Publisher: Berkley

A- #BookReview: It Takes a Psychic by Jayne Castle + #Excerpt

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A- Reviews> blog tours> book reviews> Excerpts
A- #BookReview: It Takes a Psychic by Jayne Castle + #ExcerptIt Takes a Psychic (Ghost Hunters #17) by Jayne Castle
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: hardcover, ebook, audiobook
Genres: action adventure romance, paranormal romance, romantic suspense, science fiction romance
Series: Harmony #17
Pages: 316
Published by Berkley on June 3, 2025
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

Two unlikely allies search for the secrets of their pasts while on the run within the Alien world of Harmony in the thrilling new novel by New York Times bestselling author Jayne Castle.
Leona Griffin is at the height of her career as a para-archeologist thanks to a recent Underworld discovery. Her high profile attracts the attention of an organization of elite, secretive collectors. They want her to authenticate the artifacts that aspiring members submit as evidence to join their group. The ceremony takes place at a glittering reception where Leona is shocked to discover that one of the relics is a powerful Old-World object known as Pandora’s Box. But she’s not the only one interested in that artifact.
Oliver Rancourt, a man with a unique talent—they say you never see him coming—is also there. Leona knows she must not underestimate him. Attempting to make a discreet exit, she stumbles over the body of a waiter wearing the emblem of a dangerous cult. Before she can alert authorities, a police raid sends the reception into chaos. To avoid being arrested, Leona slips away with Oliver—a risky decision that gets her fired.
Now forced to work together, Leona and Oliver pursue an investigation that leads them to the town of Lost Creek where the locals are obsessed with a chilling legend involving a long-dead cult leader and illicit paranormal experiments. But Leona knows the real danger may be the irresistible attraction between herself and Oliver.

My Review:

Leona Griffin KNOWS she’s in the middle of a setup, she just doesn’t know what the setup is supposed to set her up FOR.

The job seemed on the up-and-up, for select definitions of up all the way around. Leona is at the height of her career as a para-archaeologist, as well as temporarily famous for rescuing herself and her colleagues from conducting and/or being part of an experiment, trapped in the mesmerizing, mysterious and above all psionically powerful section of planet Harmony’s Underworld known as the Glass House.

She assumes that the university where she works as a researcher is just using her temporary fame to get more donations. Which would work for her – even if she hates this part of the work – as Leona IS a researcher and would hopefully get some of her own research funded by at least some of those donations.

But that would be too simple. Also not nearly as distasteful, not to mention dangerous, as the actual setup she’s stuck on stage participating in.

Her talent – or at least the one that is publicly known – is her ability to determine whether an artifact is a fake or the ‘Real McCoy’, assuming that old idiom is still in use centuries in the future. However, the elite collectors’ society that strong-armed her employer into providing her services for this dog and pony show has a different agenda. They’re just testing her, hoping that she’ll miss a fake so they can embarrass her in public. Not because they know her, but because entertainment value of one sort or another is all that the hired help is there for – and that’s all she is to the rich and entitled no matter what her professional qualifications are.

While the person pulling the society’s strings has a third, nefarious reason for setting Leona up. It’s a reason that reaches back into the darkest period of Harmony’s history and hopes to repeat it. No matter how many deaths the notorious Vincent Lee Vance caused in that chaotic past.

Or how many deaths his self-appointed heir needs to cause in their here and now to achieve their insane goals. Starting with Leona Griffin’s.

Escape Rating A-: This was one of those cases of the right book at the right time. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it, even if the right time was several weeks before I could post this review. I love this series so much that I just couldn’t resist the siren song of dust bunny chortles a minute longer. And I’m not in the least bit sorry about that!

If you’ve never visited Harmony, you’ve never met a dust bunny. Which means you are really missing something special, because the native dust bunnies pretty much steal the show in every single adventure.

That’s particularly true in this latest story, as Roxy starts out by persuading Leona to rescue a bunch of caged dust bunnies in a clandestine research lab (and we all know where THAT was heading), then stealing a suspiciously specifically tuned crystal as well as a psionically powered dildo, moves on to picking up a fancy hat at a bridal store, and ends up by stealing Leona Griffin’s heart along with an entire floating fantasy amusement park thrill ride.

Dust bunnies are ALL adrenaline junkies at heart, and Roxy is no exception. Not that she can’t throw down when danger is near. Dust bunnies are predators, after all. By the time you see their second set of eyes, it’s too late for whoever has endangered them or the human they’ve decided to adopt.

And never, for a single second, think that it’s the other way around.

This particular entry in the Harmony/Ghost Hunters series, hearkens back to its immediate predecessor in this series, People in Glass Houses, where we were first introduced to the Griffin Sisters and their dangerous family secret. It also reaches way back into the connecting Arcane Society series and its Fogg Lake offshoot – back to Harmony’s literal and literary ancestors in Lightning in a Mirror.

I’ve read the whole interconnected series, both the historical/contemporary Arcane Society and the futuristic Harmony series and ALWAYS had a ball – and not just because of the dust bunnies although they certainly ‘help’. As they generally do. But I love the great interconnected, interwoven web of the whole thing. And I’ll confess that I’m not sure this one is a good entry point – especially with the web of connections linked to it.

But I DO love this whole thing and want to share it, so if you’re looking for a way in, try starting at either the first Fogg Lake story, The Vanishing, or the first Griffin Sisters story, People in Glass Houses. Be advised, once you get hooked you’ll want to read them ALL! (Speaking of sharing, there’s an excerpt below so that you can get a taste of this book!)

I know that I’ve talked more about the series as a whole than this particular entry in it, but that’s how I felt about this one. I read it because I was looking to be comfortably immersed in a world I knew and loved, even if – or especially because – I knew that the characters IN the story would have to go through some uncomfortable experiences and revelations along the way. As they did.

But the happy ever after was earned, the dust bunnies DEFINITELY got their just reward, and the latest evil was successfully vanquished. I don’t know which of her many interconnected worlds the author will be visiting next, but whichever it is, I will absolutely be there!

Excerpt from It Takes a Psychic by Jayne Castle (aka Jayne Ann Krentz)

The psi-lock was relatively simple. It had been designed to keep the dust bunnies inside, not to keep humans from opening it. She touched it with her fingertips, rezzed her senses, and unlocked the door.

The dust bunnies tumbled out. They bounced up and down in front of her-she got the feeling she was being thanked, and then all of them-including the one that had gotten her attention in the gallery and led her to the lab-dashed out the door and vanished into the dark hallway. Evidently they didn’t need her help to escape the mansion.

“Guess my work here is done,” she said under her breath.

But the discovery of the imprisoned dust bunnies put a new light on the Society. She had been well aware that the organization was one of the university’s major donors-that was why she had been sent to the gala-and she’d suspected that several of the members dabbled in the gray market. Avid collectors were obsessive by nature. They rarely went out of their way to ensure the legal provenance of valuable artifacts.

But discovering that the Society was conducting research using dust bunnies as test subjects was too much. It could not be overlooked. She would report the news to the director of the para-archaeology department when she met with him in the morning. Morton Bullinger might be willing to ignore issues of sketchy provenances, but even he could not ignore this. He would have to take the information to the university’s board of directors and they would be forced to confront the endowment fund people. There was no way the institution could continue to accept money from the Society.

She started toward the door. She was tempted to examine some of the more interesting artifacts on the workbenches, but she had taken enough risks. She could not afford to get caught inside the lab.

She changed her mind when the beam of her flashlight swept across a gracefully curved black crystal bowl in a glass case. She could feel the disturbing vibe of power in the object from across the room.

Curious, she went closer and rezzed her senses a little. The bowl was definitely Alien in origin and there was a lot of energy locked in the object. Fascinated, she put her fingertips on the lock of the glass case.

A sharp frisson of awareness sparked across her senses, rattling her already tense nerves. She was no longer alone. She whirled around, struggling to come up with a believable explanation for her obviously illicit presence in the lab. She was good at thinking on her feet but there were not a lot of options here. Something along the lines of the classic I was looking for the restroom would have to do. It was weak, but combined with her temporarily famous status and her connection to the university, it might work.

She opened her mouth to start talking very fast but she went blank when the beam of her flashlight illuminated the man in the slightly rumpled tux standing in the doorway. She recognized him immediately. She had picked him out of the crowd earlier in the evening when she realized she was being watched. Somehow she had known he was the one who had been keeping an eye on her. She had concluded that he was either undercover security or a professional antiquities thief. The one thing she had been certain of was that he was not the boring, harmless-looking collector he was pretending to be.

Oh, shit.

“Good evening, Dr. Griffin,” he said. He adjusted his black-framed glasses. “I thought I’d lost you. Are you selecting a little souvenir to take with you when you leave tonight? I don’t blame you. There are some very nice items in the Society’s collection.”

***

He thought she was a thief.

Under the circumstances, that made sense-after all, she was not supposed to be in the lab. But that left his own status unclarified. Was he a security guard, or did he plan to steal one of the artifacts himself? If she were a betting woman, she would have put her money down on the latter possibility. She was quite sure she was dealing with a professional thief. He probably saw her as competition and, maybe, a threat.

There was nothing notable about him-nothing at all-and that was precisely what had given her goose bumps. A man like this one ought not be the sort who got overlooked in a crowd, yet that was exactly what had happened out there in the ballroom. He had moved through the throng of well-dressed guests as if he were a ghost.

Not that he went completely unnoticed. On a subconscious, psychic level, people were aware of him. She had watched, intrigued, as individuals moved out of his way when they sensed his aura. A powerful energy field had that effect on others.

As far as she could tell, she was the only one who had really paid attention to him. She was pretty sure there was only one explanation for his near-invisibility-he possessed some serious talent. Yet he was going out of his way to try to conceal it. His ability to do that was even more interesting.

At one point he had cruised past her while she sipped a glass of sparkling water and pretended to admire a statue of the Society’s founder. She’d caught a glimpse of specter-cat eyes behind the lenses of the black-framed glasses and picked up the vibe of his powerful energy field. It would be very easy to underestimate this man. She would not make that mistake.

Excerpted from It Takes a Psychic by Jayne Castle Copyright © 2025 by Jayne Castle. Excerpted by permission of Berkley. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

A+ #BookReview: Who Will Remember by C.S. Harris

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A+ Reviews> book reviews
A+ #BookReview: Who Will Remember by C.S. HarrisWho Will Remember (Sebastian St. Cyr, #20) by C.S. Harris
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, ebook, audiobook
Genres: historical fiction, historical mystery, regency mystery
Series: Sebastian St. Cyr #20
Pages: 384
Published by Berkley on April 15, 2025
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

The gruesome murder of a prominent nobleman throws an already unsettled London into chaos in this electrifying new historical mystery by the USA Today bestselling author of What Cannot Be Said.
August 1816. England is in the grip of what will become known as the Year Without a Summer. Facing the twin crises of a harvest-destroying volcanic winter and the economic disruption caused by the end of the Napoleonic Wars, the British monarchy finds itself haunted by the looming threat of bloody riots not seen since the earliest days of the French Revolution. Amidst the turmoil, a dead man is found hanging upside down by one leg in an abandoned chapel, his hands tied behind his back. The pose eerily echoes the image depicted on a tarot card known as Le Pendu, the Hanged Man. The victim—Lord Preston Farnsworth, the younger brother of one of the Regent’s boon companions—was a passionate crusader against what he called the forces of darkness, namely criminality, immorality, and sloth. His brutal murder shocks the Palace and panics the already troubled populace.
Sebastian St. Cyr, Viscount Devlin, learns of the murder from a ragged orphan who leads him to the corpse and then disappears. At first, everyone in the dead man’s orbit paints Lord Preston as a selfless saint. But as Sebastian delves deeper into his life, he quickly realizes that the man had accumulated more than his fair share of enemies, including Major Hugh Chandler, a close friend who once saved Sebastian’s life. Sebastian also discovers that the pious Lord Preston may have been much more dangerous than those he sought to redeem.
As dark clouds press down on the city and the rains fall unceasingly, two more victims are found, one strangled and one shot, with ominous tarot cards placed on their bodies. The killer is sending a gruesome message and Sebastian is running out of time to decipher it before more lives are lost and a fraught post-war London explodes.

My Review:

One of the things I utterly adore about this series is the way that each book is firmly fixed in its time and place, and that that foundation in its there and then shows the exact opposite of ANY vision we might have in our heads about what the Regency period was like. Especially if that vision owes its glitter and sparkle to Bridgerton, Georgette Heyer or even Jane Austen.

Weymouth Bay with Approaching Storm. Painting by John Constable (1816)

This particular entry in the series shines a light in darker places than usual, as it takes place in the summer of 1816, which, basically, wasn’t. Not that the summers of 1817, 1818 and 1819 were all that summer-y either. Although the sunsets were spectacular for years afterwards.

What made the situation so much darker and chillier, as this book explores rather, well, darkly, is that they didn’t know WHY clouds and storms blotted out the sun for days and weeks on end. It’s not totally unreasonable for people to have thought the world was coming to an end.

Because they were freezing and starving and it seemed like it would never end.

Not that already weren’t entirely too many people starving and shivering because Britain’s post-Napoleonic War economy was a wreck. The war was over – YAY! BUT, the soldiers were demobilized and thrown back into the population without pensions. The government was going through a period of austerity – for everyone but themselves, of course – and jobs were scarce.

And the government – and so many of the upper classes – were just so certain that it was the fault of the poor themselves that they were poor, and if they were just forced to be good, upright citizens who knew their place and didn’t question their betters that conditions would miraculously improve.

(And doesn’t that sound so very familiar?)

So when Sebastian St. Cyr, Viscount Devlin, gets called to the sight of the gruesome murder of one of those upper class so-called reformers, it’s clear exactly which rocks he’s going to be turning over to find out whodunnit. Because he’s certain that whoever the killer might have been, it’s not going to be the easy solution that the Crown demands in order to, well, keep order among the lower classes while hoping to satisfy the upper classes that justice is being done.

Even if it isn’t. And won’t. Unless Devlin gets his hands dirty with yet another investigation that some members of his own family would prefer he left well enough alone. Even if that well enough isn’t well at all – and they know it.

Escape Rating A+: I’ve not been remotely coy about the fact that I love this series, and this entry absolutely did not change my mind one iota. Over the course of 20 books in 20 years – and counting – it just gets better and better.

Over the course of the series I’ve realized that I’m mostly here for the historical fiction aspects of the series. Not just the way that the author illuminates this time and place that we think we know, but also the way that we walk London’s streets with Devlin and feel the cobblestones under our own feet.

At the same time, the mystery is always important and not merely in the sense of figuring out both whodunnit and why it was done. Murder is a disruption to order – to the way things ought to be. The Regency period, with its incapacitated king and its overly self-indulgent regent who will be king, was a period where order was already disrupted. And that’s before one factors in the disruptions of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars.

Meanwhile, the seeds for the Industrial Revolution have already been sown, and revolt and rebellion are bubbling up from the so-called lower orders who have seen their disruptions and results in nearby France and in the far away but less bloody and more successful United States. Change is in the wind – even if that wind is not blowing the skies clear enough to grow crops.

The disruptions caused by murder in this series, particularly this murder, are intended to show what’s lurking in the depths that is usually covered over by government propaganda and social expectations.

Because the victim in this particular case was believed to be a ‘good’ if somewhat priggish man who was working for the ‘betterment’ of the country even if he was a bit overbearing about it all. But someone knows that facade was just that, a false front that they are determined to strip away. This is a fascinating case because the point of it is NOT to capture a villain, but to expose exactly how much of a villain the murder victim really was – and to uncover his confederates in that villainy.

Justice, such as it turns out to be in this case, has already been had. And this entry in the series is all the more interesting for its purposes to have been so turned around and yet resolved as satisfactorily as possible.

I was all in on this one from the very first page, and finished the story in a bit of a sad catharsis because I was glad to see it resolved but that resolve is equivocal in exactly the way that it should be and that was marvelous in its way.

One final note about this story. I’m surprised to have a readalike for this that is not historical fiction or mystery, but if you’re interested in the effects of the year without a summer, there’s an award winning science fiction short story, “The Year Without Sunshine” by Naomi Kritzer, that deals with the effects of a similar situation on one small community and its lovely and hopeful in ways that make it a good follow up to Who Will Remember.

A- #AudioBookReview: Kills Well With Others by Deanna Raybourn

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A- Reviews> book reviews
A- #AudioBookReview: Kills Well With Others by Deanna RaybournKills Well with Others (Killers of a Certain Age, #2) by Deanna Raybourn
Narrator: Jane Oppenheimer, Christina Delaine
Format: audiobook, eARC
Source: purchased from Audible, supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, large print, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: mystery, suspense, thriller
Series: Killers of a Certain Age #2
Pages: 368
Length: 10 hours and 19 minutes
Published by Berkley, Penguin Audio on March 4, 2025
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

“Much like fine wine, battle-hardened assassins grow better with age.”—#1 New York Times bestselling author Lisa Gardner

Four women assassins, senior in status—and in age—sharpen their knives for another bloody good adventure in this riotous follow-up to the New York Times bestselling sensation Killers of a Certain Age.

After more than a year of laying low, Billie, Helen, Mary Alice, and Natalie are called back into action. They have enjoyed their time off, but the lack of excitement is starting to chafe: a professional killer can only take so many watercolor classes and yoga sessions without itching to strangle someone...literally. When they receive a summons from the head of the elite assassin organization known as the Museum, they are ready tackle the greatest challenge of their careers.

Someone on the inside has compiled a list of important kills committed by Museum agents, connected to a single, shadowy figure, an Eastern European gangster with an iron fist, some serious criminal ambition, and a tendency to kill first and ask questions later. This new nemesis is murdering agents who got in the way of their power hungry plans and the aging quartet of killers is next.

Together the foursome embark on a wild ride across the globe on the double mission of rooting out the Museum’s mole and hunting down the gangster who seems to know their next move before they make it. Their enemy is unlike any they’ve faced before, and it will take all their killer experience to get out of this mission alive.

My Review:

The wifi wasn’t THAT bad. No, seriously, I took the same trip on the MS Queen Mary 2 last summer, the one that the team from Killers of a Certain Age takes from New York City to Southampton in the early stages of this caper – and the wifi honestly wasn’t that bad. The rest of the ship, at least the parts we saw of it, were very much as described.

No murder though. At least, not as far as we heard!

Then again, Billie and company are very, very good at their jobs, and the whole point of sending in an elite team of assassins is for them to make the murder look like it never happened. Not that Pasha Lazarov isn’t very, very dead when Billie’s done with him and his teddy bear, but that his death doesn’t look like a murder at all.

Don’t worry, the teddy bear is fine. Pasha, not so much, but then that was the point. Even if, as Billie suspects, he was the wrong point.

Still, contract complete, case closed. Right? Wrong, as the team discovers when they make their way to their safe house and discover that the house isn’t safe at all. In fact, it’s on FIRE.

And suddenly, so is this story. Because someone in their organization has sold them out, put a target on their backs while aiming them at the wrong villain for the wrong reasons even as the real monster plans to toy with them as they chase the true mastermind around Europe while that mastermind plots revenge, mayhem and a gigantic payday steeped in blood and decades in the making.

It’s all about the ‘one that got away’. For the traitor, it’s about a future they let slip out of their hands. For the villain, it’s payback for the murder of their father – who truly was an evil bastard – at the righteous hands of Billie and her team. For the team, it’s about a case they were never able to close and a luminous piece of looted Nazi art that they were never able to restore.

Until now. If they survive. If, instead of age and treachery beating youth and skill, age and skill can manage to beat youth and treachery one more time.

Escape Rating A-: The first book in this series, Killers of a Certain Age, was both an absolute surprise and an utter delight. Just as “Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!” – a catchphrase whose origins Billie and her team are just the right age to remember and appreciate – nobody expects a quartet of sixty-something women to be an elite team of assassins. Not unless they remember the movie Red with Helen Mirren playing a character who could easily have been one of Billie’s aliases, or who have fallen in love with The Thursday Murder Club series, whose main character is also quite a bit like Billie and is also played by the same actress in the upcoming TV series.

While that was not as big a digression as it could have been, that digression is a bit on point for this story.

The main story here, as it was in the first book, is told from Billie’s first-person perspective as she and her team are in the midst of the case at hand – even as that case goes utterly off-kilter and entirely out-of-whack. Not that even at the outset it was as ‘in whack’ as it should have been.

But the case does itself digress on occasion, to cases and contracts and errors and omissions in some of the team’s earlier contracts, told from an omniscient third-person perspective. At first, it seems as if those trips down memory lane are for context about their past and their skills, but as the net closes in so too do those memories as various nooses tighten and the past catches up to the present.

At the same time, the case in the present is a wild thrill ride, interwoven with a whole lot of tips and tricks about hiding in plain sight and escaping without a trace and the way that even their oldest tricks still work fantastically well because the weakest point in ANY security system, even the most technically advanced and supposedly unbreakable, is always the human factor. And those haven’t changed at all.

Initially, the story moves just a bit slowly, as, well, cruise ships are wont to do. But the reader catches Billie’s nagging suspicion that something isn’t right fairly early, and we’re waiting for the other shoe to drop right along with her.

When it does – or actually when it catches fire – the story is off, not just to the races but to a whirlwind tour of both sides of the Mediterranean in pursuit of a dead woman with a plan for revenge so cold that she’s willing to take out her own family to see it done.

And still, and yet, and at the heart of it all is the ride or die sisterhood of these four women who will and have, killed and nearly died for each other over the course of four decades – and their bickering willingness to argue and fight and still protect each other and the hostages to fortune they have all gathered along the way – sometimes in spite of themselves.

Just as I wasn’t expecting that first book, I wasn’t expecting this to turn into a series. Hoping, certainly, but not expecting. Which means I’ve been waiting for this with the proverbial bated breath, was absolutely thrilled to get it, and was utterly absorbed by it in both text and marvelous audio – switching back and forth so I could find out how they got out of this mess that much sooner.

All of which means I’m left in the exact same place I was at the end of Killers of a Certain Age. I had a ball with Billie and her found family, and I would love to ride with this crew again. But the story ends in a way that could BE the end. They all do sound like they’ve found the respective happy ever afters that none of them thought they would live to see. Or in Billie’s case, even want.

Howsomever, the first book started because there was something rotten at the heart of their organization that, let’s say, interfered with their pending retirements. They got dragged into THIS case because there was something that was rotten at the heart of their organization that interfered in an entirely different way with their retirements.

When this case gets wrapped up, they make a new and better deal for the retirements they all actually seemed to want this time around. Which doesn’t mean that they got all the rot out of the organization this time around. In fact, I’d kind of be surprised if they had. And very happy about it – possibly much happier than they’ll be if I’m right.

#AudioBookReview: I Got Abducted by Aliens and Now I’m Trapped in a Rom-Com by Kimberly Lemming + #Excerpt

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B Reviews> blog tours> book reviews> Excerpts
#AudioBookReview: I Got Abducted by Aliens and Now I’m Trapped in a Rom-Com by Kimberly Lemming + #ExcerptI Got Abducted by Aliens and Now I'm Trapped in a Rom-Com (Cosmic Chaos, #1) by Kimberly Lemming
Narrator: Hazel Addison
Format: audiobook, eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Libro.fm, supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: alien abduction romance, Romance, romantasy, science fiction romance
Series: Cosmic Chaos #1
Pages: 304
Length: 9 hours and 23 minutes
Published by Berkley, Penguin Audio on February 18, 2025
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

A hilarious and sexy romance about a woman who gets dropped on a strange planet only to fall for not one, but two, aliens, from the author of That Time I Got Drunk and Yeeted a Love Potion at a Werewolf.

Dorothy Valentine is close to getting her PhD in wildlife biology when she’s attacked by a lion. On the bright side, she’s saved! On the not-so-bright side, it’s because they’re abducted by aliens. In her scramble to escape, Dory and the lion commandeer an escape pod and crash-land on an alien planet that has...dinosaurs?

Dory and her new lion bestie, Toto, are saved in the nick of time by a mysterious and sexy alien, Sol. On their new adventure, they team up with the equally hot, equally dangerous Lok, who may or may not be a war criminal. Whether it be trauma, fate, or intrigue, Dory can’t resist the attraction that’s developing in their trio....

As this ragtag group of misfits explore their new planet, Dory learns more about how and why they’ve all ended up together, battles more prehistoric creatures than she imagined (she imagined...zero), and questions if she even wants to go back home to Earth in this hilarious and steamy alien romance adventure comedy romp.

My Review:

Today is Valentine’s Day, which screamed for a romance to be today’s book. I really want to claim that aliens made me do this book to celebrate the day, but that’s not my story.

However, it is, it oh so definitely is, Dory’s story. It’s right there in the title, I Got Abducted by Aliens and Now I’m Trapped in a Rom-Com. Because Dory was abducted by aliens, and she is trapped in what the aliens believed was a rom-com.

Dory’s mileage definitely varies on that. Her story definitely turns into the ‘rom’ part of that phrase. It also, certainly does have plenty of humor in it. But part of that humor is that the aliens intended to set up a rom-com without having an actual feather of a clue as to what either ‘rom’ or ‘com’ truly mean to humans. Or, for that matter, to the Sankado, the species they’ve already abducted.

So Dory isn’t trapped in a rom-com. She does, however, totally and absolutely, get ensnared in the romance part of that equation. Times two.

And it’s a screaming ‘O’ of a blast every wild and crazy step of the way.

Escape Rating B: I picked this one up because a) that spoileriffic title and b) the author’s Mead Mishaps series was incredibly fun (start with That Time I Got Drunk and Saved a Demon and be prepared to both blush furiously and ROFL while doing so.) Not to mention c) the book comes out on Tuesday, today is Valentine’s Day and the perfect timing of the whole thing could not be ignored. At least not by moi.

The trope this story wallows in is a familiar one. Of course it’s the ‘Aliens Made Them Do It’ ™ plot device – the one that the author is using and not the aliens making them do it. Also, the author is using it correctly while the aliens flubbed nearly all of their attempts – which is part of the fun of the thing.

The thing about this particular trope is that it screams for a ‘dubcon’ (that’s dubious consent) warning that can literally be seen from outer space. Dory, along with her partners Sol and Lok, clearly do consent to everything in the moment, but the reader can easily get hung up and thrown out of the story on the question of whether it’s true consent because the aliens have drugged all of them to create that consent at the outset.

Dory occasionally throws herself out of her own story because her desires in the moment and her resulting behavior are contrary to everything she ever knew about herself.

Some readers will be totally squicked out. Some will be all into the scene. Because I was listening to a chunk of the story, I was both blushing furiously (listening to a third party describe a sex scene is just weird) and getting a bit weirded out by just how much the way her partners talked sounded like grooming her to accept things she otherwise wouldn’t.

(BTW the audio narration was FINE, I only switched to the ebook because I was all in and reading is just plain faster.)

In the end I concluded that Dory was just discovering that she was really into the kink of it all and that was okay. But your reading mileage may go through some rough patches along the way and it may definitely vary.

The part of the story that’s just purely funny – in a very wry and totally satirical way – is the way that the particular aliens who got them ALL into this mess created said mess through bureaucratic insanity, academic pomposity, and shoddy research. They created the initial mess, dug themselves a hole and threw the first results of that mess into it, realized that they’d screwed up and then dug some more and made the hole bigger.

Anyone who has ever done research or worked in either a big bureaucratic organization or in academia is going to see the situation for the hilarious and rueful set up that it is and just laugh until tears run down their face because it’s true and awful and truly awful and so very much more common than anyone wants to admit.

But this is still Valentine’s Day so I need to get back to the romance. While the aliens may have been trying to set up a rom-com, in truth this is a sex-into-love romance times two. Dory and her partners create a really hot triad. And in an entirely different kind of warning, while this trio does set fire to the sheets, there is actual fire but no actual sheets. The sexytimes, as Dory herself would say, are “hot as balls” and the scenes never, ever fade to black.

Whether or not that’s your thing, it certainly turns out to be theirs. Even if it’s not you’ll still want to slap the alien meddler who is not just watching, he’s taking notes. Dory certainly does – and who can blame her?

In the end, there are multiple facets to this wild romp of a romance. There’s the meddling aliens who screw up and set off the whole entire mess. There’s the incredibly hot romance between Dory and her two sexy partners, who fall in love while an incompetent research intern meddles with their lives every step of the way.

Last but not least, there’s the two sets of sentient beings, alien to each other, who have been thrown together against their wills trying to make the best of it – in spite of yet more alien meddling. That’s clearly going to be the throughline for the entire Cosmic Chaos series, as this story ends with that incompetent research intern failing upwards into a promotion that Dory and her friends are sure to make certain he regrets at every turn. Or at least I certainly hope so and am looking forward to finding out.

The true level of Cosmic Chaos in this story has to be experienced to be believed, so I’m going to leave you with this excerpt from the opening of I Got Abducted by Aliens… so that you can experience a bit of Dory’s voice for yourself. One last thing, that lion, to quote Dory, “THE FUCKING LION!” turns out to be the very best wingman a displaced human could EVER have.

Excerpt from I Got Abducted by Aliens and Now I’m Trapped in a Rom-Com by Kimberly Lemming

“Fuck, I’m dead?” I snarled, gazing down at the desert. A bright light was pulling me farther into the sky. Which was probably good, right? I’m not the religious type, but I think the general consensus is that up is good.

“All right, not all bad, I guess?” I turned to have a look around, taking in the sights before— “THE FUCKING LION!” I screamed, trying to kick away my murderer. The sandy-brown fur of its mouth was stained a telltale red. I put a hand to my throat, flinching when pain erupted. My hand came back covered in blood. “All right, so you definitely didn’t miss. What is going on?”

The lion ignored me; instead his eyes remained transfixed by what he saw above us. I stilled and looked up to see the clouds shimmering. A darker spot opened up in the sky. A greenish light sparkled out of it until the force pulling me sped up to a breakneck pace. The light became blinding, and I . . . I must have fainted.

The next thing I knew, I was in a tank. My body felt too heavy to move. There was a tickling sensation on my neck. Reaching out, I tried to touch the glass front of the tank but couldn’t reach it. When I cried out, bubbles floated uselessly out of my mouth. I wasn’t sure how long I was floating as I drifted in and out of consciousness.

Muffled chirping met my ears. I struggled to open my eyes, but the room was so damn bright.

Why . . . why do I smell cotton candy? Am I having a stroke? I thought that was burnt toast. Dammit. I knew I should have taken that CPR class. What smell meant you were having a stroke?

A sharp zap to my neck shocked me awake. Birds were chirping all around me. I struggled to get up. Something dug into my arms, so I thrashed. Strings lined with suction cups snapped off my arm with little pops. The birds’ chirping grew angrier as I pulled my other arm free. I blinked and looked around to see what looked like . . . owls?

“What the fuck?” I asked. Mutant-looking owls with large fluffy ears fluttered around me, chirping and fussing. Their feathers ranged in color from simple blacks and grays to the colorful blue and orange plumage you would normally find on a tropical bird. Which, frankly, is a wild range of colors for one species to have. I wonder if it’s gender-based.

Focus.

Macaw-like beaks took up a third of their face. Their flapping wings ended in tiny three-fingered hands. One of them was dressed in a white robe and it was trying to probe me with some horseshoe-looking gun thing.

I smacked it away from me and got to my feet. “One of you better start chirping in English,” I warned. Fear and rage caused the threat to come out in a stuttered shout.

The birds were unaffected.

Unfortunate.

I touched my neck, unsure if I’d truly died and gone to some bird hell. But all I felt was smooth skin. When I inspected my hand, not a drop of blood was found. I checked the other side; still nothing. “If I’m not dead, how am I healed?”

The room was lined with rows of cylindrical tanks filled with green liquid. I peered closer at their contents to see the face of a sleeping woman floating in the tank. Her round face looked serene. Long braids fanned out around her face. A few tapped their beaded ends against the glass. The hair rose on the back of my neck as I took in each tank, noting that every one of them held a person. I rubbed my eyes, trying to wake up from the nightmare. Yet when I looked around again, the pods and their occupants remained. Worse still, I noticed that all of them were women.

Reality sank to the pit of my stomach. I was on an alien spaceship. Those aliens only felt the need to capture women, and I’d just woken up on an operating table. If this wasn’t hell, it was about to be.

Screaming, I stumbled away from the nearest alien, then snatched a tray off the counter next to the table where I’d woken up. Glass vials and unsettling-looking tools crashed to the floor when I flung it at the nearest alien. Two slightly bigger Owlish came at me with what looked like cattle prods. I grabbed hold of one and kicked off its owner, then swung wildly at its partner. The bird’s squawk was cut short when my stick hit the side of its head, sending the creature flying back. Not knowing what else to do, I just swung at any of the little aliens that came within striking distance.

Farther into the room was a dome-like door leading to a hallway. I leapt over two of the Owlish, caught my foot on one, then tripped and fell on my ass. The fall knocked the stick out of my hand; it ricocheted off the ceiling and slammed into a glass case lining the wall. Blue goop spilled out all over my hair. It weighed down my wild red curls until they felt like rivers of slime. “No! No strange alien goop in my hair, dammit!” I wailed, scrambling back on my feet. “Fuck, my ass is gonna die. I’m so gonna die.”

One of the Owlish squawked like a penguin and stomped closer to me. I jumped up, shoving it aside before I sped down the hallway. My vision blurred, causing me to stumble against the wall. The slime dripping down my head grew hot, and the skin where it touched tingled. “Oh, gross. This better not be poison,” I said, wiping it away quickly.

I burst into the first room I encountered to see that it was full of bigger penguin-looking bird aliens and slammed the door shut. “Nope.”

I swore all the way down to the next room and locked myself behind the door. Then I looked around to see that I had made a poor, poor decision, as this room was full of so many more Owlish, some with the cattle prods, and, of course, the motherfucking lion.

My murderer was floating in a ray of light on a table, completely unaware of its surroundings. Flapping noises beat on the door at my back and the Owlish in the room began chattering angrily. Those with cattle prods advanced.

. . . Fuck this.

“You know what? If I have to die”—I raised a finger to all the bird fuckers in the room—“we’re all gonna die.” I grabbed the nearest Owlish and threw it at the others charging forward.

Excerpted from I Got Abducted by Aliens and Now I’m Trapped in a Rom-Com by Kimberly Lemming Copyright © 2025 by Kimberly Lemming. Excerpted by permission of Berkley. All rights reserved.

#BookReview: Beast of the North Woods by Annelise Ryan

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | book reviews> C Reviews
#BookReview: Beast of the North Woods by Annelise RyanBeast of the North Woods (A Monster Hunter Mystery, #3) by Annelise Ryan
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, ebook, audiobook
Genres: mystery
Series: Monster Hunter Mystery #3
Pages: 320
Published by Berkley on January 28, 2025
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

When a local fisherman is mauled to death, it seems like the only possible cause is a mythical creature in the latest puzzling entry in this USA Today bestselling series.
An ice fisherman is savagely mauled to death in Rhinelander, Wisconsin, and an eyewitness claims the man was attacked by a hodag. There's just one problem with it's well known that the creature is not real and was created by a local hoaxer. So how could an imaginary creature be chomping on local sportsmen? 
The suggestion that a hodag killed someone isn’t well received by the townsfolk because of its beloved ties to the town and the money it generates from tourist dollars. Due to this, people begin to suspect the witness is the real killer, especially when it’s discovered he has a tangled past with the victim. 
The witness to the attack happens to be the nephew of Morgan Carter’s bookstore employee, Rita Bosworth, who convinces the professional cryptozoologist to travel to Wisconsin to prove that a hodag not only exists but killed the victim. 
Clues may be hard to come by, but one thing's for something killed that man, and that something now has its eyes focused on Morgan.

My Review:

I picked this up because I liked the first book in the series, A Death in Door County, and I really enjoyed the second, Death in the Dark Woods. I started this third book hoping that the upward trend continued.

It didn’t. At least not for this reader. As always, your reading mileage may vary.

What mostly worked in the first book – and definitely worked in the second – was the way that bookstore owner, budding amateur detective and professional cryptozoologist Morgan Carter uses her actual professional credentials for hunting monsters to find actual monsters, even though – or especially because – the monster she starts out hunting is absolutely not the monster she finds.

In other words, she’s usually on the track of Bigfoot. Or something like Bigfoot. Or Nessie. Or in the case of the Beast of the North Woods, a Hodag. Now the Hodag is a proven hoax – because the person who supposedly captured one in 1893 eventually confessed to the deception.

Not that the town of Rhinelander, Wisconsin, which really does exist, hasn’t made plenty of hay (or at least tourist dollars) out of being the home of the Hodag. But no one expects to see a living, breathing beast in the area.

The Hodag in its ‘natural’ habitat.

Except that someone claims they have, and that the beast they saw mauled a man to death in the woods. The local police are sure the dude who reported the body is attempting, badly, to cover up a murder. One that he committed himself, of course.

Morgan is 99% convinced he didn’t see a Hodag. Which doesn’t mean the guy is guilty of the murder. Even if the dead man seems to have been his lifelong rival if not outright enemy.

In Morgan’s previous adventures, she hasn’t found Bigfoot, or Nessie, or any other cryptids. She certainly doesn’t expect to find a Hodag in this case. That she actually DOES find one this time around is more than a bit of a surprise. That there are human monsters hiding in the shadows behind the cryptid is no surprise at all.

That her EvilEx™ seems to be messing with her head from the very beginning very nearly has Morgan running through the woods in terror LONG before the Hodag EVER makes the already messed-up scene in a way that threw this reader all the way out of a story that I was really hoping to love.

Escape Rating C: For this reader, the second book in this series, Death in the Dark Woods, was the one that hit the sweet spot. The first book went into just a bit too much detail about the flora and fauna of Door County, although that served as great background for just how Morgan approached her cryptid hunting. That first story also introduced the best character in the whole series and a very good boi, Morgan’s dog Newt. If I continue to read this series – and at the moment that issue is seriously in doubt – it’ll be to see how Newt is doing because he’s just awesome.

Unfortunately, that first book also introduced us, at least in absentia, to Morgan’s EvilEx™, David Johnson. David murdered her parents, framed her for his crime, disappeared into the wind and has been stalking her ever since. I have to confess that the stalker ex is one of my least favorite plot devices, so having him lurk over this particular entry in the series from not very far away at all just took me right out of the story. (I know this is a ‘me’ thing and may not be a ‘you’ thing and your mileage may vary, etc., etc., etc.)

This series, by its nature of starting out hunting mythical monsters, is always just a hair away from ‘jumping the shark’ and for me the frequent references to David Johnson – or whoever he really is – sent the whole thing right over the top of the shark and its wake.

And Morgan spends entirely too much of this story not thinking clearly, mostly because of David but not completely, that she seems to miss all the clues until its too late and she’s briefly in the frame for yet another murder she didn’t commit. Poor Newt has his work cut out for him this time around.

(I LOVE Newt. He’s a very good boi and don’t worry, he’s just fine throughout this story. It’s his human who keeps ending up in serious trouble.)

So this is the point where I’m going to admit that I’m seriously thinking of bailing on this series. I was hoping for something like Death in the Dark Woods, a cozy monster hunting mystery – as much of a contradiction in terms that should be but wasn’t. I needed a comfort read and that’s not what I got at all, so this was the wrong book at the wrong time and relied heavily on a plot device that makes me cringe. Color this reader disappointed.

I know I keep saying this, but it bears repeating, YOUR READING MILEAGE MAY VARY.

Grade A #BookReview: Remember When by Mary Balogh

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A Reviews> book reviews
Grade A #BookReview: Remember When by Mary BaloghRemember When: Clarissa's Story (Ravenswood, #4) by Mary Balogh
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, large print, ebook, audiobook
Genres: historical fiction, historical romance, regency romance
Series: Ravenswood #4
Pages: 368
Published by Berkley on January 7, 2025
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

Discover the beauty of second chances at love and life in this heartfelt new novel from New York Times bestselling author Mary Balogh.

The Dowager Countess of Stratton, Clarissa Ware, née Greenfield, has just presented her younger daughter to the ton, and the rest of her life belongs only to herself. She returns to Ravenswood, intending to spend the summer alone there. But the summer has other plans for her.

Born a gentleman, Matthew Taylor has chosen to spend his life as the village carpenter. Growing up, he and Clarissa were close—dangerously so, considering his family’s modest fortune. As a young man, he never would have been a suitable match for the daughter of the wealthy Greenfields. Clarissa married Caleb Ware, the Earl of Stratton, so Matthew married another, though he was widowed soon after.

Now everything is different—Clarissa has already lived the life expected of her by society. And Matthew is as attractive and intriguing as he was when they were young. As their summer friendship deepens into romance, they stand together on the precipice of change—essentially the same man and woman they remember being back then, but with renewed passion and the potential to take their lives in an entirely new direction.

My Review:

The Ravenswood series began with Remember Love, when the shit quite spectacularly hit the fan in the Ware Family. Caleb Ware, the Earl of Stratton, brought his latest mistress to his family seat at Ravenswood, and expected everyone to just, well, look the other way. Just like all the people in London did when he spent the Parliamentary season philandering.

He miscalculated – or frankly never calculated at all, because that wasn’t the way things usually worked for him.

Because at Ravenswood, his wife Clarissa is the one who holds everyone’s hearts and keeps everything together. Especially their family. Which means that when his adult son and heir discovers his father in flagrante delicto with his latest paramour, Devlin Stratton rings the curtain down on his father’s shenanigans.

Devlin gets exiled for his inability to “rug sweep” the transgression. The series so far, Remember Love, Remember Me, and Always Remember, has dealt with the fallout of the scandal through the eyes of the adult children whose expectations got upended in the aftermath.

The one person whose perspective we have not really explored until now is that of the now-Dowager Countess of Stratton, Clarissa Ware née Greenfield. This is her story, six years after that scandal broke all their illusions and four years after the death of the philandering Earl.

Clarissa’s story turns out to be the story of what happens when one takes what poet Robert Frost will refer to, nearly a century after the events of this story, as, instead of “The Road Not Taken”, rather the road more travelled by. Clarissa chose the life expected by her class and gender. She married a wealthy man, lived a privileged life of position and ease and was fortunate enough to have five children live to adulthood. Her marriage was reasonably contented and often happy even if her husband was unfaithful practically from their wedding day.

After all, that was also part of that more travelled road.

But as this story opens, Clarissa is in the process of recognizing that her expected path has come to an end. She is on the cusp of her 50th birthday. Her children are all grown and have been successfully launched into the world. Her oldest son is now the Earl, and his wife is the Countess. No one NEEDS her for anything. Not that her family doesn’t love her and isn’t willing to surround her with love and care and entertainment – but she has no purpose of her own.

Which is why she comes home to Ravenswood, alone, to be by herself and sit with herself – or mostly walk with herself – and figure out who SHE is and what SHE wants for this new chapter of her life.

What she learns is that the road LESS traveled, the one she turned away from when she married Caleb Ware, has wound back around to meet her in the person of the best friend she ever had, the then young man who stood and watched as she walked away.

Escape Rating A: This is the book in this series that I was hoping for – and it absolutely was worth the wait!

The story here is all about second chances. Not just a second chance at love, although it is certainly that. But also about second chances at life. They say that it’s never too old to become the person you were meant to be – and this is that kind of story as well.

(It is also very reminiscent of Someone to Care in the author’s Westcott series. So if you liked that you’ll LOVE this! I promise)

What made this entry in this series so satisfying – well, there’s more than one thing. I always adore a story where the would-be romantic partners are a bit more mature because the stakes are in some ways much higher and in others much lower, and that is certainly true here.

Clarissa Greenfield and Matthew Taylor grew up as best friends. They were, to use a more 21st century phrase, each other’s person. The depth of their friendship was certainly turning towards romantic love when they went their separate ways. While they were both of the same class as children, both children of landed gentry, Matthew’s family was at the lowest rung of that scale and Matthew was a second son who would have to make his own way. Clarissa’s family was at the high end, with more than enough wealth that Clarissa would have plenty of money in her own right and was expected to reach even higher in her inevitable marriage.

Also, Clarissa was very willing to do the expected thing, while Matthew marched to the beat of not just his own drummer, but to a cadence that he hadn’t even identified yet. His family expected him to follow one of the traditional paths for second sons, and he rebelled at every turn.

But that was then. Meanwhile, in their now, while their circumstances have diverged even further they have also come back to the same place in similar positions. Both have lost their spouses. Both have reached places in their lives where they do not HAVE to care quite so much about what other people think.

And the friendship that has lain dormant for 30 years is still there, just waiting for a spark to bring it back to life. They are still each other’s person and time has not changed that at all. Even if the entire neighborhood, as well as nearly all of Clarissa’s family, balk at her intimate friendship with a man who has gone rather down in the world – Matthew is the village carpenter after all – while she has gone even further up.

Unlike the story in Someone to Care, Clarissa and Matthew don’t lie about their relationship. They don’t pretend they are not friends, they don’t hide that they are seeing each other after they both decide that they are – whether they should or not.

What made the story work so well was the way that Clarissa makes the decision to live for herself in this latest chapter of her life. She proceeds to take on pretty much all comers, including most of her family, as they question and cajole and attempt to manage her and her relationship with someone who initially seems unsuitable but who is the only truly suitable person for Clarissa to spend the next chapter of her life with in whatever manner she chooses to spend it.

I loved this entry in the series because I was able to identify with Clarissa and the choices and decisions she had to make without feeling like she was out of her time. Her story about second chances and second choices resonated well, as even in her privileged position her problem of what to do and to be now that she has reached the end of the road well traveled but still has plenty of life left to live is something that many of us face even if we’re not in quite such plush circumstances as we face it.

This was also very much the right book at the right time as I was looking for a comfort read this week and I certainly found a lovely one in this book and this series. A series which I sincerely hope continues as there are plenty more Ware cousins and neighborhood acquaintances who could use their own happy ending!

A- #BookReview: Shattering Dawn by Jayne Ann Krentz

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A- Reviews> book reviews
A- #BookReview: Shattering Dawn by Jayne Ann KrentzShattering Dawn (The Lost Night Files Book 3) by Jayne Ann Krentz
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, large print, ebook, audiobook
Genres: paranormal, romantic suspense
Series: Lost Night Files #3
Pages: 331
Published by Berkley on January 7, 2025
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

An unsettling investigation teaches two deeply suspicious people how to trust in the next thrilling novel of the Lost Night Files trilogy by New York Times bestselling author Jayne Ann Krentz.

Amelia Rivers, a member of the Lost Night Files podcast team, hires private investigator Gideon Sweetwater to catch the stalker who has been watching her. Amelia suspects the stalker may be connected to the shadowy organization responsible for the night that she and her two friends lost to amnesia—a night that upended their lives and left them with paranormal talents.

Gideon suspects that Amelia is either paranoid or an outright con artist, but he can’t resist the chemistry between them. He takes the case despite his skepticism. For her part, Amelia has second thoughts about the wisdom of employing the mysterious Mr. Sweetwater. She is wary of the powerful attraction between them, and deeply uneasy about the nightmarish paintings on the walls of his home. She senses they were inspired by his own dreamscapes.

Amelia knows she doesn’t have time to find another investigator, and Gideon is forced to reckon with the truth when he disrupts what was intended to be Amelia’s kidnapping. Now the pair is on the run, with no choice but to return to the haunting ruins of the old hotel where Amelia’s lost night occurred. They are desperate to stop a killer and the people who are conducting illegal experiments with a dangerous drug that is designed to enhance psychic abilities. If they are to survive, they will have to trust each other and the passion that bonds them.

My Review:

The Lost Night Files, the podcast at the center of this series, began after three women, Pallas Llewellyn, Talia March and Amelia Rivers, all lost a night, together, in the crumbling ruins of the old Lucent Springs Hotel.

They all believed that they were there for a job. Their combined specialties would be ideal for working on the rehabilitation of the formerly grand hotel and spa into a thing of beauty as well as a destination resort.

After being drugged, experimented upon, nearly killed in an out-of-control fire and/or crushed by an earthquake – all in the same night – and then, of course, disbelieved by the local cops, they banded together to give themselves, well, a job. Just an entirely different job than the one they thought they were being interviewed for.

Together, they started the podcast, searching for answers. Over the course of the series, beginning with Sleep No More and continuing with The Night Island, they found some of their answers – as well as other victims of the same nefarious operation – AND a whole hell of a lot more questions. Not to mention links back to the Bluestone Project behind the mysterious events at Fogg Lake that were explored in The Vanishing, All the Colors of Night, and Lightning in a Mirror.

Also, what look like happy ever afters for Pallas (Sleep No More) and Talia (The Night Island).

This time around its Amelia Rivers’ turn – in more ways than one.

It doesn’t take Amelia’s enhanced paranormal senses, courtesy of that mysterious experiment, for her to realize that someone is watching her. But her senses do give her the tools she needs to photograph and possibly even identify her stalker – at least in the paranormal spectrum where her talent manifests.

But Amelia’s talents as a photographer, whether paranormal or mundane, don’t exactly give her the tools she needs to hunt down someone who really is out to get her. (It’s not paranoia if it’s real, and this is very, very real indeed.)

Which is where private investigator Gideon Sweetwater comes in. Or will if Amelia decides she can trust him to be open-minded about her case. Little does Amelia know that Gideon’s mind was opened LONG before Amelia ever walked into his life. Not because he was part of the experiment, but rather because paranormal talents have been part of the Sweetwater family for generations.

And it’s his uncle’s misguided attempt to find more people like their family that started this whole entire mess. And might just end them all.

Escape Rating A-: Welcome to the ‘Jayneverse’ a place where psychic powers and paranormal talents hide in plain sight in some very surprising times and people and places – when they bother to hide at all.

Everything connects up eventually, from the 19th century Arcane Society, where the rationalization of the Industrial Revolution forced those talents underground – and gave rise to some seriously mad scientists – to the 20th and 21st century of this series and its predecessor Fogg Lake where those talents are hidden to keep the talented from being labelled as crackpots – to the far flung future of humanity out in the stars where paranormal talents are not merely accepted by downright required for survival on the lost colony of Harmony.

Howsomever, just because this book, and the trilogy it’s a part of, is part of a much broader tapestry, that does not mean that you can’t dive in right here – because you absolutely can. The links between the individual series and subseries are loose and tangential. If you know what came before – and after – it gives the story just a touch more resonance, but each book gives more than enough hints to pick up what has already happened in ITS subseries. Not that the links to other times and places aren’t irresistible – because they are. Just that you don’t have to know the ins and outs of all of those links to become immersed in the one that you have in your hands at the time.

That being said, Shattering Dawn is the wrap up of The Lost Night Files, and it does work better if you start with Sleep No More so that you’re right there with the fans of the podcast when Amelia needs them to rescue her – not that Gideon isn’t already working on that little problem.

What makes this story, and this series, so much fun is that there are always multiple strings to the author’s bow. So to speak.

The primary story is always the mystery to be solved, and in the case of The Lost Night Files it’s a doozy. Pallas, Talia and now Amelia have been pulling at the threads of that mystery from the very beginning. They know they’re closing in on the truth – and Amelia is certain that the truth is closing in on her as well.

Part of what makes this story such a page turner are the wheels within wheels of that truth. Amelia and her friends are not the only victims in a race to a deadly finish. There are conflicting and hidden motives on all sides, with each party having its own idea of what the endgame should be and who should be permitted to walk away from it.

At the same time, the heartbeat of this story, like the rest of the series, is the burgeoning romance between Amelia and Gideon. They begin by not trusting themselves or each other, and their steps towards even a possible alliance are hesitant and yet still every bit as hot as the power they wield separately – and even more explosively together.

I had a marvelous time reading Shattering Dawn – as I have with all of this author’s work, especially in the Jayneverse. Now that The Lost Night Files have found their answers, I’m looking forward to her next, It Takes a Psychic, written under her Jayne Castle pen name and set in fantastic, futuristic Harmony. If I’m really lucky, the story will even feature an intrepid Dust Bunny or two. I can’t wait to find out!

#BookReview: Bayou Book Thief by Ellen Byron

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B Reviews> book reviews
#BookReview: Bayou Book Thief by Ellen ByronBayou Book Thief (Vintage Cookbook Mystery, #1) by Ellen Byron
Format: ebook
Source: purchased from Amazon
Formats available: paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: cozy mystery, culinary mystery, mystery
Series: Vintage Cookbook Mystery #1
Pages: 304
Published by Berkley on June 7, 2022
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

A fantastic new cozy mystery series with a vintage flair from USA Today bestselling and Agatha Award-winning author Ellen Byron.
Twenty-eight-year-old widow Ricki James leaves Los Angeles to start a new life in New Orleans after her showboating actor husband perishes doing a stupid internet stunt. The Big Easy is where she was born and adopted by the NICU nurse who cared for her after Ricki's teen mother disappeared from the hospital.
Ricki's dream comes true when she joins the quirky staff of Bon Vee Culinary House Museum, the spectacular former Garden District home of late bon vivant Genevieve "Vee" Charbonnet, the city's legendary restauranteur. Ricki is excited about turning her avocation - collecting vintage cookbooks - into a vocation by launching the museum's gift shop, Miss Vee's Vintage Cookbooks and Kitchenware. Then she discovers that a box of donated vintage cookbooks contains the body of a cantankerous Bon Vee employee who was fired after being exposed as a book thief.
The skills Ricky has developed ferreting out hidden vintage treasures come in handy for investigations. But both her business and Bon Vee could wind up as deadstock when Ricki's past as curator of a billionaire's first edition collection comes back to haunt her.
Will Miss Vee's Vintage Cookbooks and Kitchenware be a success ... or a recipe for disaster?

My Review:

There is just something about New Orleans, and there probably always has been. There certainly always has been for me, as I’ve been drawn to reading books set in that city ever since my very first visit decades ago. So, when a friend picked up this book and said it looked like fun, I was more than willing to come along for the virtual trip.

Ricki James isn’t so much visiting as returning home to New Orleans after a long absence when this story begins. Her move may be a return to her roots after years in Los Angeles, but it also represents a fresh start – or at least Ricki certainly hopes so. She has come home in an attempt to dodge not one but two scandals she hopes she left behind in LA.

Just as no good deed goes unpunished, no really big scandal ever truly gets left behind – particularly not when there’s still some juice left in it. A situation with which Ricki becomes all too aware when a new and equally juicy scandal arrives at her door.

Not, initially, her personal door, but definitely, more importantly and absolutely worse, the door of her new and just barely established antique cookery, bookstore and museum gift shop at the equally newly established Bon Vee Culinary House Museum in the Garden District home of the late and much lamented Genevieve “Vee” Charbonnet, one of the city’s legendary restaurateurs.

One of the museum’s docents, a man nearly everyone on the staff can barely stand – at best – is caught red-handed with a selection of her shop’s vintage cookbooks concealed under his coat. It’s theft, pure and simple – no matter how much he tries to pin the blame that is so obviously his on practically every other person on the scene. His attempt to shift the blame merely spreads the ill-will he has always engendered – and avails him absolutely not.

But it might be the cause of his murder that night. A murder that casts a shadow over the Museum AND Ricki’s shop, as the theft, the spurious accusations the man threw around, AND the general enmity that nearly everyone seems to have felt for him, points out a possible motive. A motive that, as thin as it might seem, seems to be the only one the police can find.

The question, a question that seems to generally hover around the NOPD according to these local residents, is whether the police are willing and/or able to look all that hard when there’s an easy solution clearly to hand.

And that’s what leads antique cookbook expert Ricki James onto the path that many a worried amateur sleuth has trod before her. She decides to investigate the murder herself. Just to see if she can find a clue – or ten – that the police might have missed. In the hopes of preserving a wonderful place full of terrific people who are doing good work and might just offer her a chance to make a new place for herself into the bargain.

Escape Rating B: Bayou Book Thief was simply a delicious starter for a cozy mystery series. There was plenty of atmosphere – well of course because New Orleans – along with tempting red herrings, a fascinating ‘home base’ filled with interesting and quirky characters AND a whole series of villains that were easy to hate.

Beginning with that first murder victim, as it seems like no one misses the man. He was a nuisance when he was alive – and an even bigger one now that he’s dead. Leaving behind oodles of potential suspects and plenty of motives.

What made the story extra, added fun and filled with even more surprises was that the motive was wrapped around a decades old secret in a way that added to all the charm – and warmed the cockles of this booklover’s heart.

Writing randy romances – actually soft core porn – in the 1950s (around the time that the infamous Peyton Place was first published) was just not the done thing for young blue-blooded women possessing New Orleans’ finest pedigrees. Over half a century later, the now 80something Madame Lucretia Noisette is delighted that her old pseudonym has been rediscovered and she’s more than willing to own it.

The world has changed in the intervening decades, and at her age she’s past caring about any possible remaining potential scandal – even if her son and her grandchildren are not.

Little do they know that it’s not grand-mère’s once upon a time scandal that will cause the most problems. It’s not even Ricki’s much more recent scandals – the ones that she hoped she had left behind in LA. (That she had one serious scandal in her past is not atypical for the amateur detective in a cozy series. Two, however, struck this reader as a bit over-the-top, as both scandals were extremely juicy to the point where having one person be involved in both felt a bit like ‘overegging the pudding’. I’m curious to see the effects they’ll have on Ricki in future books in the series.)

Where back in the day the investigative axiom “cherchez la femme” might have led to the real villain, in this later day “follow the money” is a much better bet. Even if Ricki doesn’t figure out the whole thing at the very last moment.

She’s still ahead of the NOPD, something that is likely to spur her to future investigations. As it already has, considering that there are at least two more books in this charming cozy mystery series, Wined and Died in New Orleans and French Quarter Fright Night. I’m certainly planning on a return visit the next time I feel like ‘laissez les bon temps rouler’ the way to murder.

A- #BookReview: Love You a Latke by Amanda Elliot

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A- Reviews> book reviews
A- #BookReview: Love You a Latke by Amanda ElliotLove You a Latke by Amanda Elliot
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: contemporary romance, Hanukkah romance, holiday romance, romantic comedy
Pages: 368
Published by Berkley on October 8, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

Love comes home for the challah-days in this sparkling romance.
Snow is falling, holiday lights are twinkling, and Abby Cohen is pissed. For one thing, her most annoying customer, Seth, has been coming into her café every morning with his sunshiny attitude, determined to break down her carefully constructed emotional walls. And, as the only Jew on the tourism board of her Vermont town, Abby's been charged with planning their fledgling Hanukkah festival. Unfortunately, the local vendors don’t understand that the story of Hanukkah cannot be told with light-up plastic figures from the Nativity scene, even if the Three Wise Men wear yarmulkes.
Desperate for support, Abby puts out a call for help online and discovers she was wrong about being the only Jew within a hundred miles. There's one Seth.
As it turns out, Seth’s parents have been badgering him to bring a Nice Jewish Girlfriend home to New York City for Hanukkah, and if Abby can survive his incessant, irritatingly handsome smiles, he’ll introduce her to all the vendors she needs to make the festival a success. But over latkes, doughnuts, and winter adventures in Manhattan, Abby begins to realize that her fake boyfriend and his family might just be igniting a flame in her own guarded heart.

My Review:

It may be “beginning to look a lot like Christmas” – but it’s beginning to look a lot like Hanukkah, too. Particularly this year, as Hanukkah begins on the evening of December 25, 2024 – yes, that’s Christmas Day – and ends at sunset on Thursday January 2, 2025.

Hanukkah is not “late” this year – or in any other year. It’s EXACTLY when it’s supposed to be, the 25th day of the month of Kislev according to the Hebrew calendar – which is a LUNAR calendar based on the phases of the moon with a bit of a fudge factor to keep the months in line with the seasons of the solar year. The secular calendar, otherwise known as the Gregorian calendar, is a SOLAR calendar, based on the Earth’s orbit around the sun – with its own bit of fudge factor (leap years with leap days) to keep months lined up with the seasons. They aren’t the same.

And this is just the kind of thing that Abby Cohen finds herself attempting to explain – a LOT – as the only Jewish small business owner in her tiny town in Vermont. The one who has been voluntold that she’ll be planning a Hanukkah Festival/Market in less than a month, in the hopes of helping the town to stand out a little in the midst of the more ‘traditional’ Holiday Markets – meaning Christmas – in the neighboring towns. Even though the planned date for the ‘Hanukkah Festival’ is going to miss the actual holiday by more than a bit.

Abby’s coffee/pastry/lunch place isn’t doing well, financially – and neither are any of the other shops on the town’s Main Street. They ALL need a boost. The idea for the Hanukkah Festival isn’t bad – it’s just that the head of the town’s business association is a real steamroller who really wants a traditional holiday market but recognizes the market – ahem, so to speak – is saturated.

And who both doesn’t want to do all the work involved in any festival AND is most likely planning on using Abby as a scapegoat when people complain – either that the festival is too Jewish – or much more likely considering Lorna’s plans for the Festival – not nearly Jewish enough.

A problem that Abby is already having plenty of trouble with herself. She’s disconnected herself from the Jewish community in general – and from her parents in particular – for reasons that are far from apparent as the story begins.

But it’s clear she’s running away from something – or someone, or her own feelings about one or the other – and this little town in Vermont is far enough from her native New York City to be an escape from whatever trouble she left behind. Even if she brought the trauma of it with her.

Which is where her best and possibly least favorite customer comes in – and helps her out. Seth’s not a bad or troublesome customer in any single way. It’s just that he’s an effusive, cheerful, morning person – annoying so – and Abby is neither. He seems a bit of a pollyanna, always seeing the brighter side of everything – while Abby sees all the glasses, and cups, and plates, as half full AT BEST.

A best she is never, NEVER at first thing in the morning. (As a fellow non-morning person, I feel for her. Seriously. Morning people are TERRIBLE and need to stay far, far away – and be quiet about it – until after serious applications of caffeine.)

But Seth turns out to be the only other Jewish person in town. And he has a brilliant idea. A way they can help each other. Abby needs to go to New York City – in spite of just how much the very thought of running into anyone from her past gives her the heebie-jeebies – to find vendors willing to come for the festival.

And Seth needs to bring a nice Jewish girl home to his parents for Hanukkah in just a few short days. If Abby is willing to fake a relationship for the eight days of Hanukkah, Seth will help her make all the connections she needs to make the festival a success.

What could go wrong? Everything. What could go right? EVERYTHING!

Escape Rating A-: This is the second book in my personal participation in the 2024 Ho-Ho-Ho Readathon. If you are playing along with my Holiday Bingo Challenge, Love You a Latke checks off the box for either “Other Winter Romance” or “Seasonal but not Xmas” as well as “Snow on the Cover” but you’ll have to pick just one. I was specifically looking for a holiday romance centered around Hanukkah instead of Christmas because there just aren’t as many of those as I’d like to see.

Like Abby in the story, I often get just a bit annoyed that saying “holiday” this time of year is simply a coded way of saying “Christmas” that doesn’t acknowledge any of the MANY other holidays that are celebrated this time of year.

And a part of this story is Abby pushing back against that nearly overwhelming tide. The organizer wants to have her cake and eat it too, a “Holiday” Festival that’s labeled as Hanukkah so it stands out but is really Christmas after all. I was a bit astonished that Abby never thinks that Lorna isn’t getting kickbacks or trading favors with all of the ‘friends’ she expects Abby to hire to work on the festival she doesn’t want to plan and carry out herself.

But maybe I have a more suspicious nature than Abby does.

I’ll get down off my soapbox now – or at least I’ll try. Because the heart of this story is, of course, the will they/won’t they/can they/should they fake romance between Seth and Abby. Fake relationship romances are always so much fun because of the tension between what the couple is pretending to be versus what they think they really are and how easy the fake becomes real.

And that oh-so-very-much worked between Abby and Seth. Because his mother, as much as she is meddling, is actually right. Abby and Seth belong together because they make each other better people through challenging each other to be their best and most honest selves.

But the soul of the story is Abby’s internal conflict – and did I ever feel for her in that. She grew up in a close-knit Jewish community in New York City – a community that she loved BUT that she couldn’t really trust because her parents were lying, gaslighting, abusive assholes, and they poisoned everyone against her to make themselves look like perfect parents.

So she’s lost touch with her roots because it felt like the only way to excise the cancer in her soul. She misses being a part of the community so much, of being in on the jokes and sharing the history and all of what makes it a comfort to be among one’s own people no matter how that group is defined.

And she’s afraid of it at the same time because her parents have poisoned it for her and she fears – not unreasonably – that if she trusts anyone with her true self, with her fears and weaknesses and hopes and dreams – that they will either weaponize her feelings against her or betray her to her parents and their clique – or both. Letting Seth in AT ALL, even just as a friend, is a HUGE leap for her – and it’s so understandable that she very nearly doesn’t make it.

I felt SO MUCH for Abby’s journey. Both her disconnect and her need and desire to reconnect. But I kept waiting for her confrontation with her parents. She needed it and so did I as the reader. It felt like she couldn’t really have a happy ever after until at least some of that boil got lanced – no matter how painful THAT operation might be.

But I’m not sure it did. And I’m caught on the horns of a dilemma about that because the way it went felt more real. Not satisfying, because I was hoping for a big blowup and a huge catharsis – and that’s not how life works. Which is honestly a pity, but that’s the way things go.

I think the question for readers – and it’s the one I’m still puzzling over – is whether the way it does go is enough for Abby to start healing. In the end, I think so. I hope so. But I’d still love to have seen some just desserts get served.

#BookReview: We’ll Prescribe You a Cat by Syou Ishida, translated by E. Madison Shimoda

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B Reviews> book reviews
#BookReview: We’ll Prescribe You a Cat by Syou Ishida, translated by E. Madison ShimodaWe'll Prescribe You a Cat by Syou Ishida, E. Madison Shimoda
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, ebook, audiobook
Genres: literary fiction, magical realism, translated fiction, world literature
Series: We'll Prescribe You a Cat #1
Pages: 304
Published by Berkley on March 8, 2023
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

A cat a day keeps the doctor away…Discover the award-winning, bestselling Japanese novel that has become an international sensation in this utterly charming, vibrant celebration of the healing power of cats.Tucked away in an old building at the end of a narrow alley in Kyoto, the Kokoro Clinic for the Soul can only be found by people who are struggling in their lives and genuinely need help. The mysterious clinic offers a unique treatment to those who find their way it prescribes cats as medication. Patients are often puzzled by this unconventional prescription, but when they “take” their cat for the recommended duration, they witness profound transformations in their lives, guided by the playful, empathetic, occasionally challenging yet endearing cats.Throughout the pages, the power of the human-animal bond is revealed as a disheartened businessman finds unexpected joy in physical labor, a young girl navigates the complexities of elementary school cliques, a middle-aged man struggles to stay relevant at work and home, a hardened bag designer seeks emotional balance, and a geisha finds herself unable to move on from the memory of her lost cat. As the clinic’s patients navigate their inner turmoil and seek resolution, their feline companions lead them toward healing, self-discovery, and newfound hope.

My Review:

Kyoto’s Kokoro Clinic for the Soul can only be found if you really, really need it. You’ll probably only even hear the rumor about its existence – and a rather confused and confusing rumor at that – if you are in need of the service they provide.

If there’s an ache in your soul – even if you think that ache is in your mind, and you have the patience to circle the block and not let yourself get convinced that you’re, pardon the expression, barking up the wrong tree, you’ll see a poorly maintained building in the shadows behind newer and much taller ones, down an alleyway that can be found “east of Takoyakushi Street, south of Tominokoji Street, west of Rokkaku Street, north of Fuyacho Street, Nakagyō Ward, Kyoto.”

It’s the place where the young and slightly scatterbrained Dr. Nikké and his taciturn receptionist Chitose will prescribe you a cat for whatever ails you.

Shuta Kagawa is depressed and miserable. His job at a seemingly successful financial management firm is actually hell on Earth, with an absolute demon of a boss. (Not literally. Probably not literally. Comparisons could certainly be drawn). He wants to quit, but he doesn’t want to disappoint his parents. He wants a real life instead of a sentence to purgatory. He thinks that the Kokoro Clinic provides some kind of mental health therapy.

Which they do, just not in any way that he imagines. They prescribe him a cat named Bee. And she gives him something to focus on besides his own angst. She changes his life – sometimes willingly on his part, but mostly not so much – and the lives of everyone around him. That the people around him at the end are absolutely NOT the same people around him at the beginning is just part of his cure.

Shuta and Bee’s story is the first thread of a delightful tapestry, that gets woven, one prescription – and one cat – at a time, by two practitioners who know just what it means to leave a part of your soul behind.

Escape Rating B: There are a LOT of books similar to this one, where the central location is mysterious or mythical or just difficult to find, where that place connects a series of stories that at first don’t seem connected at all, where there’s just a touch of magic or magical realism, where the overall experience ends up being a bit bittersweet. Not all of the vignettes have happy endings, but they all have cathartic ones.

I picked this up because I LOVE those kinds of books, and this one has cats, which is always a win for me. Certainly the idea of being “prescribed” a cat caught my imagination, as it did several people who saw this title in my Stacking the Shelves and Sunday Posts where this title was featured. Because really, a prescription for a cat – complete with cat! What’s not to love?

But, if the concept behind the prescription seems a bit familiar, that’s only because it has become so through books such as Before the Coffee Gets Cold and many others. Of the ones I’ve read so far, this reminds me of the most is The Full Moon Coffee Shop, so if you liked that you’ll probably like this and vice versa.

What makes this one work is the way that the prescriptions all have different results. Shuta Kagawa does, in the end, adopt Bee. They rescue each other, which is what often happens with companion animals who become part of our lives and hearts. It’s kind of what we expect in ALL the stories  – but that’s not what actually happens.

In other cases, the cat opens people’s eyes to their own situations. The cat doesn’t need rescuing, it’s the human who needs a different perspective – even if that perspective is that it’s time to let go – whether of a human relationship that isn’t working or holding on too tightly to the grief over the loss of a pet. Different situations require different forms of closure, after all.

The magical realism magic of this story rests in the disappearing/reappearing clinic and its origin story, which the reader is led to slowly and carefully over the course of the book. But the fun magic is that Dr. Nikké’s and receptionist Chitose’s labor of love for both cats and humans becomes so successful over this course of prescriptions that it looks like they’ll be keeping their doors open – when they can be found at all – for a long time to come.