If you’re looking for a big fantasy/horror novel you’ll get lost in for a while, this is a book to consider. It combines elements of many other stories — a gothic mansion in the Scottish highlands, a school for “unusual” children, a tormented villain, and brave heroes, both young and old. It’s one of those…
This book combined a lot of things I love about Jasmine Guillory, and a few things I didn’t love so much. Isabelle is a likeable character, sympathetic and fairly well-developed. She works as an assistant in a publishing house, and I found the description of the work fascinating. Izzy actually gets to coach, prod, and…
I loved Egan’s Pulitzer Prize-winning A Visit from the Goon Squad, although now, nearly 12 years later, I didn’t remember much about the book. Maybe I should have reread it before reading the sequel, The Candy House, but instead I read it much like a stand-alone book. Maybe that’s why I had trouble connecting with it. Both…
I was offered a review copy of Stacie Murphy’s new novel, The Unquiet Dead, a historical mystery set in 1893. Since it was a sequel, I decided to read A Deadly Fortune first. I loved both of them and highly recommend them for anyone who likes historical mysteries. A Deadly Fortune, Murphy’s debut novel, introduces…
I liked this novel, but I didn’t love it. Rachel is a manager at a large luxury hotel in Fort Lauderdale, when she loses her job after she’s sexually assaulted by a wealthy patron. When she can’t find a decent job in Florida, she moves to Kelley Island in Ohio for a job working for…
Every year I think I’m going to focus on the series I’m in the middle of, rather than starting up new ones. And every year that doesn’t happen. In 2021 I did make a strong effort to continue series. Some favorites were the Lady Astronaut series by Mary Robinette Kowal, the League of Extraordinary Women series…
I’m not a fan of novella-length work, because it’s not long enough for me to really get into the story and its characters. That said, I’m becoming a big fan of Harrow, having read The Ten Thousand Doors of January and The Once and Future Witches. A Spindle Splintered is the first of a series…
I wasn’t initially a fan of Chambers, but after Long Way to a Small Angry Planet, I’ve come to like each of her books more and more. This one was no exception. Psalm is a novella and the start of a science fiction series about man and robot. As a novella, there wasn’t as much…
As I began reading Eve Brown, I was pretty sure I wasn’t going to like it as much as Hibbert’s previous two books, which I loved so much I read twice (rare for me). Eve is an event planner who’s just finished a wedding where a few things went seriously wrong, so her latest career…
Dear Miss Kopp is the sixth book in the Kopp Sisters series by Amy Stewart, and I was thrilled to receive an advanced review copy from NetGalley. This is one of my favorite historical series, and if you haven’t read it, I strongly recommend picking up the first book, Girl Waits With Gun. What makes…
I loved the first book by Knecht, Who is Vera Kelly? so I was very happy to receive a review copy of its sequel. These books combine a couple of things I really love – a complicated main character, a mystery, and the history and politics of other countries. In the first novel, heroine Vera…
I read these two books nearly back to back, and their plots and characters were amazingly similar, though I had no idea when I chose them. I love a totally random reading coincidence. Here’s a comparison of the two novels. The story: both The Dry and Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter are mystery/thrillers about an unsolved…
The Book Stop 