Source: supplied by publisher via Libro.fm

A+ #AudioBookReview: To Clutch a Razor by Veronica Roth

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A+ Reviews> audio reviews> audiobooks> book reviews
A+ #AudioBookReview: To Clutch a Razor by Veronica RothTo Clutch a Razor (Curse Bearer, #2) by Veronica Roth
Narrator: Helen Laser, James Fouhey, Nina Yndis, Tim Campbell
Format: audiobook, eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss, supplied by publisher via Libro.fm
Formats available: hardcover, ebook, audiobook
Genres: Dark Fantasy, fantasy, urban fantasy
Series: Curse Bearer #2
Pages: 229
Length: 5 hours and 46 minutes
Published by Macmillan Audio, Tor Books on September 16, 2025
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

#1 New York Times bestselling author Veronica Roth pulls from Slavic folklore to explore family, duty, and what it means to be a monster in this sequel to the USA Today bestselling novella When Among Crows
A funeral. A heist. A desperate mission.
When Dymitr is called back to the old country for the empty night, a funeral rite intended to keep evil at bay, it's the perfect opportunity for him to get his hands on his family's most guarded relic—a book of curses that could satisfy the debt he owes legendary witch Baba Jaga. But first he'll have to survive a night with his dangerous, monster-hunting kin.
As the sun sets, the line between enemies and allies becomes razor-thin, and Dymitr’s new loyalties are pushed to their breaking point.
Family gatherings can be brutal. Dymitr’s might just be fatal.

My Review:

Everyone believes that they are the heroes of their own stories. Even the monsters. Perhaps, especially the monsters, so that they have justification for the villainies they permit. And commit. If the end truly justifies the means, then ANY means, no matter how terrible, are permissible in order to serve a righteous cause. It’s all about ‘the greater good’ and is precisely what makes that phrase so monstrous.

The story that began in When Among Crows presents the reader with both sides of that eternal conflict in this particular world. Our world, but a variation of it where magic walks among us and hides in not-so-plain sight.

The Knights of the Holy Order believe that their ‘war’ against magical creatures is righteous, because whenever they meet one of those creatures that hides behind a human face, the creature does its damndest to kill the knight however it can. So the knight feels justified in killing any such creature whenever and wherever they are found – and even hunting them down for that very purpose.

But those creatures tell a different story. Every single one of them is hunted. Every single one has lost friends and loved ones to the knights. And every single one of them is no match for the knights and their magic. From the creatures’ perspective, the creatures generally don’t hunt the knights, but are all too aware that if a knight finds them, they are already dead. So they fight as best as they can with whatever they have, whether knives, teeth, claws or shapeshifting. The creatures feel like they have no choice, just as they had no choice to be born what they are.

Knights, however, are MADE to be what they are.

Dymitr, Knight of the Holy Order from a long line of such knights, came to Chicago to beg Baba Jaga to destroy him, because he can no longer bear to commit the atrocities expected of him. He knows the creatures he’s been taught since childhood to kill are merely people with magic – just like himself.

Instead of killing him, Baba Jaga makes him into something that has never been, a knight who is also a creature. His family will kill him when they know. But he has a task to complete for Baba Jaga in order to claim his new life. A task that will take him back to the last place that he and his new friends should EVER go.

Dymitr really can’t go home again. But the only way to learn that – all the way down to his bones – is to go there anyway. And take his two dearest friends along with him for the terrible journey.

Escape Rating A+: This second book in the Curse Bearer is every single bit as excellent as the first book, When Among Crows. It also really, truly does not stand alone, so start with Crows.

Howsomever, a part of that ‘not standing alone’ is that the reader – or listener in my case and the narrators were all marvelous AGAIN – comes into this book already knowing these people and caring about them, so this one also gave me a bit of an approach/avoidance conflict. I needed to see how this story ended, BUT I didn’t want to actually experience each of the terrible things that happen to these characters, because I like them and wanted them to be okay. Which they are in the end but absolutely not unbloodied, unchanged, unscarred or untraumatized.

This story, and this series, takes these people we’ve come to know and love and takes them on a walk through some very dark places because those are the places they need to go to get redemption. So the story is not exactly fun but it is ALWAYS compelling – and sometimes even more so because of the darkness it has to travel through.

Putting it another way, this was a bit of a train wreck book, not in the sense that the book is terrible – instead it’s terribly good – but in the sense that I knew something terrible or terrifying or both was about to happen to the characters, whom I liked very much, and I didn’t want to watch but still NEEDED to see.

The series, so far at least because damn I hope there are more, is Dymitr’s, even though his is not the only perspective we get to experience. Dymitr is the curse bearer of the series’ title. In When Among Crows, his eyes were fully opened to the truth, or at least A truth, about his own people by seeing them through the eyes of their enemies.

The Knights have always told their story as a ‘secondly’ story, in that they justify their actions towards the creatures they hunt because, in the present at least, any creature they find attacks on sight. That the zmora and the strzyga (both avian shapeshifters) and all the others attack when cornered because that’s the only option they have doesn’t matter to the knights because they believe their mission is a ‘holy’ one.

But those creatures, those people, are only defending themselves. They’d be happy to live and let live if they only could. Or perhaps there was a point where they would have. Now, there’s so much history and blood on both sides that peace between them might not be possible. And doesn’t THAT sound familiar?

So that first story took Dymitr into the belly of the first beast, to the supernatural community of Chicago, so that he could see that the creatures he had been taught to hunt were merely people. This second book takes him home, to learn first-hand and as painfully as possible that the people he loves, the people who taught him to fight and hunt monsters – are the true monsters.

What he’ll need to reckon with in later books in the series – if they ever exist and I sincerely hope they will – is that he is part of both sides and that they are part of him. That he still loves people who are creatures AND people who are monsters. Even if only one side is still willing to love him back.

#AudioBookReview: The Healing Hippo of Hinode Park by Michiko Aoyama, translated by Takami Nieda

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | audio reviews> audiobooks> B Reviews> book reviews
#AudioBookReview: The Healing Hippo of Hinode Park by Michiko Aoyama, translated by Takami NiedaThe Healing Hippo of Hinode Park by Michiko Aoyama
Translator: Takami Nieda
Narrator: Naruto Komatsu, Kenichiro Thomson, Susan Momoko Hingley, Yuriri Naka, Ami Okumura Jones
Format: audiobook, eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss, supplied by publisher via Libro.fm
Formats available: hardcover, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: relationship fiction, sad fluff, translated fiction, world literature
Pages: 256
Length: 4 hours and 57 minutes
Published by Hanover Square Press, Harlequin Audio on September 23, 2025
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

The enchanting new novel by the multimillion-copy bestselling author of What You Are Looking For Is in the Library, about five strangers who each seek comfort from a healing hippo ride.
Nestled at the bottom of a five-story apartment block in the community of Advance Hill is the children's playground in Hinode Park, where you will find a very special age-old hippo ride named Kabahiko. According to urban legend, if you touch the exact part of the hippo where you have an ailment or wound, you will see swift signs of recovery. They call it "Healing Hippo."
In The Healing Hippo of Hinode Park, the apartment residents each find their way to Kabahiko, confessing their troubles and drawing upon the hippo's rumored abilities. From a struggling student who pets the hippo's head to reverse his poor academic performance to the lonely new mother who hopes that touching the hippo's mouth will allow her to better express herself, this heartwarming, eclectic cast of characters will all come to Kabahiko for healing in their lives—though they may not always find it in the ways they expect.
With Aoyama's classic charm and emotional power, The Healing Hippo of Hinode Park is a deeply moving celebration of kindness, community and understanding.

My Review:

I picked this up because I LOVED the author’s first book, What You Are Looking For Is in the Library and was hoping for more just like it. That particular book is one of my favorites among the current trend of mostly light, slightly bittersweet, loosely linked stories that are more about healing and interconnected relationships than they are anything else. Often, these stories have just a touch of magical realism, as was particularly true in the book that seems to have started the trend, Before the Coffee Gets Cold.

The “Healing Hippo of Hinode Park”, the playground statue at the center of this neighborhood and the people who come to perch on the hippo Kabahiko’s back in hopes of fixing whatever part of them is currently broken, is not magical in any demonstrable sense. Although neither was the library in the author’s first book.

The magic in Kabahiko is really the magic of the human spirit. The hippo just gives that spirit a bit of focus. Or perhaps that’s clarity. It could just be that Kabahiko provides a listening ear and an open heart into which someone, several someones, can pour their troubles and hear THEMSELVES and what’s at the heart of their current predicament.

The theme behind these interactions with the hippo seems to be that “It’s never too late to be what you might have been.” It’s also never too early.

In each person who comes to Kabahiko for healing, whether child or teen or adult, it seems, or it feels, or both, that they have a physical ailment. Each chapter is named for the part that the person thinks they need to heal.

But the stories here aren’t about the physical. They’re about anxiety manifesting physically. They’re about suppressing one’s own voice out of fear of what others will think. Or fear of embarrassment or being ostracized or of looking out of touch with the world. Each person has closed themselves off from their authentic self – but the part that they’ve locked away has to find another avenue for drawing attention to itself so that the situation can be resolved. Which means that something hurts in the physical sense as a way for the body to express the emotional pain. Or blockage. Or both. Definitely both.

The individual stories, from the student who discovers he can no longer skate through school to the mother who lets a ‘mum group’ she doesn’t even like walk all over her to a middle-aged man resenting the changes that the years have brought instead of making the life he has the best it can be, are individually lovely and heartwarming and utterly real in their exploration of human nature and human relationships.

Which just makes the reader hope for, long for, or perhaps even look for, a Kabahiko somewhere near so that they, too, can be healed.

Escape Rating B: I have to confess that while I did like this one, I didn’t like it quite as much as I did the author’s first book. Which probably has a whole lot to do with the library setting of that first book, AND that I didn’t personally get into quite as many of the individual scenarios in this book as I did in the Library. Because, well, library.

Howsomever, when I listened to The Healing Hippo of Hinode Park, it turned out to the perfect listen for a busy week as each chapter was precisely the right length for my drive. It felt like each day I’d gotten a whole story, a happy ending, with nothing hanging over me but the anticipation of a new story the next day.

This is a multi-cast recording, and the readers for each individual story generally fit well into their characters, although as usual I have to register a tiny complaint that I don’t know who read whom so that I can look for the voice actors in other audiobooks.

I especially enjoyed the way that the overall theme made the individual stories have a more universal feel than I initially expected. The ‘mum group’ story drove me a bit batty until she stopped being a doormat but that’s definitely a ‘me’ thing.

In general, books like this are ones that I turn to when I need a quietly happy comfort read instead of a cathartic and generally murderous comfort read. I love the way the individual stories ‘magically’ get connected in the end, and they all seem to have just the right amount of fluff, but real fluff and sad fluff, to fit this kind of mood.

So if you’re looking for a light reading pick-me-up, pick up The Healing Hippo of Hinode Park, What You Are Looking For Is in the Library, or my other personal fave, The Kamogawa Food Detectives, and leave the world behind for a light and emotionally refreshing story.

A+ #AudioBookReview: Hemlock and Silver by T. Kingfisher

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A+ Reviews> book reviews
A+ #AudioBookReview: Hemlock and Silver by T. KingfisherHemlock & Silver by T. Kingfisher
Narrator: Jennifer Pickens
Format: audiobook, eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss, supplied by publisher via Libro.fm
Formats available: hardcover, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: cozy fantasy, fairy tales, fantasy, retellings
Pages: 368
Length: 11 hours and 50 minutes
Published by Macmillan Audio, Tor Books on August 19, 2025
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

From New York Times bestselling and Hugo Award-winning author T. Kingfisher comes Hemlock & Silver, a dark reimagining of “Snow White” steeped in poison, intrigue, and treason of the most magical kind.
Healer Anja regularly drinks poison.
Not to die, but to save— seeking cures for those everyone else has given up on.
But a summons from the King interrupts her quiet, herb-obsessed life. His daughter, Snow, is dying, and he hopes Anja’s unorthodox methods can save her.
Aided by a taciturn guard, a narcissistic cat, and a passion for the scientific method, Anja rushes to treat Snow, but nothing seems to work. That is, until she finds a secret world, hidden inside a magic mirror. This dark realm may hold the key to what is making Snow sick.
Or it might be the thing that kills them all.

My Review:

Snow. Glass. Apples. The images are iconic, aren’t they? Snow White. Mirror Glass. Poison Apples.

Howsomever, particularly considering that he was married to a woman who might as well be Maleficent, the King of this little fantasy kingdom is actually a rather decent – and somewhat nondescript – man. Also a desperate one. His 12-year-old daughter, Snow, seems to be dying by inches – and it’s not an easy or an easy death. None of the official court healers has a clue. That this seems to be an era when leeching and purging and OMG blistering the feet were the height of medical expertise, well, that’s not a surprise.

So he turns to a very unofficial healer, the spinster daughter of one of the kingdom’s prosperous merchants, a woman referred to as ‘Healer’ Anja. In Anja’s case, the title is a courtesy only, because she’s not really a healer and she’d be the first to admit that. But the church’s blessing on her work DOES keep the witch burnings away. At least so far.

Anja is more of a medical researcher than an actual healer. And the medicine that she has spent her life pretty much obsessed with is poison. Not exactly. (There’s a lot of not exactly and sorta/kinda and maybe and well, well uh, in the way Anja talks inside her head. The place from which this entire story is told – and told well if you like protagonists who are a bit too honest with themselves and frequently to their own detriment.)

The fact that some, many, possibly even most, poisons have no known cure is a problem that Anja has spent her life solving just a tiny corner of. She knows she’s not doing much, but solving the problem of poisons has consumed her life. Treating the patient attached to the problem isn’t her thing. At all. (She’s Gregory House only tactless rather than acidly cutting. She doesn’t want to emotionally wound the patients, but she just doesn’t know what to say to make the truth more palatable than it generally is.)

The king asks Anja to come to his daughter and figure out what’s the matter with the girl. Anja knows she’s being ordered to go, even if he never, ever uses those words, because he’s the king and he can do her father’s business untold damage, or simply have them all killed, if she refuses. This king isn’t like that – although he could be – and we get to experience all of Anja’s thoughts and fears on the subject as she agrees to go, caveat-ing all over the place that it might not be poison at all.

It is, and it isn’t. Just as there’s not exactly a poisoner – but there’s not exactly not one, either. Anja’s whole investigation runs headlong into a whole lot of people and things and situations that aren’t quite what they appear to be – but aren’t exactly not what they appear to be, either.

Because there’s an entire strange, fascinating and terrifying world that isn’t nearly so benign (and yes, that’s sarcasm) as what would in our world be Alice’s side of the looking glass. Filled with men, and monsters, and a queen who spent too long looking in the mirror and painted herself RED.

Escape Rating A+: This is surprisingly cozy for a fantasy about poisons. Then again, I’m not completely surprised because this is T. Kingfisher, and a LOT of her stories have quite a bit of cozy hidden inside. Like much of her work, it’s not cozy in any overt way, rather it’s cozy because she puts in a lot of cozy details about life in her created worlds, and it’s the kind of detail that feels cozy even when the events happening around those cozy details are very much NOT.

This story, like so much of her work, rides or dies on the back of – or rather in the head of – its first person protagonist, Anja. If you enjoy Anja’s voice – a voice that often feels like the voice of the author herself – you’re going to love this book. But if Anja’s constant second-guessing and self-deprecation and constant prevarication gets in the way of the story – for you – instead of BEING the story as it was for this reader, this may be more of a cup of chime adder venom than it is a delightful cup of tea.

(I listened to this one in audio, and the narrator, Jennifer Pickens, was just perfect for Anja. I loved the way that she was calm and reassuring, just the way that I thought Anja should sound, particularly when the person she was trying to reassure was herself.)

The thing about Anja, that I enjoy a lot about this author’s protagonists, is that the stuff she is gibbering inside her head is exactly the sort of thing that we all hope goes through our heads – and doesn’t spew out of our mouths too often – in the face of some of what she faces. And we all think we’re kinda weird and wonder why anyone puts up with us and all our faults are glaring and we’re never enough, etc., etc., etc. In other words, Anja has the same kind of impostor syndrome as the rest of us, so if you like seeing someone very real as a hero, she’s lovely. If you want your heroes to be heroic all the time, she’ll drive you bananas.

The story is also a lovely paean to the joys of scholarship and the delights of finding an answer to a question that has been plaguing you for ‘lo these many years’ that is terrific. Particularly if you’re female and have been told repeatedly and often that you’re too smart or like things that other people find inappropriate or distasteful for females but think is just fascinating when a male goes off on the exact same tangent.

I’ll get off the soapbox I borrowed from Anja and get back to things.

What made this story so much fun, for me, were the details of Anja’s life and her investigations and her desperation to solve the problem of Snow’s poisoning. Not that she doesn’t want to save the child, but what spurs her is her love of discovery.

The world that she finally discovers behind the mirror – with the help of an obnoxious, egotistical, self-centered and entirely much too cattitude-filled CAT is every bit as thrilling and frightening as any hero could have wished makes everything both simpler and more complicated – as such discoveries do. She has a big piece of the puzzle – and so MANY more questions that need to be answered.

I have to admit that I was surprised at the way the mirror world worked, because a fairy tale reimaging is absolutely NOT the place I expect to find the Star Trek “Mirror Universe”, but it’s here anyway. Not exactly, but close enough, right down to the description of the characters as “aggressive, mistrustful and opportunistic” – which describes the Mirror Queen to a “T”. Or perhaps that should be an “A”, as in apple, and we’re back where we started from.

In the end, this story is terrific, and it would be even better if it weren’t a reimagining of Snow White. But it is and that makes it all the more delicious, as this is a Snow White who in the end, gets her own damn revenge thankyouverymuch – with the help of a fairy god-cat, a gang of monstrous helpers who are pretty much the opposite of dwarves, and a female healer who solves the puzzle, saves the day and earns her very own happy ever after.

Grade A #AudioBookReview: Alchemy and a Cup of Tea by Rebecca Thorne

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A Reviews> audio reviews> audiobooks> book reviews
Grade A #AudioBookReview: Alchemy and a Cup of Tea by Rebecca ThorneAlchemy and a Cup of Tea (Tomes & Tea Book 4) by Rebecca Thorne
Narrator: Jessica Threet
Format: audiobook, eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss, supplied by publisher via Libro.fm
Formats available: paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: cozy fantasy, epic fantasy, fantasy romance
Series: Tomes and Tea #4
Pages: 316
Length: 10 hours and 22 minutes
Published by Bramble Romance, Macmillan Audio on August 12, 2025
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

USA Today, Sunday Times, and Indie bestselling author Rebecca Thorne brings the Tomes & Tea series to a delightful, cozy close for our beloved lesbian book- and tea- sellers.
This trade paperback release features vivid sprayed edges, a beautiful color illustration, and a never-before-seen bonus short story!
Reyna and Kianthe have no trouble ruling the Queendom, battling evil alchemists, and rescuing adorable baby dragons, but can they save their town from the ravening influx of.... tourists?!?
On the night of her kidnapping, all Reyna wanted was a relaxing cup of tea. She didn’t expect to be dropped in a hidden cell, but what the hells. She’s flexible.
When Kianthe “rescues” her wife, she expects they’ll be back at New Leaf having tea by noon. But there’s a problem: an alchemy circle marred Reyna’s cell. What does a radical group of alchemists want with the Queendom’s newest sovereign… and why did they think they could get away with this?
To make matters worse, Kianthe and Reyna’s hometown is having its own problems. Word of New Leaf Tomes and Tea―and its celebrity owners―has finally spread, and tourists are flooding into Tawney. As their friends struggle with the sudden influx, Kianthe and Reyna have to face a bigger conundrum than rogue alchemists: the fact that closing their bookshop might be the only way to save their town.
Things can’t just be simple, can they?

My Review:

The story of Tomes and Tea could have been wrapped up at the end of the previous book, Tea You at the Altar. After all, the traditional ending of romances has always been the wedding – and the bedding that follows. But Reyna and Kianthe anticipated that long ago, because their world is not ours and in any case, our world has changed.

But the ending of Tea You at the Altar, traditional as it might have been, left a literal ton of unanswered questions. Not about Reyna and Kianthe’s relationship but about all of the duties and responsibilities they have taken on, together AND separately.

Kianthe is the Arcandor, the Mage of Ages, the most powerful mage in all the realms and the true leader of the Magicary – even though she delegates the administrative work of her job to the High Mage who oversees the magical academy located there. In spite of the fact that the Arcandor and the current High Mage pretty much hate each other for living.

Reyna is the newly crowned Queen of the Queendom – even though she’s not remotely a member of the ruling family. But she’s willing to do the work – and there’s a metric buttload of THAT after years under the rule of the tyrannical – and most likely sociopathic AND bat-shit crazy – Queen Tilaine.

But the Magicary and the Queendom’s Capital are not remotely near each other – not even as their griffins fly. And neither seat of power is close to the place that Reyna and Kianthe call home, their combination book and tea shop, New Leaf, in quaint, remote Tawney.

A setup which brought to mind a conversation from The Fellowship of the Ring that takes place between Frodo and Sam while they are in Rivendell for the Council of Elrond about the possible ending of Frodo’s not yet written book about the quest they haven’t really started yet. [Frodo opined] “And they all settled down and lived together happily ever after? [To which Sam’s unspoken response was] ‘And where will they live? That’s what I often wonder.”

And that’s exactly what Reyna and Kianthe are wondering when this final entry in the series opens. The home of their hearts is in Tawney, but Reyna has just been kidnapped from the Queen’s Palace and Kianthe rides to the rescue along with a company of the Queensguard. They’re caught between being together and performing their respective duties, and something is always falling into the crack between.

What they eventually discover has fallen into that chasm is a villain who has been playing an extremely long game, spending decades gaining power and trust at the Magicary while secretly inventing an entirely new branch of magic, stolen from someone else, as villains do. All it will take to wrest control from both the Queendom’s and the Magicary’s hands is to make a really big sacrifice – which no villain ever plans to do all by themselves – or, if at all possible, by themselves at all.

It’s up to Kianthe and Reyna to stop the WORST from happening – even if they have to make a big sacrifice of their own. Because that’s what THEY do, save the day and the world in spite of the odds and without counting the cost to themselves. It’s the job they both signed up for, separately and together, and they’ll fix this mess or die trying. Or both.

Escape Rating A: I had pretty much the same reaction to this book as I did the previous, Tea You at the Altar. I started out listening, both because I was enjoying the narrator, Jessica Threet and because I wasn’t quite ready for the series to end. Then I got caught up in the rising tension of the plot against the Magicary, the increasing threat of the rogue alchemists making all the trouble, along the forces that were making life in Tawney unliveable for EVERYONE and decided to switch out of my leisurely stroll through this final book in favor of learning if any of my guesses about the sources of any of the threats were correct.

I had to know. And now I do and the ending – and this time it’s a real ending – wraps up all the loose ends from the entire series and ties the story up in a lovely bow with happy endings all around.

Except the villain, of course.

It was terrific the way that the rather different tensions ratcheted up on all sides in this final book. Reyna’s mostly fine in the Queendom, but it’s not where she wants to be and she’s not doing what she wants to do, but she’s doing it well.

Her kidnapping opens the story up to its final arc of big problems and the painstaking solving thereof, when she discovers an alchemical symbol hiding underneath the floor of her cell. Alchemy is the bastard child of Kianthe’s elemental magic, and it’s powered by sacrifice. Finding that symbol under the floor raises questions about who wants whom to sacrifice exactly what – and why.

Finding the same symbol hidden in the Magicary draining the source of all elemental magic, the Stone of Seeing, tells Kianthe and Reyna that whatever this plot is, it’s big. Really, really big. Change the balance of the whole entire world big.

From that point the story is off and running at the speed of dragon wings. Literally. And the tension doesn’t let up until the very desperate, but ultimately satisfying, end. Along the way there are plenty of the cozy fantasy touches that make this series so much fun, particularly the mess back home in Tawney where the tourists are overrunning the place in the hopes of getting a glimpse of the Queen and the Alcandor in their natural habitat.

But what powers the grand finale of this series has to be grand enough to power that happy ever after ending – and it definitely does. When this series first started, back in Can’t Spell Treason without Tea, I thought it had promise but wasn’t sure whether or not it could get out of the long shadow cast by Legends & Lattes. Now at the ending I’m happy to say that it delightfully did, and that Tawney stands proudly beside Thune as a cozy fantasy destination that it has been a joy to visit every step of the way.

I’ll miss Kianthe and Reyna and their sweet romance and terrible puns, but I’m glad they got the happy ever after they worked so very hard for. And I’m looking forward to see what comes next from the mind of their creator.

A- #AudioBookReview: A Case of Mice and Murder by Sally Smith

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A- Reviews> audio reviews> audiobooks> book reviews
A- #AudioBookReview: A Case of Mice and Murder by Sally SmithA Case of Mice and Murder: The Trials of Gabriel Ward by Sally Smith
Narrator: Matthew Lloyd Davies
Format: audiobook, eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss, supplied by publisher via Libro.fm
Formats available: hardcover, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: historical mystery, mystery
Series: The Trials of Gabriel Ward #1
Pages: 336
Length: 9 hours and 58 minutes
Published by Bloomsbury Publishing, Raven Books on June 17, 2025
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

"I was immediately besotted . . . Brilliant." -Janice Hallett, internationally bestselling author of The Appeal
The first in a delightful new mystery series set in the hidden heart of London's legal world, introducing a wonderfully unwilling sleuth, perfect for fans of Richard Osman and Nita Prose.
When barrister Gabriel Ward steps out of his rooms at exactly two minutes to seven on a sunny May morning in 1901, his mind is so full of his latest case-the disputed authorship of bestselling children's book Millie the Temple Church Mouse-that he scarcely registers the body of the Lord Chief Justice of England on his doorstep.
But even he cannot fail to notice the judge's dusty bare feet, in shocking contrast to his flawless evening dress, nor the silver carving knife sticking out of his chest. In the shaded courtyards and ancient buildings of the Inner Temple, the hidden heart of London's legal world, murder has spent centuries confined firmly to the casebooks. Until now . . .
The police can enter the Temple only by consent, so who better to investigate this tragic breach of law and order than a man who prizes both above all things? But murder doesn't answer to logic or reasoned argument, and Gabriel soon discovers that the Temple's heavy oak doors are hiding more surprising secrets than he'd ever imagined . . .

My Review:

In May of 1901, the world was on the cusp of change. The old century had gone, and taken the queen who had ruled Britain through most of it along with it. The game of empires was already on the road to a war that would reshape the fate of the British Empire and redraw the map of the world.

But Sir Gabriel Ward KC, senior barrister of the Inner Temple, faced changes in his own personal world that he didn’t so much confront as stumble over as he entered his office on the morning of 20 May.

Just as, at first, he stepped over the corpse of the Lord Chief Justice as it lay across his office doorway.

Sir Gabriel’s day, and indeed the rest of his life, had just been knocked out of its appointed path and his eccentric comfort zone. Neither will ever be the same.

Because Sir Gabriel, in spite of his inclination – indeed in direct conflict with the conduct of his whole, entire life – is about to be thrust into the middle of a murder investigation. Not in his usual position as counsel for either the prosecution or the defense, not as a judge as so many of his fellow KCs aspire to and have achieved, thankfully not as a possible suspect – but as the detective.

The man couldn’t be further out of his depth if he had dived into the Channel!

But he’s stuck, caught on the horns of a dilemma forced upon him by the Inner Temple’s powerful – if often petty and self-aggrandizing – treasurer. The Treasurer desires to keep the investigation of the Temple and its members in house. Which he can actually do as a result of old, obscure but still valid legal privileges given to the Inner and Middle Temples centuries ago.

The Treasurer also wants the investigation to exonerate any and all members of the Temple – without divulging any of their secrets – so that the police can focus on outsiders. Whether that is remotely true or possible or even makes any sense at all.

Sir Gabriel wants to keep his comfortable rooms in the Inner Temple, a comfort that the Treasurer has the power to take away at a whim – or any hint of disobedience. Sir Gabriel, knowing the side on which his bread is buttered, acquiesces in spite of the wreck it will make of his life, his meticulous plans for an important upcoming case, and whether or not he is willing to cover up whatever truths he may manage to uncover.

His life will never be the same. Ironically, considering that the man is already well into middle age when this story begins, the investigation is going to be the making of him, and he’ll be all the better for it – if not half so comfortable as he was before he stepped over the Lord Chief Justice’s corpse.

Escape Rating A-: At first, I thought this was a VERY traditional ‘golden age’ kind of mystery, and that Sir Gabriel Ward KC was a very traditional, if more than a bit eccentric, sort of amateur investigator. As much as I generally enjoy mysteries in audio – because it’s so difficult to thumb to the end to find out ‘whodunnit’ – the audio in this case wasn’t helping at all.

Sir Gabriel’s speech patterns are slow and thoughtful, the voice actor read him in rather lugubrious tones, and it made the whole thing feel exaggeratedly slow. The reading absolutely did match the character, but it drove me personally bananas. Changing the speed of the reading from 1.0 to 1.1 changed my picture of everything entirely as I still got the flavor of Sir Gabriel’s manner of speaking without feeling as though I could paint dry as he spoke.

I started out wondering if I could bear to listen to the story, and ended up loving it.

What makes A Case of Mice and Murder so fascinating turns out to BE the character of Sir Gabriel, and the eccentric but methodical way he conducts the two cases that confront him in his first outing.

The one is familiar, he has taken on the case of the publisher of a children’s story ABOUT the Inner Temple, and the story has become an international bestseller. Which one would think would be a good thing for the publisher, but the VERY thorny problem at law is that the manuscript was found dropped on the publisher’s literal doorstep. He’s never known who the author was – and now that there is money to be made – well, there are claims to be made and answered.

This is just the kind of case, complete with difficult questions and debatable precedents, that Sir Gabriel loves to argue in court. For either side.

But it’s his investigation of the Lord Chief Justice’s death in which he really shines – in a way that is totally unexpected both to Sir Gabriel and to the reader. Because his investigation forces him to take an open-minded look at the lives of the people around him. Not just his fellow barristers, but all the members of the Inner Temple community.

With his innate endless curiosity as well as a mind that is compelled to search out ALL the facts and weigh them equally, to not ever go into a case with preconceived notions on any side, what he discovers opens his mind to the lives of those around him. It doesn’t change his eccentricities at all, rather it uses them to present an even-handed view of everyone and everything, from the petty jealousies of his fellow barristers to the stifled intellects of their wives to the pride and desperation in the lives of the workers who keep the Temple functioning.

And it’s in that open-mindedness that he finds the solution to both the cases before him, and combines them into one terrible but inevitable conclusion.

In the end, what made this work is the exact thing I initially thought was going to drive me away – the eccentric, curious, deliberate speech and character and mental processes of Sir Gabriel Ward KC. Now I’m looking forward to Sir Gabriel’s next investigation in A Case of Life and Limb, coming just in time for the Christmas holidays in which it is set.

#AudioBookReview: First-Time Caller by B.K. Borison

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | audio reviews> audiobooks> B Reviews> book reviews
#AudioBookReview: First-Time Caller by B.K. BorisonFirst-Time Caller (Heartstrings, #1) by B.K. Borison
Narrator: E.J. Bingham, Hathaway Lee
Format: audiobook, eARC
Source: borrowed from library, supplied by publisher via Libro.fm
Formats available: hardcover, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: contemporary romance, romantic comedy
Series: Heartstrings #1
Pages: 420
Length: 11 hours and 54 minutes
Published by Berkley, Penguin Audio on February 11, 2025
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

A hopeless romantic meets a jaded radio host in this cozy, Sleepless in Seattle-inspired love story from beloved author B.K. Borison.
Aiden Valentine has a secret: he's fallen out of love with love. And as the host of Baltimore's romance hotline, that's a bit of a problem. But when a young girl calls in to the station asking for dating advice for her mom, the interview goes viral, thrusting Aiden and Heartstrings into the limelight.
Lucie Stone thought she was doing just fine. She has a good job; an incredible family; and a smart, slightly devious kid. But when all of Baltimore is suddenly scrutinizing her love life-or lack thereof—she begins to question if she's as happy as she thought. Maybe a little more romance wouldn't be such a bad thing.
Everyone wants Lucie to find her happy ending... even the handsome, temperamental man calling the shots. But when sparks start to fly behind the scenes, Lucie must make the final call between the radio-sponsored happily ever after or the man in the headphones next to her.

My Review:

Lucie Stone and Aiden Valen make real magic in the radio booth – but first they have to get there. And that takes some doing on the part of practically every single person in Lucie’s life – including her twelve-year-old daughter.

Which is pretty much the dichotomy that powers this entire grumpy-sunshine romance.

The first part of the story is the setup. Aiden Valen – who broadcasts as Aiden ValenTINE, is the host for a romance hotline on an independent Baltimore radio station. A station he is literally tanking, all by himself, because he’s fallen out of love with love and is spreading his disillusionment all over his show.

Obviously, Aiden is the grump in this pairing.

Lucie, on the other hand, is the sunshine, even though her life doesn’t have quite as much sunshine as it ought to have. At least not according to her daughter Maya, her daughter’s dads, her coworkers, her bestie, and seemingly everyone else in her life.

And that’s where the conspiracy comes in, the fun begins, and the magic happens. Because Lucie is all about the magic of love, even if she’s never managed to find it for herself. Which is why her daughter concocts a scheme to call into Aiden’s radio show on her mom’s behalf, in the hopes that Aiden can help Lucie find what she’s looking for.

Lucie hears her daughter on the phone in the middle of the night talking with a man. From under the covers, the better to muffle the sound. At first, Lucie goes ballistic on both of them, not unreasonably so. But it’s late and she’s tired and she’s more tired of being lonely than she wants to admit.

So she ends up talking with Aiden for the rest of his shift, and she’s honest about life, dating, the universe and pretty much everything. And it goes VIRAL. Lucie’s struck a chord with the entire Eastern Seaboard. With Aiden along for a ride he never thought he’d EVER want to take.

Because Lucie still believes in magic, while Aiden doesn’t even believe in love. Until he does.

Escape Rating B: I ended up with an epic amount of mixed feelings about this one. The second half of the book – once they get into the booth together and start talking to each other and to the people of Baltimore who are shipping it like mad – it really is magic.

But getting there, that first half of the book, was a bit of a slog. It seemed as if every single person in Lucie’s inner circle was a boundary-stomping jerk. While this setup may have been exactly what Lucie needed, the way it happened and the way they all, collectively, went about it was absolutely NOT what she wanted or how she wanted it.

The relationship that Aiden and Lucie develop once they get into the booth – and out of it – was all about consent. Specifically hers. But getting her there was the absolute opposite, a campaign conducted by the people who did love her and did mean the best for her with their interference. But does that mean it’s okay to ignore someone’s expressed wishes because you ‘mean well’ and where does that end? It’s a situation that I find triggering and others may as well, but your reading mileage hopefully varies.

Once they interact directly with each other, the whole thing is utterly magical. I adored their banter, I loved the way they played off each other, and it was extra fun that it seemed as if even though we were experiencing this story through their alternating first-person perspectives, that Aiden didn’t have a clue about his own feelings, while Lucie steadfastly avoided getting a clue that the entire city was shipping the relationship that neither of them recognized they were having.

I also adored that Lucie was in a male-dominated profession (she’s a car mechanic), that she’s doing it well and is well respected by her co-workers, and that all four of her somewhat grumpy, older, male coworkers are shipping it along with the rest of Baltimore just added to the fun – and to the magic.

Speaking of magic, the audiobook is magical, and it’s also a terrific medium for experiencing this particular story. The experience is all the better because the alternating perspectives are voiced by not one but two narrators, Hathaway Lee for Lucie and E.J. Bingham for Aiden. Because we’re so deeply inside their heads for this, it worked so much better that each had their own narrative voice to go along with their own internal voice.

In the end, the good outweighed the ‘less good’ parts of this story, although I have to confess that I’d probably have bailed if so many friends hadn’t talked both the book and the author up so much. It also helped that the radio show parts of the story reminded me very fondly of Turn It Up by Inez Kelly, a story I read a while back that was also about co-hosts on a radio program that talk their way into romance with the same kind of banter.

Which leads to one last comment. According to the author, this book is meant to invoke fond memories of the movie Sleepless in Seattle. Whether it does or not is certainly in the eye of the beholder. Howsomever, a second book in this Heartstrings series has been announced, And Now, Back to You, inspired by When Harry Met Sally. I can’t wait to see if the iconic scene from that movie is replicated – and how!

A- #AudioBookReview: Knave of Diamonds by Laurie R. King

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A- Reviews> audio reviews> audiobooks> book reviews
A- #AudioBookReview: Knave of Diamonds by Laurie R. KingKnave of Diamonds (Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes, #19) by Laurie R. King
Narrator: Amy Scanlon, Steven Crossley, Jefferson Mays
Format: audiobook, eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss, supplied by publisher via Libro.fm
Formats available: hardcover, large print, ebook, audiobook
Genres: historical fiction, historical mystery, mystery
Series: Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes #19
Pages: 336
Length: 9 hours and 39 minutes
Published by Bantam, Recorded Books on June 10, 2025
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

Mary Russell’s allegiances are tested by the reappearance of her long-lost uncle—and a tantalizing case not even Sherlock Holmes could solve.

When Mary Russell was a child, she adored her black sheep Uncle Jake. But she hasn’t heard from him in many years, and she assumed that his ne’er-do-well ways had brought him to a bad end somewhere—until he presents himself at her Sussex door. Yes, Jake is back, and with a load of problems for his clever niece. Not the least of which is the reason the family rejected him in the first place: He was involved—somehow—in the infamous disappearance of the Irish Crown Jewels from an impregnable safe in Dublin Castle.

It was a theft that shook a government, enraged a king, threatened the English establishment—and baffled not only the Dublin police and Scotland Yard, but Sherlock Holmes himself. And, now, Jake expects Russell to step into the middle of it all? To slip away with him, not telling Holmes what she’s up to? Knowing that the theft—unsolved, hushed-up, scandalous—must have involved Mycroft Holmes as well?

Naturally, she can do nothing of the sort. Siding with her uncle, even briefly, could only place her in opposition to both her husband-partner and his secretive and powerful brother. She has to tell Jake no.

On the other hand, this is Jake—her father’s kid brother, her childhood hero, the beloved and long-lost survivor of a much-diminished family.

Conflicting loyalties and international secrets, blatant lies and blithe deceptions: sounds like another case for Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes.

My Review:

“There’s nothing more disarming than a Jack Russell terrier,” according to Mary Russell’s long-absent rogue of an uncle, Jake Russell. Jake was so much the epitome of the black sheep of the family that he managed to fade completely into the shadows for fourteen long, and often dark, years. But now he’s arrived on his niece’s doorstep in Sussex, hoping that he can work his ‘disarming’ charm on her, just as he used to.

Jake starts out this adventure by trying to stack the deck in his favor – as he usually does. In this particular instance, that means timing his approach to his niece AFTER he’s certain that her much too observant husband, Sherlock Holmes, is on his way elsewhere.

But the Mary Russell that Jake remembers was only eleven, albeit clever and mischievous enough to let herself be part of one of his dodgy but well-intended cons. After the death of her parents and younger brother – an event that did not bring her beloved uncle around to rescue her – and after ten years as the apprentice and later wife of the ‘Great Detective’ himself, Sherlock Holmes, Mary Russell is not nearly so innocent or gullible as she once was.

Which doesn’t mean that she won’t, eventually, go along with the scheme that brought him to her door. Only that he’ll have to be a bit more, well, honest about his intentions. She may still love him, but she’s also VERY well aware of who and what he is, and she doesn’t trust him very far at all.

And she shouldn’t. Because, as always, Jake Russell is no better than he ought to be, and up to all of his old tricks. In fact, he needs Mary to help him finish one of his own actual old tricks, to help him steal back something he stole long ago, and get a bit of his own back against the man who betrayed his trust – and perhaps even his heart.

All she has to do is help him trace the untraceable, find the unfindable, and close an old cold case that defied not just the Crown’s attempt at solving it, but even the efforts of the Great Detective himself.

Escape Rating A-: I picked this up because I love this series. I’ve loved it from the very first book, The Beekeeper’s Apprentice, THIRTY YEARS ago, and I’m not likely to change my mind. The next Russell book is always on my Most Anticipated List, and whatever its title turns out to be, it will be as soon as it’s announced as well.

Because this entry in the series was lovely, made even lovelier this time around because I started it in audio. The voices were excellent, Amy Scanlon as Mary Russell, Stephen Crossley as Holmes, and Jefferson Mays as Mary’s uncle Jake Russell. Scanlon and Crossley have both voiced their parts in earlier entries in the series, but Mays was a new voice and was as perfectly cast as they were.

I certainly enjoyed their performances, and it worked well to have three voices as the characters narrate their own chapters, but I also had a driving need, as always with Russell’s adventures, to find out what happened next.

So I switched to text and finished in just a couple of well-spent hours.

The previous book in this series, The Lantern’s Dance, was a bit different from the usual run of the series in that it dived a bit deeper in the Holmes’ family history than is usual – because his own history is not a place that Sherlock Holmes himself ever seriously desires to go. It was also not a good jumping in place for the series, but was an excellent story for those who have followed the series from the beginning.

This latest book is also different from their usual adventures, but in a different and equally unusual way. Because it involves a real, historical unsolved case that was cold in Russell’s time and at our own point in time is almost 120 years frozen. And STILL unsolved.

The ‘Irish Crown Jewels’ as modelled by Charles Vane-Temple-Stewart, 6th Marquess of Londonderry, when he was lord lieutenant of Ireland

(It reminds me a bit of the 1990 theft from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston in that the crime was never solved and the stolen loot has not surfaced to this date.)

That’s precisely what happened in the theft of the so-called Irish Crown Jewels (technically the Jewels of the Order of St. Patrick) stolen from Dublin Castle in 1907. The case was never officially solved, and the jewels have not turned up – at least not yet.

Sherlock Holmes, unfortunately, was not involved in this case as it historically occurred, but the Scotland Yard investigation by Detective Chief Inspector John Kane DID occur, as did the subsequent complete and utter suppression of his report. While there was no ‘Jake Russell’ involved in the theft, the rest of the details Jake describes to Mary are pretty close to the known facts.

So, the story told in Knave of Diamonds is, in its way, a bit like the story in Emma Donoghue’s The Paris Express or Anatomy of Evil by Will Thomas, in that the story is a fictionalization of a real, documented, historical event with added fictional characters, motivations and solutions to give the reader more insight into the event as well as tell a cracking good story.

The thing about this particular fictionalization and retelling that made this an A- instead of an A or even an A+ (I do love this series and it often hits a sweet spot between comfort read and right book, right time that sends it right to the top for me) is that a lot of the recap of the historical events is told by Jake Russell as he’s trying to, let’s call it charm, his niece into helping him out.

A good bit of Jake’s charm is his line in obfuscatory patter. He’s not exactly trying to deceive Mary, but he IS trying VERY hard to hide certain details from her well-trained and extremely observant eyes, ears, and especially mind. Because he can’t dazzle her with his brilliance – she STILL knows him too well – he’s trying very hard to baffle her with his bullshit. Of which there’s rather a lot.

To the point where Mary has to frequently wrangle him back to the point. It’s an infodump, and it’s a big one. Admittedly done as well as an infodump can be done, and probably the best option for introducing this mess of a case (the story is fascinating, but the theft, the case and the handling thereof were all utter fiascos, every single one.)

After that infodump is out of the way, the story is an absolute hoot – made even better once Holmes enters the picture. Which of course he does, not just because he’s following Mary, not even just because he doesn’t trust Jake Russell, but because Brother Mycroft wants Sherlock to finally SOLVE the original theft. And for once, Sherlock is having NONE of his brother’s machinations. The Crown had his report back in 1907, didn’t want to hear a single thing he had to say, and Sherlock is not interested in solving their problem now.

At least not on behalf of his brother OR the Crown.  After all, no one died, no one was falsely accused, and the mere theft of some shiny baubles is not enough to endanger the empire. His sense of justice is not engaged, and he just doesn’t care what happened to some bits of jewelry no matter how costly. Which doesn’t mean he wouldn’t like to know the answer. For himself. For Mary. And even, just a bit, for that irrepressible rogue, Jake Russell.

That the case was never OFFICIALLY solved does not in any way prevent this decidedly UNOFFICIAL solution from being a marvelously good story. Which it absolutely is.

Knave of Diamonds, at least in audio, concludes with a delightful little short story that shows us a bit of Jake Russell as a young but already clever and devious con man, up to the tricks that will test his wits and keep him on the run for the rest of his life. In text, the author’s notes at the end let the reader know that she’s intending for her next book to be outside the Russell and Holmes series, in fact she’s planning on a followup to the fascinating nonseries book Back to the Garden. Or at least that book wasn’t part of a series at the time. It will be, however, and I’m certainly looking forward to reading it – hopefully this time next year.

#AudioBookReview: Wooing the Witch Queen by Stephanie Burgis

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

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

My Review:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Grade A #AudioBookReview: Tea You at the Altar by Rebecca Thorne

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A Reviews> audio reviews> audiobooks> book reviews
Grade A #AudioBookReview: Tea You at the Altar by Rebecca ThorneTea You at the Altar (Tomes & Tea #3) by Rebecca Thorne
Narrator: Jessica Threet
Format: audiobook, eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss, supplied by publisher via Libro.fm
Formats available: paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: cozy fantasy, epic fantasy, fantasy romance
Series: Tomes and Tea #3
Pages: 336
Length: 11 hours and 41 minutes
Published by Bramble Romance, Macmillan Audio on March 4, 2025
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

The Princess Bride meets Travis Baldree in Tea You at the Altar, the third cosy fantasy in Rebecca Thorne's bestselling Tomes & Tea series. Our sapphic adventurers must navigate the ultimate maelstrom – their own wedding!
Kianthe and Reyna are ready to finally walk down the aisle, and in just seven days their wedding of a wifetime will become a reality. There's still so much to do but, like all best-laid plans, everything seems to be going awry.
Their baby dragons are causing mayhem in the town of Tawney, and Kianthe’s uptight parents have invited themselves to the wedding. Yet, worst of all, Reyna has become embroiled in a secret plot to overthrow Queen Tilaine. The world seems against them – and how are they going to live long enough to say ‘I do’?

My Review:

The Tomes & Tea Quartet has turned out to be an epitome of cozy fantasy romance – something I don’t think anyone expected when Can’t Spell Treason Without Tea came out pretty much directly in the wake of Travis Baldree’s Legends & Lattes and we were all very much there for it because there wasn’t anything else like either of them at the time.

Of course, there is now because they’re both oh-so-good and they have very much of the same feels and yet they’re not nearly as much like each other as appeared at first blush. And all the blushes thereafter.

The thing about cozy fantasy is that, while bad things do happen to good people, the bad things aren’t necessarily all that bad – and they tend to get resolved in peaceful – or at least bloodless – ways.

But Tomes & Tea has hewed a bit closer to its fantasy roots in that there really is true evil afoot in the person of capricious, rapacious Queen Tilaine, and the solution to the Queendom’s – and the whole world’s tyrant queen problem is going to involve some political shenanigans, some dangerous skullduggery, and a certain amount of outright treason.

In other words, this is the story where Kianthe and Reyna stage a coup against the very queen that Reyna once swore fealty to as a Queensguard. The thing about staging a coup is that both successful and failed versions of that act generally end up bloody. The only question is which side the blood belongs to, with the answer generally being both – and LOTS of it.

But this coup is all wrapped up in lace and chiffon, as the overthrow is intended to occur in the literal middle of Reyna and Kianthe’s wedding. But that’s only if they manage to get all their ducks and pirates in a row, wrangle the townspeople of Tawney AND Kianthe’s estranged parents, keep last-minute suitors for both brides at bay and, last but absolutely not least, find a second-choice candidate for Queen to stand against Tilaine – because their first and otherwise only contender just said “not just no but hells no” and has managed to make it stick in spite of all the pressure to change her mind.

Escape Rating A: I was intending to savor this a bit. After all, it’s the next-to-the-last entry in the Tomes & Tea series, and I’m not going to be ready for it to end, even at the end of the next book. Probably no one else will be, either.

But I was listening to this in audio, the narrator Jessica Threet was doing a lovely job, the story was proceeding at a lively but not breakneck pace – it’s not that kind of story – and I realized that the cozy pace was beautifully concealing an ever ratcheting amount of underlying tension and I just couldn’t wait any longer and read the last third in a rush because it was just time for the other boot to fall, for Queen Tilaine to crash the party, and for someone’s world AND worldview to come crashing down.

Hopefully Tilaine’s, but I’d reached the point where I HAD to know, my patience was out, and another hour was going to see me through to the end if I was willing to stay up for it.

Which, of course, I was. And I did. And OMG the damn thing ends on a huge and downright shocking and even painful cliffhanger and the final book in the quartet, Alchemy and a Cup of Tea, won’t be published until August 12 but I already have an eARC and I doubt I’ll be able to wait that long to find out what happens next. And finally.

Kianthe and Reyna have earned their happy ever after, they deserve it, they’re entitled to it, and I can’t wait to see it happen. And I probably won’t. Wait that is. (Wherever the line was when they were passing out patience, I didn’t start out with nearly enough to stand in it and wait to get more.)

If you LOVE cozy fantasy, you’re going to leave Tea You at the Altar already itching for the finale and looking for something to tide you over in the meantime. Alchemy and a Cup of Tea isn’t coming until August. The next Legends & Lattes book, Brigands & Breadknives, isn’t coming  until NOVEMBER, so that won’t help with the tiding over unless you need to get caught up and/or want to indulge in a reread while you wait.

If you haven’t had a chance to blush over Kimberly Lemming’s Mead Mishaps series, (That Time I Got Drunk and Saved a Demon, That Time I Got Drunk and Yeeted a Love Potion at a Werewolf, and That Time I Got Drunk and Saved a Human (yes, there’s a theme here!)), that series has a very similar vibe to both Legends & Lattes AND Tomes & Tea, (including the pirates!) and is just plain cozy – and even sexier – fantasy romance fun and should keep the vibe going long enough to get to Alchemy and a Cup of Tea – along with plenty of cups of tea, of course!

A- #AudioBookReview: The River Has Roots by Amal El-Mohtar

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A- Reviews> audio reviews> audiobooks> book reviews
A- #AudioBookReview: The River Has Roots by Amal El-MohtarThe River Has Roots by Amal El-Mohtar
Narrator: Gem Carmella
Format: audiobook, eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss, supplied by publisher via Libro.fm
Formats available: hardcover, ebook, audiobook
Genres: fairy tales, fantasy, fantasy romance, retellings
Pages: 130
Length: 3 hours and 53 minutes
Published by Macmillan Audio, Tordotcom on March 4, 2025
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

Follow the river Liss to the small town of Thistleford, on the edge of Faerie, and meet two sisters who cannot be separated, even in death.
“Oh what is stronger than a death? Two sisters singing with one breath.”
In the small town of Thistleford, on the edge of Faerie, dwells the mysterious Hawthorn family.
There, they tend and harvest the enchanted willows and honour an ancient compact to sing to them in thanks for their magic. None more devotedly than the family’s latest daughters, Esther and Ysabel, who cherish each other as much as they cherish the ancient trees.
But when Esther rejects a forceful suitor in favor of a lover from the land of Faerie, not only the sisters’ bond but also their lives will be at risk…

My Review:

Thistleford lies just on the borders of Faerie – or Arcadia as it is called in this beautiful, lyrical almost fairy tale. (It reads so much like a fairy tale, and it certainly turns out to be one, but I kept thinking it must be a retelling of something I just didn’t recognize – and maybe it is.)

Esther and Ysabel Hawthorn live on the banks of the River Liss, and their joy as well as their duty is to sing to the magical willows that thrive on the banks of the river. It’s a task, and a delight, that has been handed down through the Hawthorn family for generations. Not just the singing, but also the care, maintenance and very careful harvesting of the willows and all the magical things they produce.

Because there is still magic in this world, even as ‘modernity’ encroaches, and the willows that the Hawthorn family tends produce the best magic-infused wood for working this world’s magic. A magic that is based on language, on the conjugation of words, and the transition of forms from the word “grammar” into “grimoire” – and back again.

Which is where the story of the Hawthorn sisters turns from love to tragedy and back again. Esther, the older sister, has fallen in love, not just with the Fae lands of Arcadia that border their own, but with one of the Arcadians, the wrath of the storm that calls themself Rin even as they refer to Esther as ‘Beloved’.

But Ysabel longs to remain with hearth and home, and resents the parting that she knows will come. She wants Esther to marry the neighbor who continues to court her in spite of her rejection – because that’s the future she wants for herself.

Instead, they find themselves thrust into the middle of exactly the kind of ‘murder ballad’ that Ysabel always loved to sing, and it’s left to Esther to sacrifice even more than she already has to keep Ysabel from making the same terrible mistake.

If she can find a way to make the magic that saved her reach out to a woman who has always loved her sister but rejected the magic that drives her very soul.

Escape Rating A-: The audio narration of The River Has Roots, in the hands – and more importantly the voice – of Gem Carmella – is absolutely exquisite. Not that the story isn’t lovely, but the reading, and even more poignantly the singing, of the narrator puts this story over the top in more than one way. (That the background and transitional music in the narration was performed by the author and her own sister added an extra bit of loveliness to the entire endeavor.)

Most of those ways are very, very good. The music of the Hawthorn Sisters is an important part – sometimes THE most important part – of the story.

There were also, however, and very much on the other hand, points where she was voicing the villain of the piece and she was so damn good at portraying his slimy villainousness that I wanted to throw something – preferably at him. He was so vile, and portrayed so well in that vileness, that I wanted to wash that voice out of my ears.

It took me a while to figure out what bothered me SO MUCH about the villain – because it was done so beautifully well – is that he’s a particular kind of villain. He’s a broken stair villain. He’s toxic, Esther knows he’s toxic, the narrator handles voicing his toxicity so well that it’s screamingly obvious, but he’s the kind of villain that is embedded in the system and manipulates it to his advantage even as the people around him just claim that he’s socially awkward and Esther KNOWS she’ll be portrayed as a hysterical female or receive some other gendered dismissal as long as he continues to seem like he’s obeying social norms and just doing it badly when he’s really hiding his despicable intentions under a thin veneer of ‘polite behavior’ and what he’s really trying to do is box Esther in so that she has no choice but to submit.

I’m going to try real hard to get down off this soapbox, but I’ll admit that it’s giving me extreme difficulty. The whole thing disturbed me considerably more than intended – but it SO DID.

As is fitting for a fantasy where the magical system is based on language, I fell so, so hard for the gorgeous lyricality of this story. At the same time, I have to confess that I was one of the few people who just didn’t ‘get’ or ‘get into’ This Is How You Lose the Time War, so I came into The River Has Roots hoping that I would like it but not predisposed to do so. It was an experiment that this time paid off.

From the beginning, the story reminded me a LOT of The Butcher of the Forest by Premee Mohamed with its setting on the edge of a dangerous fae country and its rules about coming in and attempting to go back out. It also very much has the feel of a fairy tale, and if it turned out to be a reworking or retelling of an existing tale I wouldn’t be surprised. Additionally it held echoes of Sharyn McCrumb’s Appalachian-based Ballad series that begins with If Ever I Return Pretty Peggy-O, which, come to think of it, are also murder ballads.

All of which meant that I wasn’t expecting a happy ending and was VERY pleasantly surprised – as were the Hawthorn sisters – when one arrived anyway. I’ll certainly be back the next time the author publishes a solo endeavor!