard told him he was exaggerating the threat. Little did he know that it was already too late.

Fitzhugh’s final words to Barker – to anyone at all – as he expired on the office floor – were a gasped, “Help me”. Which Barker chooses to take as his first, last and only instruction from a client who will be unable to pay his bill. A fact which doesn’t matter to Barker, as he feels duty bound to solve the murder.

Even though Barker’s assumption of that duty puts himself, his business partner and chronicler, Thomas Llewelyn, and all that either of them holds dear – including their own lives – into the crosshairs of a serial killer that the newssheets dub “The Mad Pie Man”. A killer who is willing to poison an entire family – and Barker’s entire household – to protect the secret of his identity until his mad murder spree is done.

Escape Rating A: Last week ended on a ‘flail and bail’, which is the point where I turn to comfort reads to get back into the swing of reading and reviewing. The Barker & Llewelyn series has been at the top of my comfort reads list since I dove into the first book, Some Danger Involved, back in 2023 in the throes of a similar situation. Series like this one are perfect for me – whether every single book in the series is or not – because they’re all good at least and usually quite a bit more. The worlds are fully fleshed out, often because there is plenty of material to build upon. What I particularly love about mysteries – as differentiated from thrillers – is that they are all about the disruption of order and more, well, comfortingly, its restoration. Good triumphs, and evil gets its just desserts. Maybe not quite as much as I’d like sometimes, but enough to be satisfying. AND to get me out of my reading slump.

The mystery in this one is filled with poisoned red herrings. At first it seems as if Fitzhugh was killed by chance – one poisoned pie piece on a sample tray that others picked from unscathed. But Barker never believes the easy answer, so when the entire family of the boy giving out free pie samples is poisoned that night – with an entirely different poison – Barker knows this case is more than it seems.

Also deeper and more diabolical than the fictional Sweeney Todd story that it resembles.

Even as the ‘Mad Pie Man” steps up his mad campaign against Barker and Llewelyn, invading their house, poisoning both the butler and the dog and leaving traps in every corner and cubbyhole, Barker & Llewelyn are scrambling to discover what the case if about in the first place.

It’s become obvious that Fitzhugh was the original target, and everything else is just covering tracks, but why? Fitzhugh was both a Member of Parliament and a lawyer, so there are plenty of possible motives for his death. Perhaps too many.

So the traps close in, Barker and Llewelyn painstakingly sifting through Fitzhugh’s actions and cases, while the Pie Man escalates his attempts to take them out before they uncover his secrets. It’s a cat and mouse game where both sides think they are the cat – and both sides have deadly claws. The Pie Man has already drawn first blood – but Barker & Llewelyn are more determined to protect themselves – and all their own.

The case was fascinating because, in the end, justice was served by someone to whom justice had once been denied. And because once the truth was revealed, everyone recognized that his cause was just even though his methods were reprehensible. And it’s a case that went on longer than it might have – but still compellingly so – because the killer was close and hiding in plain sight behind Barker’s and Llewelyn’s own assumptions – just as the victim once did.

Ultimately, this was another fascinating and successful case, wrapped up in Llewelyn’s concerns about the future of the Agency, even at the point where he’s not certain either of them has one. The result of those concerns should provide yet more interesting twists and turns in future entries in the series.

Next up is Heart of the Nile, which may not go all the way to the actual Nile, but still sounds fascinating. It looks like the case will plumb the depths of the British Museum and dig deep into the heart of, not the Nile, but the heart of (perhaps) Cleopatra’s mummy. My reading heart is already beating faster with anticipation!

A- #AudioBookReview: Time Will Tell by Hannah Bonam-Young

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A- Reviews> audio reviews> audiobooks> book reviews
A- #AudioBookReview: Time Will Tell by Hannah Bonam-YoungTime Will Tell by Hannah Bonam-Young
Narrator: Victoria Connolly, Maxim Reston
Format: audiobook, ebook
Source: borrowed from Amazon Kindle Unlimited
Formats available: ebook, audiobook
Genres: contemporary romance, romantic comedy
Series: Improbable Meet-Cute: Second Chances #2
Pages: 92
Length: 1 hour and 48 minutes
Published by Amazon Original Stories on January 20, 2026
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon
Goodreads

When a mysterious time capsule leads a Toronto teacher to England, she discovers some loves are worth crossing oceans—and decades—to find, from New York Times bestselling author Hannah Bonam-Young.
When a history teacher receives a letter from her deceased grandmother revealing a secret love affair in the 1950s, it leads her to a time capsule hidden decades ago. But it’s the charming grandson of her grandmother’s lost love who changes everything, proving that sometimes the heart knows exactly where—and when—it belongs.
Hannah Bonam-Young’s Time Will Tell is part of The Improbable Meet-Cute: Second Chances, stories for star-crossed lovers and hopeless romantics. They can be read or listened to in one sitting. Let’s do it again.

My Review:

Too much of a good thing is not always wonderful. Especially when the good thing is all about a bad thing. I’ll explain later.

Nevertheless, that’s how I found myself searching for something a whole lot lighter and fluffier than the book I had planned to close out this week. Which, come to think of it, is how I ended up reviewing Accidentally Yours, the first story in the Improbable Meet-Cute Second Chances series and what led me to pick up the second story, Time Will Tell, to finish out this week on the lighter note that it needed.

This turned out to be exactly what I was looking for – and even better than I’d hoped.

Like the first book, this is definitely a meet-cute, but it isn’t the usual sort of second-chance romance at all. Although it absolutely does represent a second chance, but it’s a second chance at a couple of removes in a way that turned out to be lovely.

Georgia Whitaker is a history teacher, who is doing her best to get her senior-year high school class to see that history is happening all around them all the time in ways both large and small, but always meaningful.

She’s also found a very personal historical project to serve as her example – and the students are more engaged than they have been for quite some time. Then again, it’s not often that a high school glass gets to dissect the history of one of their own teachers!

Georgia and her class have been diving into the history of a very special – and very personal – time capsule. Once upon a time, in the 1950s – which does make her students giggle and snort more than a bit – Georgia’s beloved grandmother Bonnie Foster found the love of her life with Martha Bennett. But in the conservative 1950s, their love was only safe as long as it was hidden.

When they parted, Bonnie and Martha put together a time capsule of their photos, letters and memories, and buried it near the Toronto apartment where they’d been so happy together for not nearly long enough.

Upon her death, Bonnie left her granddaughter, Georgia, a letter that revealed the truth she could not manage to say during her lifetime, along with the location of the buried treasure. But not its key. Martha took the key with her back to England.

Which is where Georgia and her class come in. Georgia has researched – as history teachers do – and discovered the identity of Martha’s grandchild, a Dr. Callum Lewis in Nottinghamshire England. Her class helps, hinders and snarks their collective way through Georgia’s first email to Callum, and is invested in seeing what story time will tell, seven decades after Bonnie and Martha went their separate ways..

Escape Rating A-: There’s history, and then there’s history. I chose this story because it appealed on multiple levels. I am just as fascinated with history as Georgia and her prized student Phaedra were. Time capsules are weird and fascinating in their own right as well, especially when they turn up something unexpected like Bonnie and Martha’s long-hidden secret.

The book I intended to close this week off with was also historical, and it was also a history that fascinates me, but it was dark and heavy and way too much like another dark and heavy historical fiction book I just finished. Too much historical evil too close together turned out to be too much gruesomeness even though both books were good. I’ll come back to the second one in a couple of weeks once I get rid of more of the grues.

But this was light, frothy and especially fun. Also very romantic in a way that we don’t usually have a chance to see in something this short. AND it comes full circle in a delightful way, as Bonnie and Martha’s time capsule is filled with their correspondence, while the romance between Bonnie’s granddaughter Georgia and Martha’s grandson Callum is also a romance through correspondence.

Even though the increasingly flirty emails between Georgia and Callum are facilitated through the instantaneousness of the internet this is still an epistolary romance. It’s so cute and works SO well because even in email they have the chance to think about what they’ll each say and anticipate what the other will respond. The built-in delays of their respective time zones, Callum in the UK and Georgia in Toronto, combined with their busy schedules, build in minutes and even hours of worry and wonder and waiting to see if they’re on the same page even though they’re an ocean apart.

Time Will Tell, well, tells a marvelously sweet romance that manages to build beautifully. Even though they fall in love nearly at first sight of each other’s words, they still have enough time to earn the HEA that their grandmothers were too far ahead of their time to see.

As with many of the Amazon Original Stories, this was even better in audio. Victoria Connolly was terrific as Georgia, and Maxim Reston was marvelous, including his accent, as Callum. One of the things I like best about these stories in general is that the casting is generally spot on and the stories are even better when each character has their own narrator, and that was delightfully true this production.

I’m sure I’ll be back with another one of these the next time I need a light and frothy reading/listening pick-me-up!

#AudioBookReview: Lightning Runes by Harry Turtledove

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B Reviews> book reviews
#AudioBookReview: Lightning Runes by Harry TurtledoveLightning Runes (City of Shadows, 2) by Harry Turtledove
Narrator: Paul Boehmer
Format: audiobook, eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss, supplied by publisher via Libro.fm
Formats available: hardcover, ebook, audiobook
Genres: alternate history, fantasy, paranormal, urban fantasy
Series: City of Shadows #2
Pages: 354
Length: 13 hours and 8 minutes
Published by Caezik SF & Fantasy, Tantor Media on April 16, 2026
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

Hardboiled Noir meets Urban Fantasy in a post-WWII Los Angeles where vampires, zombies, and demons are part of the social fabric.

Magic is just another way to get killed in the City of Angels.

Los Angeles, 1940s. The war is over, but the shadows are growing teeth. In this gritty Historical Urban Fantasy, detective work requires more than a badge and a .38. It requires an understanding of the runes that thrum beneath the pavement.

It started with a knock on the door. It usually does. Now there’s a body, a missing musician, and a trail of magic that smells like ozone and bad luck. The LAPD is out of its depth. The "square" world is waking up to a reality they aren't prepared to handle.

My Review:

I picked this up because I fell hard for the first book in the series, Twice as Dead and was hoping for more of the same. That first book managed to combine the hard-boiled, noir-ish sensibilities of down-on-their-luck detectives like Sam Spade, Philip Marlowe and Easy Rawlins with the paranormal world of Dan Shambles into an urban fantasy that mixed the best of the ‘old skool’ of that genre with a bit of paranormal romance and the kind of thoroughgoing alternate world building that the author is famous for.

The City of Shadows that the series is set in is an alternate version of Los Angeles in a slightly skewed version of our own world. A world where all the creatures that go bump in the night – wizards, vampires, werewolves, ghosts and zombies, among others, are a known and sorta/kinda accepted part of society. About as well accepted as any other minority population, but also known to be just as real even if just as looked down upon as any other such group.

We never do find out whether the vampires, etc., came out of the coffin one relatively recent dark night or whether their existence has been accepted all along. We are, however, in a 1940s post-World War II era where the powers lined up more or less the same way but under different names – and with the supernatural fighting on both sides.

Just as in the first book, P.I. Jack Mitchell has several cases on his desk that he’s all too afraid are going to turn out to be one big, nasty mess. And he’s right. The vampire whose Nazi views and aggressive behavior drawing the wrong kind of attention to Vampire Village, the werewolf stalking the streets on full moon nights, the mob involvement in the record business AND the blackmail of the queer, black owners of the best jazz club in town shouldn’t have anything to do with each other. But Jack’s luck doesn’t work that way.

He knows they’ll be connected, if only to make his life that much more difficult and in that much more peril. All he has to do is keep his own skin in one piece long enough to unwind all the tangled threads of the case before they can tie him down or burn him out – again – and this time for good.

Escape Rating B: The cover of Lightning Runes sums up my mixed feelings a whole lot better than I ever expected. First, vampire Dora Urban wouldn’t be caught alive, unalive or dead in that dress or with that ridiculous expression on her face. Even after centuries – or more – as a vampire she’s still too much of an aristocrat for either. Meanwhile, there’s something wrong, like uncanny valley wrong or human bodies don’t quite work that way wrong, with the man standing in for Jack Mitchell. The story was like that too for me, a sense of ‘almost but not quite’ right – or at least not quite as good as the first book.

I really wanted to love this one because Twice as Dead was just so good. Parts of this WERE good. The cases were fascinating, the way that they came together took dogged investigation and a bit of luck and the way that Jack teased around all the edges of everything until the pieces started coming together was compelling. The way that Jack gathered more friends around him than he ever thought he’d have to get the job done was terrific.

But, and it’s a fairly big but, the pace slowed down every single time that Jack either got lost in his memories or got pulled down inside his own head in his totally righteous resentment of the way that the US of his 1940s – and ours – did not live up to the image it had of itself as the land of the free, the home of the brave, where all men are created equal.

Because he knows first-hand it’s not true. Jack is mixed-race, able to ‘pass’ in either direction. He sees the way the corrupt LAPD pull over men just a shade darker than himself for beatdowns in plain sight that people just pretend isn’t happening right before their eyes. He knows it could be him.

In the wake of their version of World War II, Jack still gets nightmares about his service during the war, even as he’s thinking about where he would have ended up if he hadn’t passed and wondering whether it would have been safer AND less scarring to be with the black troops or whether he’d just have a different set of scars.

While the many Jews in his neighborhood, and among his friends, remind him that there are people who have it WAY worse than he ever did – and that it’s all wrong and doesn’t look like it’s going to get righted anytime soon – if at all.

All of the above is, well, real. Very real. And it’s equally realistic that Jack thinks about all of it, gets reminded of the war all too often because he’s still fighting it in his head, hates the new ‘restricted’ neighborhoods – restricted to white people only, no nonwhites, no Jews allowed in spite of the laws against such restrictions – and seethes about all of it. That the villain this time around is his world’s equivalent of an SS officer who seems to be hell-bent on resurrecting his ‘Leader’s’ plans and policies in the US – if not the actual bastard himself – continuously pokes Mitchell’s wounds and resentments throughout the entire story.

The issue, as far as the book is concerned, is that it pulls the reader out of the story every time Jack goes down into these dark trenches, and he does it a LOT. I both sympathized and empathized with him every single time, but it either happened too often or went too deep and too far and too much.

Humphrey Bogart as Sam Spade in ‘The Maltese Falcon’

After all of Jack’s internal angst, the ending was a bit anticlimactic – and a bit of a deus ex machina. It was also a lot of fun, a popping of a huge balloon of tense anticipation with the lolloping of a ginormous shaggy dog. But as fun and funny as it was while it was happening, it was almost forgettable after the dark depths of the case itself. Your reading mileage may vary.

Or listening mileage, as the story lends itself well to audio with its first-person protagonist, very much in the Sam Spade/Philip Marlowe talking to himself and breaking the fourth wall kind of way. That being said, I kept waffling between thinking that Jack Mitchell didn’t sound as much like Spade or Marlowe as he thought he did or that the narrator didn’t sound quite as much like portrayals of Spade or Marlowe as I thought he ought to have. Your listening mileage may seriously vary on that one, especially as it may just be that Humphrey Bogart cast such a long, gravelly shadow as Sam Spade in The Maltese Falcon that it’s STILL impossible to shake.

In the end, I have to say that I liked this rather than loved it the way I did Twice as Dead. But I liked it more than enough to want to see it continue. I also need to find out how Jack’s office cats, Old Man Mose and Mehitabel are doing – and what they’re doing to destroy Jack’s office even more!

A+ #BookReview: Stay for a Spell by Amy Coombe

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A+ Reviews> blog tours> book reviews
A+ #BookReview: Stay for a Spell by Amy CoombeStay for a Spell by Amy Coombe
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, ebook, audiobook
Genres: cozy fantasy, fantasy, fantasy romance, romantasy
Pages: 384
Published by Ace on April 14, 2026
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

A cursed princess must discover what her heart truly longs for in this charmingly cozy romantic fantasy for everyone who’s ever lost – or found – themselves in a bookshop.
Princess Tanadelle of the Widdenmar is disillusioned with life as a princess. She longs for real conversation, the chance to build a life of her own making, and uninterrupted reading time.
During a routine royal visit to the town of Little Pepperidge, Tandy’s dream comes true when she finds herself cursed to remain in a run-down bookshop until she unlocks her heart’s desire. Certain that someone will figure out how to break the curse eventually, and delighted by the prospect of an entire bookstore of her own, Tandy settles into life among the stacks. She finds it easy to exchange balls and endless state dinners for teetering piles of books and an irritatingly handsome pirate who seems bent on stealing her stock.
She even starts to believe she's stumbled into her very own happily ever after.
There's just one, minor problem: as Tandy's royal duties go unfulfilled, her frantic parents start sending princes to woo her, each one of them certain their kiss will break the curse. After all, what more could a princess want but a prince?

My Review:

There’s a saying that every cloud has a silver lining. As this story begins, Princess Tanadelle has just been cursed – which really should have been the cloud. But not for Tandy. Being cursed to be confined to a bookshop in the tiny town of Little Pepperidge wouldn’t exactly be a curse for any lifelong reader – and Tandy certainly is that.

From Tandy’s perspective, this so-called curse is the biggest silver lining she’s ever found. It’s not just that she can read to her heart’s content – something that her royal duties have NEVER permitted her to do – it’s that she can stay put and away from the endless duties that being part of the royal family of the Widdenmar obligates her to carry out.

Or rather, the endless duties that her parents, the King and Queen of the Widdenmar, and her older sister, the Crown Prince (not a typo, Prince is a gender neutral term for the heir to any throne in this world) have thrust upon her. None of her duties are onerous, and Tandy recognizes that she leads a VERY privileged life.

But Tandy is the ‘working’ royal who travels up and down the kingdom, representing the royal family in an endless round of anniversaries, dedications, etc., etc., to the point where they only times Tandy gets to come home are when the court is about to move to a different region for the upcoming season.

Her never-ending travel schedule is enough to make the READER tired just reading about it.

Tandy’s curse, as much as it inconveniences her royal parents, is an absolute delight for her. She can stay put. She can sleep in the same bed every night. She has a bit of privacy and something to actually DO every day instead of just waiting for her next appearance and pretending not to have a single opinion about anything at all because she might offend someone if she even asks a pointed question. No one would ever say she has a hard life, but it is wearing. (Or it is from Tandy’s perspective and the reader certainly catches that feeling.)

This is very much a cozy fantasy, so no one is being evil in this situation. Tandy’s parents are a bit single-minded and a bit clueless, while Tandy is an overt people-pleaser who simply doesn’t know how to say “no” and police her own boundaries.

Everybody gets a whole bunch of life lessons in this one, starting with Tandy.

The bookshop isn’t a curse, it’s really a gift in curse disguise. The curse is in the pursuit of the solution. Because to break the curse, Tandy has to discover what her heart’s desire IS and grab it. It doesn’t have to be love – and it mostly isn’t.

Which doesn’t stop her parents from sending a literal rain of princes to her shop to cure her curse with a kiss. Because that’s the way fairy tales are supposed to work. But this isn’t and it doesn’t while the town benefits GREATLY from the princes, their entourages, and all the tourists who come to see the cursed princess and all the princes.

The problem with the curse, from Tandy’s perspective, is that her whole life has been about what other people need, want, and desire. She’s never been allowed to want anything for herself. The curse and the shop that comes with it, are the first opportunity she’s ever had to live just for herself and figure out what SHE wants out of her life.

Which might just turn out to be a life on her own terms. If she can just manage to tell her well-meaning, overbearing, royal parents, “NO” for the first time in her whole, entire, duty-bound life.

Escape Rating A+: Readers will definitely want to “stay for a spell” in Tandy’s magical bookshop. This is a cozy fantasy that will go down every bit as easily as the lattes in Legends and Lattes and the tea in Tomes and Tea – even if just the idea of “turnip leaf tea” makes the reader’s mouth pucker every bit as much as it does Tandy’s.

Which does lead to the one thing I kept wondering. Tandy can’t leave the shop’s property. She can’t exit the front door, she can’t vault the fence in the back garden. But people can enter the shop – and do from her very first day. Why doesn’t she get food delivery arranged? Turnips all the time have to be getting boring even with magical cooking techniques to make them less “turnip-y”. I did wonder. Often. A lot, actually. But that wondering never stopped me from falling in love with the story and its characters. That this is the author’s DEBUT novel is amazing, turnip leaf tea and all!

Because Tandy has a steady visitor from the very beginning in the person of Sasha, a teenaged dracone who would be a goth if goths existed in this world. (In my head Sasha looks like Madame Vastra from Doctor Who, but your imaginary casting mileage may vary).

In Sasha, Tandy finds a kindred soul, someone who can spend hours lost in a good book and who needs a purpose to take herself out of herself. Tandy needs a helper and a guide, Sasha needs a safe haven in which to feel her own feelings, and their friendship is glorious for them both.

Tandy’s other visitor opens her world, as she’s not the only cursed person in town. The ‘barn pirate’, a man afraid of the sea he loves, can’t be kept out of the shop no matter how much he infuriates Tandy at every turn. But just like Sasha, the pirate treats Tandy as herself and not as Princess Tanadelle, helping to figure out who Tandy might want to be if she could choose for herself.

This story, just like Legends and Lattes (particularly Bookshops & Bonedust), Tomes & Tea (beginning with Can’t Spell Treason Without Tea) and Adenashire from its start in A Fellowship of Bakers & Magic, are all cozy fantasies that combine the building of a business with the fulfilment of a lifelong dream and just the right touch of romance into something very special.

Tandy’s curse, as expected for a cozy fantasy story, turns out to be a blessing in disguise. The charm of the story is in the way that she goes about it, not just that she doesn’t EVER sit on her hands and wait to be rescued, but that she works hard at making a new life for herself, even if it might be temporary and even if she doesn’t have a clue what she’s doing most of the time.

We simply like her, we enjoy watching her muddle through – even with the endless supply of turnips – and wish that every library and bookshop was supplied with a helpful nest of bluecaps to light the way AND help readers find the books they’re looking for.

I especially enjoyed the way that the ‘parade of princes’ was handled for how it subverted so many tropes. Tandy dreads the princes. Not because they’re evil, not because anything bad is going to happen, but for the string of disappointments. Especially the issues surrounding the last prince, which is built up to be terrible – and is, but not in any of the ways that the reader expects and it’s charmingly done.

I had a terrific time with Tandy and her bookshop in Little Pepperidge. The story gives off big cozy fantasy feels, so if you loved Legends and Lattes, Tomes & Tea, Adenashire, The Teller of Small Fortunes and its follow-up, The Keeper of Magical Things, you’re in for a real treat. (And in spite of having, admittedly, MANY of the same readalikes as yesterday’s book, Stay for a Spell and Death Meets Cute are delightfully different from each other. They may use a lot of the same settings and tropes, but they use them VERY differently. Which does not mean that they are not also readalikes for each other, because they certainly are).

I’m especially happy to be able to wrap this up with Tanadelle Courcy is NOT a Princess Anymore – and just like Violet Thistlewaite no longer being a villain, it’s the making of Violet, Tandy and this charming and cozy fantasy romance.

A- #BookReview: Death Meets Cute by J. Penner

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A- Reviews> book reviews
A- #BookReview: Death Meets Cute by J. PennerDeath Meets Cute by J. Penner
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: cozy fantasy, fantasy, fantasy romance, grumpy/sunshine romance, romantasy
Pages: 304
Published by Poisoned Pen Press on April 28, 2026
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

"Filled with so much love, heart, and delicious baked goods." —Rebecca Thorne, USA Today bestselling author of Can't Spell Treason Without Tea
I am more than capable of being evil today. I think…
Iris Weyward wants to be bad. Truly bad. Terrifyingly, gloriously villainous. But after helping her sisters unleash a spell to throw the realm into chaos, Iris is left feeling strangely empty—and still not the villain of her dreams. So, she sets off for the quiet town of Fraywell to build her wicked legacy alone. 
Things start a crooked little cottage, a reputation for curses and potions, and a healthy dose of fear from the locals. But when her ogre bodyguard disappears, Iris needs new muscle. Good thing a fearsome orc just toppled over in her yard. Naturally, she decides to reanimate him. It's a perfect solution. 
Only, Talon isn't the brooding warrior she was hoping for. He's gentle. He bakes. Worst of all, he's nice. But Iris can't possibly have a thing for her new employee. She's supposed to be the most wicked witch in town! 
While Iris struggles to turn Talon into the enforcer she deserves, her sisters arrive seeking help—their magic is fading, and the cause may be closer than any of them realize. The timing couldn't be worse, and falling for an orc wasn't supposed to be part of her villain era, but it might turn out to be the best spell she's ever cast…

My Review:

What’s a witch to do when a blessing has curdled into a curse? Not that the Weyward Sisters generally have much to do with blessings because they have a well-earned reputation for evil to maintain. After all, they’re the ones responsible for the recent mess with that Scottish King who came to such a terrible end.

Then again, he did kind of ask for it. Which is precisely the kind of wickedness that Dahlia, Iris and Poppy Weyward are (in)famous for. But it’s hard to do anything really evil when one’s magic is fading, and that’s been true for the Weyward Sisters for the past year. Since they went their separate ways.

Because they couldn’t stand the sight or sound of each other a minute longer.

Which is exactly why Iris Weyward keeps putting off reading the letter her sisters sent her. No matter how much its presence taunts her amid the chaos piling on the table in her slightly out of the way cottage. A cottage that is JUST far enough outside the village of Fraywell to seem appropriately mysterious for her villainous intentions.

Intentions that aren’t going well. A deadly potion here, a poisonous apple there, earning just enough to keep herself afloat – barely – with her dreams of glorious villainy waging a seemingly unending battle with her lack of magic and occasional impulses that are much too good-adjacent to be comfortable for an evil witch.

The only person Iris intends to be ‘good’ to is her familiar, Quince. Because their relationship is symbiotic, and being good to Quince is also being good to herself. And because Quince is a hedgehog with attitude who will poke her with all his quills if she doesn’t feed (and cuddle) him on a regular basis.

Iris is just certain she needs to impress her villainy on the local population more than she has been. They’ve gotten used to her after a year in residence. She needs a menacing new bodyguard to project her evil image with a bit more villainous ‘oomph’ than the one that left her to take a vacation with his family. (A concept that makes Iris shudder with, well, horror.)

When ‘providence’ provides her with a half-orc conveniently just expired in her garden, she’s sure it’s a sign. Even with her fraying magic, she’s sure she can raise him from the dead and bind him to her service. But she’s not a monster. She summons his spirit and asks for his consent before she starts on necromancy.

Iris gets absolutely nothing she expected from this transaction. She was looking for a mean, menacing mercenary. Talon Gefroy may look the part – and look better than Iris wants to think about – but he’s NICE. Even (cringe, shudder) sweet. He cooks, he cleans, he bakes cookies. He even gives names to her chickens!

She’s thinking that he’s just not right for the job until her sisters arrive. Just as they said they would in that letter Iris never read. They’ve all lost their magic. They’ve figured out that they are cursed AND that they need to work together to find the counter.

They’re planning to stay in Iris’ little cottage, WITH IRIS, until they find the answer. However long THAT might take. Even though they get on each other’s last nerve even more than they did a year ago when they separated.

Suddenly, Iris needs Talon. Not for the role she intended for him, but for the role that he’s actually filling. Iris is not about to cook, clean, wait on and cater to her sisters. But she doesn’t have to. She has Talon for that. And just possibly for a whole lot more.

But first, she’ll have to tell him the evil truth about herself. Curses, sisters, and all.

Escape Rating A-: I had a good time with the author’s Adenashire series (start with A Fellowship of Bakers & Magic and prepare for a delightfully cozy and delicious read) and was hoping for more of the same with this book as it’s a bit of a wait until the author’s next Adenashire book, A Fellowship of Curses & Cats comes pussyfooting out.

I almost referred to Death Meets Cute as the start of a new series, and that might turn out to be right after all. It absolutely could be. This story stands alone, and Iris certainly gets her happy ever after, BUT she has two sisters to think about. So hopefully…

But first there’s this story, and it’s one of those ‘book in a blender’ things, even if all the books that get thrown into that blender are all cozy fantasies in one way or another.

Of course there’s Adenashire, and Fraywell sounds like the kind of place that would fit right into that world. If it turns out to be after all, I would be pleased but not surprised. Either way, it’s a very similar vibe, in that it’s a place where magical and non-magical people and beings live side-by-side and tolerate each other – or sometimes don’t – in the ways that people in small towns in other cozy genres generally do and don’t.

So if you like cozy fantasy, particularly in series like Adenashire, Legends & Lattes and Tomes & Tea (Can’t Spell Treason Without Tea), you’ll probably enjoy visiting Fraywell as well.

But there are two other books that need to go into that blender, books that add a little bit of danger and spice to what would otherwise be a sweet grumpy-sunshine fantasy romance. Because there are two stories at the heart of Death Meets Cute. The obvious one is that grumpy/sunshine romance between grumpy Iris and sunshine Talon.

The second, however, is the story of the fraying sisterhood between Dahlia, Iris and Poppy Weyward, and the way they’ve brought this curse upon themselves. That’s a story about the very fine line between curses and blessings, and how easy it is for the one to turn into the other – in either direction. If that’s the part of Death Meets Cute that appeals, take a look at The Crescent Moon Tearoom by Stacy Sivinski because it also tells a heartwarming story about the bonds of sisterhood and how easily those bonds can be frayed, or even broken. And that there can be terrible consequences when there’s magic involved.

The part of this that’s most purely interesting, at least to this reader, revolves around the question of what it means to be ‘evil’ along with the question of whether evil and villainy are in the eyes of the beholder. At first, that part of the story made me think of both Wooing the Witch Queen, the first book in the Queens of Villainy series, and Violet Thistlewaite Is Not a Villain Anymore. The so-called Queens of Villainy are only really considered villainous by members of the patriarchy who are pissed that they’ve chosen to rule their kingdoms themselves, while Violet has rejected real villainy and is doing her damndest to make amends for her previous actions.

Because it seems like the Weyward Sisters don’t REALLY want to be EVIL. And, that the image they want to project is in conflict with their core selves, causing them to lash out, mostly at each other. None of them want to be ‘goody-two shoes’, but that doesn’t mean they can’t be helpful and supportive and even friendly to people who act the same way towards them.

And they are all more than willing to do terrible things to people who deserve it. Or who ask for it in the same way that you can’t cheat an honest person. So they’re not really evil after all, although they might be a bit like Gretsella, the Somewhat Wicked Witch of Brigandale. Like Gretsella, the Weyward Sisters are all more than willing to deliver retribution to the deserving. And is that so bad?

Hopefully, we’ll get to find out!

Grade A #BookReview: Double Shadow by Andrew Ludington

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A Reviews> book reviews
Grade A #BookReview: Double Shadow by Andrew LudingtonDouble Shadow (Splinter Effect, #2) by Andrew Ludington
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, ebook
Genres: action adventure, mystery, science fiction, thriller, time travel
Series: Splinter Effect #2
Pages: 288
Published by Minotaur Books on April 21, 2026
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

In this thrilling installment of the Splinter Effect series, time-traveling archaeologist Rabbit Ward returns to the past to help save his former adversary and track down a murderous thief in first century Jerusalem.

ROME, 2019. Time-traveling, Smithsonian archaeologist Rabbit Ward is back in the present, but not for long. Helen, his former adversary and growing ally, is in trouble with the law after being framed for a murder she didn’t commit. Stuck in hiding and running out of other options, she turns to Rabbit for help. "Help" in this case involves a trip to first century Jerusalem to track down a mysterious man named Einar Eshek.

But Rabbit won't have to do this mission alone; as soon as he arrives in 68 CE, he meets a younger version of Helen, one who has never met him before. Together, they work to track down Eshek, who turns out to be not only a time-traveling thief, but a murderous psychopath.

As they pursue Eshek through time, Rabbit and Helen feel something even bigger pulling them together. Torn between the two versions of the woman he knows, and with the clock ticking down on Helen’s fate in 2019, Rabbit might have no choice but to betray her past self to secure Helen’s safety in the future. Tensions rise as Jerusalem prepares to go to war with Rome, and Rabbit races to capture Eshek, clear Helen’s name, and make it back to 2019 in one piece—a feat that’s proving to be easier said than done—before everything falls apart.

My Review:

Archaeologists dig up formerly hidden caches of important artifacts all the time. As often as Egypt’s Valley of the Kings has been explored and looted over the millennia, the last undiscovered royal tomb of the 18th Egyptian dynasty (the dynasty that included Tutankhamun), wasn’t discovered until February, 2025. It’s not that historians and archaeologists didn’t know that Thutmose II existed, or that he must have a tomb someplace, they just couldn’t locate it.

Until they did.

But if time travel were an actual thing, as it is in this Splinter Effect series, such discoveries might not be so uncommon. After all, that’s what Dr. Robert “Rabbit” Ward is famous for – and what his expeditions get funded for. He doesn’t just dig up the past in the present – he goes back to the past and steals or saves (opinions vary) important artifacts and places them EXACTLY where he knows he can find them again in the present.

For Rabbit, it’s about being able to experience history by being there. The artifacts he “finds” are just an excuse to get funding. He’s in it for the adventure – and the thrill of it all.

But just as billionaires pay their way into space travel, in a world in which time travel is a viable technological thing there would be some who would pay their way into the past. Even if the practice was illegal. Which it needs to be because, well, imagine the mess if anyone with enough money could go back in time and manipulate the present?

(It’s been imagined, that’s the story in Nicholas Binge’s Extremity. It’s not a pretty picture. AT ALL)

In this version of time travel, similar to John Scalzi’s 3 Days, 9 Months, 27 Years, the time traveler can’t change their own timeline, but they can ‘splinter’ the timeline to create a different future for a different version of themselves and their world.

They can also go back in time to, let’s say, act out their worst impulses with the certainty that it won’t have any effect on their own present. (A variation of Jack the Ripper’s time travel in the movie Time After Time.)

In this second book in this series, however, Rabbit’s motives for this particular jaunt back to the waning days of the Second Temple period of Jewish history (68 CE), isn’t about an artifact or even a treasure – not that he isn’t using one as an excuse.

He’s going back in time to chase a serial killer and help a frenemy – not expecting the two things to turn out to be the same thing after all.

Escape Rating A: I did read the first book in this series, Splinter Effect, for a Library Journal review but didn’t write it up because OMG Rabbit’s story in that first one is a fascinating but confusing mess. (I definitely enjoyed it, I just couldn’t wrap my mind around a review of the length I use here. I either had too many words or not nearly enough.)

This second book is even more fascinating, because there’s a bit more of a through line to tie the past, present, present past (that makes sense in the story, I swear), and the unknown future together into a rollicking historical adventure.

It helps a lot that Rabbit finally figures out his weird relationship with frenemy/rival time traveler (Dr.) Helen Fletcher. I didn’t catch the hints the first time around, because it’s sorta/kinda the relationship in The Time Traveler’s Wife – and I haven’t read that. Also, that impression isn’t strictly correct although it is adjacent.

In other words, the relationship between Rabbit and Helen isn’t as much like The Time Traveler’s Wife as it IS like a different SFnal relationship that was based on that book. By that, I’m referring to the relationship between the Doctor and River Song in Doctor Who (“The Silence in the Library” – and I can’t believe I’m referring to that twice in the same week) in that they’ve met out of order. Rabbit’s first meeting with Helen was in Splinter Effect. Her first meeting with him is here in Double Shadow, back in 68 CE in Qumran. Judaea is about to fall to the Romans, and Rabbit and Helen are caught up in the turmoil that leads to the destruction of the Second Temple and the fall of Jerusalem.

Which leads straight into the other fascinating thing about time travel stories. The “you are there” effect. The reason Rabbit does what he does, the reason Helen got caught up by the same compulsion, the thing that makes this series compulsively readable, is that they are us. They’re people from our time who are able to go back and experience history as it happened who can see things through our eyes.

Including the desire to make things better with the acknowledgement that they can’t. That for them, this is settled history. They can’t save anyone because they are already dead. And they have to do their damndest to experience the world as it was and stand by and bear witness to history even when it’s awful and not lose their humanity in the process.

So we feel for them and with them even as we watch with fascination as history unfolds – very much warts and blood and guts and all. That they’ve brought the excesses of our present into the excesses of the past – which goes back to Time After Time AGAIN – added a touch of mystery to a story that was already riveting – AND opens the series up to further (mis)adventures in its future. And I’m looking forward to reading them!