The first in a sparkling Regency-era series with a delightfully modern feel, set against the irresistible backdrop of an annual trip taken by three handsome earls . . .

Even an earl needs his ride-or-dies, and Archibald Fielding-Burton, the Earl of Harcourt, counts himself lucky to have two. Archie (the jock), Simon (the nerd), and Effie (the goth) have been BFFs since their school days, and their annual trip holds a sacred spot in their calendars. This year, Archie is especially eager to get away—until an urgent letter arrives from an old family friend, begging him to help prevent a ruinous scandal. Archie’s childhood pal Olive Morgan must be rescued from an ill-fated elopement—and her sister Clementine must be rescued from rescuing Olive. Suddenly the trip has become earls-plus-girls.

This . . . complicates matters. The fully grown Clementine, while as frank and refreshing as Archie remembers, is also different to the wild, windswept girl he knew. This Clem is complex and surprising—and adamantly opposed to marriage. Which, for reasons Archie dare not examine too closely, he finds increasingly vexing.

Then Clem makes him an indecent and quite delightful proposal, asking him to show her the pleasures of the marriage bed before she settles into spinsterhood. And what kind of gentleman would he be to refuse a lady?

Content notes:

Dear Jenny Holiday,

Earls Trip is the first historical of yours I’ve read; to date, all the other books I’ve read of yours have been contemporary. I’m a big fan of your contemporary novels. They’re auto-reads for me (or auto-listens, as the case may be), so I was keen to read Earls Trip. 

Unfortunately, I didn’t connect with the story as much as I wanted to. I think maybe your historical voice doesn’t work as well for me as your contemporary one does. Or, perhaps it is that I kept hearing your contemporary voice in a historical novel and it didn’t fit. Something like that anyway.

There were parts of Earls Trip I enjoyed (more particularly in the last third of the story which I won’t go into here because spoilers) but overall it wasn’t a book which wowed me. It wasn’t bad; I just couldn’t get all that excited about it. Which is definitely not what I said about Canadian Boyfriend recently, for example.

Archie and his BFFs, Simon and Effie, are remarkably evolved for white, wealthy, male, historical nobility. They openly talk about love and (at least in this universe) Simon coins the term “found family”. Clementine and to a somewhat lesser extent, her sister, Olive, also felt more modern than the setting did. It’s certainly not unusual for modern sensibilities to be explored in historical romance; most recently I’ve read Sarah MacLean doing exactly that, quite successfully for me, in Bombshell and Knockout. But in Earls Trip I felt a kind of dissonance about it.  On the other hand, all of the main characters are misfits of a sort and I do relate to that. There ought not be anything objectionable about a more emotionally soft and fluffy earl but for some reason I couldn’t get that to fit neatly in my head with the otherwise Corinthian pursuits Archie had (boxing, hunting, shooting, for instance), including his sexual experience and expertise. Archie was both very in touch with is feelings. His mother has dementia – perhaps Alzheimer’s although of course it was not called that – and almost never remembers him anymore and he is openly distraught by this and not remotely “stiff upper lippish”. He is very freely affectionate with his friends Simon and Effie), but he’s quite clueless about what he feels for Clem. Again, it seemed a bit incongruent to me.

As is usually the case, I didn’t refresh my memory on the blurb before I started reading. I was a little surprised by how quickly the initial scandal was resolved. The purpose of the scandal seemed to be more about getting the five young people together in an isolated location for a fortnight than that it was intended to be the central conflict.  There is perhaps a question about whether it was entirely proper for the two sisters to be alone with three bachelors for two weeks but if it raised issues for anyone, nobody objected. Once the group arrived at the castle, the book started to settle out for me however. I enjoyed the renewed friendship and affection between Clem and Olive. I liked that Clem’s example challenged all of the group to consider forgoing meat at least sometimes but also how she did not berate others for being carnivorous. Given Archie’s love of hunting and eating the results of the hunt, the idea of a “meatless Monday” (my words not from the book) was particularly difficult for him but in the end he respected Clem’s vegetarianism (or perhaps veganism?) and Clem herself sufficiently to make significant change freely and with no whining.

The humour is sometimes fairly broad – for example there is a phallic topiary garden at the castle. Sometimes it worked for me, sometimes it didn’t.

I wanted to like Earls Trip more than I did. I feel bad that I couldn’t quite connect to it. But I found myself avoiding rather than wanting to make time to read and that is always telling. As I write this, the early Goodreads reviews are rating the book at 3.89 so I may be an outlier.

Grade: C+

Regards,
Kaetrin

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Dear Emily Henry,

After reading and loving your books for a number of years now, I’ve come to have high expectations. I’ve yet to be disappointed.

There must be a signal released in my brain when I recognise your words; something in me just relaxes and prepares to be all-in on the story. I guess all my favourite authors have it – that thing where recognition occurs from that first page. It’s comforting and exciting all at once.

Funny Story is about Daphne Vincent, a children’s librarian who moved to Waning Bay on Lake Michigan with her fiance, Peter. Daphne has always wanted to belong somewhere and to someone. She is very close with her mother, but after her dad left when she was little, they moved around a lot and Daphne learned not to make friends because they wouldn’t be staying long enough for her to keep them. Her dad has been unreliable all her life and many of her childhood memories around him involve her waiting for him to arrive and fairly often him not turning up at all. She wants roots and friends and family beyond her mother and thinks she has it in Peter. She’s made an incredible effort to be accepted by his friends and family.

But then, following his bachelor party, Peter announces that he’s actually in love with his best friend, Petra, and Daphne is left very much alone.

I’d thought we were building something permanent together. Now I realize I’d just been slotting myself into his life, leaving me without my own.

Petra had been living with her boyfriend, Miles Nowak. When Petra moves in with Peter, Daphne needs a place to live. Miles, in turn, could use help with the rent. Plus, he’s a nice guy. So Daphne moves into the second bedroom in Miles’s apartment.  Daphne is hurt and reeling and counting down the days until she can leave Waning Bay and go somewhere else, to start again. Miles is not any happier and they bond over their shared heartbreak.

Very shortly after they are dumped, Daphne and Miles are shocked to receive wedding invitations in the mail for Peter and Petra. After the initial pain of it wears of, Daphne allows some anger in. And, when Peter is being condescending in a phone conversation, she blurts out that she and Miles are dating.

“I didn’t need a plus-one. He got his own invitation.”

The weighty silence tells me Peter is doing invisible calculus now. Only he’s got the brain for it. “You can’t mean . . .” His voice slides past disbelief straight into incredulity. “You’re with Miles?”

No, no, no, the voice in my head screams.

“Yep!” my mouth chirps.

I am instantly back to silent Munch-screaming out the window.

The next silence extends too long. I’m incapable of breaking it, because the only thing I can think to say is, I don’t know why I said that—it’s an outright lie, but I also cannot. Cannot tell him that.

Miles is pretty easygoing and is prepared to go along with the fake relationship. He’s also come to value Daphne as a friend and when he finds out she’s planning to leave town at the end of the summer, he embarks upon a plan to show her the real Waning Bay and the surrounds and convince her to stay. Most Sundays they play tourist and Daphne learns more about the town than she ever did while with Peter. She realises that Peter had never made an effort to help Daphne belong or be welcome.

“Daphne,” he tuts. “Daphne, Daphne, Daphne.”

“Let me guess: I’m a clueless fool,” I say.

He starts the car. “No, just a sweet, naive, beautiful little innocent, raised in captivity by a man who loves wheatgrass.”

As Daphne and Miles spend more time together, a simmering attraction develops and grows, bursting out of them from time to time before they try and put the genie back in the bottle rather than risk their friendship and their copacetic living arrangement. But it just won’t go away.

The thing, it would seem, Miles has been hiding all along is that he’s diabolically handsome, with angular cheekbones and a jaw that sort of looks like it might cut your fingertips if you were to run a hand over it. Or your tongue. You know, whatever.

Miles is nice. He’s popular with locals and strangers alike. He’s able to strike up a conversation easily and is genuinely interested in what people say to him. He’s easygoing and laid back – basically the opposite of Peter. (He also has a quirky but endearing love of sad love songs.)

Daphne has a deep sense of not being good enough, not being worth staying for, not being anyone’s first choice (apart from her mother). She wonders what is wrong with her that people leave.

Miles has his own baggage. Raised in an extremely toxic household, he feels great responsibility for his (13 years’ younger) sister, Julia. He feels like he didn’t do enough and let her down. He feels like he always lets people down when it counts.

To him, he’s the brother who ran away. To her, he’s the one who stays, even when he shouldn’t.

He tries hard to live in the moment and not to foster too much expectation from others. At least, that’s what he says. It’s clear enough that that the connections he’s made in Waning Bay don’t share that view at all. Yes, he’s often late because he gets caught up in conversations and because he’s very good at being in the moment but people want him around – he’s kind, generous, funny and personable. Because of that genuine interest, he knows everyone in town.

Miles’s philosophy can be summed up in this passage:

“Things go smoother if you don’t let people get a rise out of you,” he says. “If you give them control over how you feel, they’ll always use it.”

“Finally, I see your cynical side,” I say.

He smiles, but his jaw is tight, and it doesn’t reach his eyes. “It’s not cynical. If you don’t give other people responsibility for your feelings, you can have a decent relationship with most of them.”

Honestly, it’s not far off from thoughts I’ve had. Only for me, it’s never been about controlling the feelings themselves. I wouldn’t know where to begin with that. It’s more, controlling the expectations you have for certain people.

If a person lets you down, it’s time to reconsider what you’re asking of them.

Whereas Daphne’s is very different.

You can’t force a person to show up, but you can learn a lesson when they don’t.

Trust people’s actions, not their words.

Don’t love anyone who isn’t ready to love you back.

Let go of the people who don’t hold on to you.

Don’t wait on anyone who’s in no rush to get to you.

Beyond the relationship between Miles and Daphne though, Funny Story, charts Daphne coming into her own, learning more about herself, putting herself out there and finding her own sense of belonging rather than looking for it from others. She makes a good friend at work, Ashleigh, and their growing bond is also great to witness. I liked Ashleigh very much – as well as the other library staff and other locals we meet along the way.

I also liked that Daphne learns she isn’t perfect and that, ultimately, it’s okay – people make mistakes and hurt others, even she does. She has to grapple with not just being the one being left waiting, but being a person who has let others down. It’s a thing she’s never realised before – mostly it’s never come up (my impression was this was largely because she lived her life in such rigid compartments before the Peter/Petra catastrophe – which turned out to be the best thing for her). But things get a little messy and Daphne realises that not everything needs to be coloured inside the lines. She also realises she’s worth loving, worth staying for and worth investing in – by others and by herself.

I liked very much that Miles got support he didn’t even know he needed from Daphne and was able to see himself through her eyes and realise that he’s worthy too.

Funny Story is told entirely from Daphne’s point of view which makes sense given the eventual conflict between she and Miles. You set up very well the reasons for each character to act as they do. I did think that Miles’s initial explanation as contrasted with the more complete version was a little bait-and-switchy. It made the ending more satisfying but it felt to me a bit like the conflict was a tad manufactured. That’s really my only criticism of the book – otherwise, I pretty much loved it from start to finish. And, I want to reiterate, the HEA was extremely satisfying.

Grade: A-

Regards,
Kaetrin

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Dear Tessa Bailey,

I have been so looking forward to this book! When I heard from trusted romance friends that Fangirl Down rivaled It Happened One Summer – my favourite of your books up to then – my excitement only mounted. I’m here to say Fangirl Down lived up to its promise. It was funny, sexy (very) and pretty much hit every one of my good book buttons.

Wells Whittaker is a pro golfer who’s been in a slump for the past two years. He came onto the scene five years ago and won a couple of majors but more recently he’s often missed the cut and his behaviour – tolerated when he was winning – became much more criticised. As it is, he’s barely allowed to be on the tour due to his antics on the course.

Josephine Doyle is his number one fan. She’s followed his career from the beginning. No fair weather fan, Josephine is here to stay.

Josephine knows golf; her family runs a pro shop, The Golden Tee, in Palm Beach and she’s certified to give lessons. While it wasn’t ever specified I got the impression that if she had wanted to, Josephine could have headed to LPGA herself. Her parents have now retired and she runs the pro shop herself.

When Wells is in Florida for a tournament, she’s at the course, cheering him on the whole time. Josephine’s fandom isn’t about a celebrity crush. Sure, Wells is good-looking, but she likes his game, his skill and she has witnessed kindnesses from him which indicated to her he was a golfer worth following.

Wells has had only limited interaction with Josephine over the years but he’s certainly aware of who she is. She’s shouted encouragement and banter at him from behind the rope, she holds up her sign “Wells’s Belle” and wears his merch. Wells is very down on himself and his career. He knows he’s tanking and there’s no saving him. The only thing that makes him want to try is his number one fan. He wishes she’d stop and then he could crawl off to wherever failed golfers go to die.

As the book begins, Josephine has won a competition to have lunch with Wells and for him to give her a putting lesson. She doesn’t really need the lesson of course but she’s very excited to spend some 1:1 time with her idol. However, after another bad round, Wells just wants to throw in the towel (yes I know I’m mixing my sports metaphors). So he tells her there won’t be a lunch or putting lesson. He says she should stop admiring him, he’s not worth her time or effort, then tears up her “Wells’s Belle” sign (because she’s still not giving up on him!) and leaves the tour. Still, something about Josephine gets to Wells and he can’t stop thinking about her. He hated the look in her eye when she finally gave up and left.

There’s a hurricane in Florida which does a lot of damage to the pro shop and Josephine’s already precarious financial position falls into the ditch. She’d let her flood insurance lapse in order to pay the rent on the shop. She’d foregone her health insurance for the same reason – and, as a Type 1 diabetic, healthcare is not really optional. Now with the shop and the stock in it ruined she’s lost as to how she will go on. Worse, her parents do not know about her financial issues and she’s just not sure how she will tell them their legacy is gone. One thing about Josephine is that she doesn’t want people hovering over her, especially re her diabetes. She understands people caring but she’s an adult and can take care of herself. (Even with her financial situation, she has been managing her diabetes.)

Wells, drowning his sorrows repeatedly and getting into bar brawls to let off steam, hears about the hurricane.

God, he needed a drink. Badly.

But he couldn’t seem to make the move to the kitchen to get a fresh bottle of scotch. Everything Nate had said was true—he had behaved like a relentless prick his entire career. Trash-talked the other pros instead of making friends. Been indifferent toward the fans. Either outright ignored the press or gave them answers they couldn’t air on television.

More than anything, he wanted to give the world his middle finger and go back to bed. No one expected anything from him. He had no family to let down. No real friends to piss off. No mentor to disappoint.

But as loudly as oblivion called to him, the crystal-clear memory of her sang louder.

God, it was annoying.

“We’re getting lunch, Josephine,” Wells shouted on the way to the shower. “Dammit, we’re getting lunch.”

When Wells turns up at the Golden Tee on a pretext, he realises quickly that Josephine needs a lot more than lunch.

The knowledge that this person was so much more than his most loyal fan came crashing down on Wells’s head like a ton of bricks. Josephine had problems to contend with. Serious ones. Her family’s shop was underwater and she had to worry about blood sugar going up and down. And he’d ripped her fucking sign in half? What kind of a monster am I?

Wells promptly offers to give Josephine the money she needs (he has plenty of it, after all) but of course she refuses. Her pride is pricked and she lets him have it.

“Are we really pointing out each other’s flaws, because I don’t think you have that kind of time on your hands.”

“I have nothing but time on my hands.”

“Fine! Then your backswing is timid.”

“My—” His neck locked up like a prison cell. “What did you say?”

“I said . . .” … “You used to swing like you had nothing to lose. It was glorious to watch. Now, you handle the driver like you’re worried the ball might yell at you for hitting it too hard.” She stabbed him in the chest with her index finger. “You swing like you’re scared.”

That’s truly when Wells realises Josephine has chops and from there he comes up with an idea.

“If I can get back on the tour, if they’ll allow me back on, why don’t you put your money where your mouth is and caddie for me? Since you know so goddamn much.”

Caddies make a percentage of whatever the golfer wins. If Wells can get back in the money, Josephine can get what she needs with no damage to her pride. And suddenly he wants to try. For her. I’ve tagged this book “morality chain lite”. I think it fits. Whilst Wells does learn to love the game again and do for himself rather than only ever relying on Josephine to be his moral compass, it takes most of the book for him to get there. But – for Josephine he will stop throwing golf clubs. He will make nice (ish) with reporters. He will behave himself. for her. She needs him and he’s not going to let her down.

Wells has a history of being abandoned by those he loves. First his parents when he was a child and then his mentor, after his game slumped. He expects to be left and, as Josephine points out to him, he tends to torpedo things himself before they can go bad and hurt him. At least that way he’s influencing what’s happening; it’s not just being done to him. He’ll do the leaving before something or someone leaves him. But Josephine promises not to give up on him as long as he doesn’t give up on himself and from there, well, the only way is up.

Almost from that first interaction, Wells has a bone-deep unshakeable protective streak when it comes to Josephine. He’d carry her around in his pocket and keep her safe always if he could. It’s ridiculously charming. Sometimes amusingly obnoxious. But, and this is important, while he feels all those feelings, he also knows that it’s important to Josephine to stand on her own two feet and to be respected for being the competent woman she is. Wells does not want her to be sad or scared or unhappy in any way and so he is determined to give her whatever she needs however he can. I 100% did not hate it.

“Thank you, Wells. Really.”

Ask me to walk on broken glass next. Watch me not even hesitate. 

It’s really all throughout the book. If this kind of devotion doesn’t work for a reader, Fangirl Down will be a fail but it super works for me and I lapped it up with a spoon.

“Wells.” She tried to slow him down, but her heels only skidded in the grass. “Golfers don’t bring their caddies to the media tent.”

“This one does.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know, Josephine,” Wells fired back over his shoulder. “I just . . . have this pretty intense need to make sure everyone knows you’re very fucking important. Okay? Could you kindly just go along with it?”

I enjoyed Wells and Josephine’s growing professional and personal relationship. I loved how Josephine’s fandom wasn’t just because Wells has the best butt in golf (though he does). Wells appreciates (and so did I) that the chemistry between them is a thing born of their personal relationship and their interactions once the caddie/pro partnership starts. Josephine is attracted to Wells the man, not Wells the celebrity.

I laughed at quite a bit of Wells’s befuddlement about Josephine. She blows him away in all senses of the phrase.

Can’t I just miss the taste of my boyfriend’s cock? she’d purred, kissing his crown.

And his brain went offline after that.

He’d literally passed out from the sucker punch of relief she’d given him. And when he’d woken up, she was back at it. Moaning as she sucked him.

No clothes this time. Not a single stitch.

Now he was supposed to make small talk. Chew things and operate utensils.

How.

and

He had no idea what he’d done to deserve the Cadillac of sexual favors, but he wanted to be a better person now. Volunteer more. Build orphanages with his bare hands. Save the bees. All of it.

I loved the way Wells respected Josephine’s dreams and desires, even at his own expense. I loved how Wells understood that Josephine was his equal partner and wasn’t shy about letting others know it.

The sex was scorching, the banter top notch. There was so much for me to love in Fangirl Down. It truly is your best book since It Happened One Summer (another cracker) and possibly, it’s even better.

Grade: A

Regards,
Kaetrin

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Hairstylist Jess Greene has spent the last decade raising her younger half-sister, Tegan—and keeping a shocking secret. Ever since their reckless mother ran off with a boyfriend she’d known only a few months, Jess has been aware that he’s the same accomplished con man who was the subject of a wildly popular podcast, The Last Con of Lynton Baltimore.

Now thirty-one, Jess didn’t bargain on Tegan eventually piecing together the connection for herself. But Tegan plans to do exactly what Jess has always feared—leave their safe, stable home to search for their mother—and she’ll be accompanied by the prying podcast host and her watchful, handsome producer, Adam Hawkins. Unwilling to let the sister she’s spent so much of her life protecting go it alone, Jess reluctantly joins them.

Together, the four make their way across the country, unraveling the mystery of where the couple disappeared to and why. But soon Jess is discovering other things too. Like a renewed sense of vulnerability and curiosity, and a willingness to expand beyond the walls she’s so carefully built. And in Adam, she finds an unexpected connection she didn’t even know was missing, if only she can let go and let him in . . .

Content Note: mention of a past death by suicide, mental illness

Dear Kate Clayborn,

Anyone who has ever read one of your books knows your writing is beautiful. It is also unique. Your writing voice is one I can pick out in a crowd, a combination of gorgeous turns of phrase and  thoughtful motifs and word pictures. The Other Side of Disappearing is no different.

On it’s face, the “disappearing” in the title refers to Jess’s mother and her boyfriend, con man Lynton Baltimore. But there are layers of disappearing and disappeared in the book and by the end, the title has new significance. When Tegan was left in her care, Jess disappeared. She was focused solely on looking after Tegan and protecting her privacy. She has no social media, few friends and keeps everyone at a distance. This, to a certain extent, includes Tegan herself, particularly given the things she she has not shared about their mother. Jess’s is the biggest but there are other “disappearances” and reappearances, things and people being seen and unseen in the story, some small and subtle, some more obvious. These are all woven wonderfully together in a beautiful tapestry.

Adam is struck down by almost instant love when he first meets Jess. He immediately wants to protect her and make sure she is not taken advantage of by his boss, Salem Durant (the host of the first big podcast, The Last Con of Lynton Baltimore). Salem had been due to meet Lynton in person for the last episode of the iconic podcast, ten years before. But he didn’t show. (Instead he was busy running off with Jess and Tegan’s mother.) Some say Baltimore’s last con was to Salem herself. It still stings and she wants the follow up. There’s something there about relevance and reclaiming glory too as well as other things which are revealed later in the story.

Adam wants this story too. His best friend, Copeland “Cope” Frederick, a famous NFL player, died by suicide following a mental health crisis. Adam longs to tell Cope’s story in a podcast of his own but he is new to journalism and needs to earn his stripes before he can get the chance. Nonetheless, Adam finds himself immediately torn between his own goals and his desire to protect Jess. Jess may have disappeared but Adam sees her, immediately and clearly and he never loses sight of her. Not once.

Jess decides to go with Salem, Adam and Tegan on the search for the missing couple but does not intend to talk or share her story with the podcast. She is the epitome of reluctant to be involved. When Salem offers Adam the chance at his podcast if he gets Jess to talk on the record I thought I knew where the story was going. But you are too clever and, no. There were a number of times where the book could have gone a certain way but Adam and Jess are better than that and what separates them near the end is far more complicated. It all comes down to who sees you, how you see yourself.

Another recurring motif in the book is this:

“A shell souvenir,” she says quietly.

 

“What?”

 

She shrugs. “I don’t know. It’s like—collecting a bunch of little shells from the beach. Individually, they’re nice, sure. But if you want to remember your trip, you do something with them, the way these shops do. Put them in a jar, or glue them to a frame. Coat them in something that’s probably toxic and make a keychain. Stock them on your shelves for selling. A souvenir.”

which occurs when the team are in Florida during their search. There are a number of callbacks to this word picture as the story progresses and each one builds until in the end, it is its very own shell souvenir.

Jess is by no means immune to Adam’s charms. He is handsome and big and tall, protective, kind, open and vulnerable.

I push myself more upright so I can see him better. He’s wearing athletic shorts and a soaked-through T-shirt. He’s sweating. Breathing harder than normal. His hair is damp and sticking up in all directions, windblown. He’s the in-real-life version of every movie star who does some cheesy magazine cover story about how they bulked up to play a superhero, except in real life, it’s not cheesy at all.

 

This is terrible news.

To get involved with Adam threatens her privacy, her lack of visual substance, her framework. But he is a very hard man to resist. He doesn’t push. He’s just there, being kind and constant and caring and how can you fight that?

Adam tries to keep things professional. He doesn’t want to be any kind of burden to Jess who clearly has a lot on her plate but she’s just so darn wonderful it’s a hopeless case.

I turn to look at her. She pulled her hair up a couple of hours ago, high on the top of her head in a haphazard bun, and the fact is, I’ve avoided most eye contact since. Her neck is long and smooth and she has two slim, gold hoops in the cartilage of her right ear. I thought seeing her legs was bad, but this?

This is brutal.

In some ways, the result of the search is a little bit of a McGuffin – The Other Side of Disappearing is a romance, not a mystery – though the mystery is solved at the end. At least one of the revelations felt a little underdeveloped or perhaps just a bit out of place/unnecessary. I did love the way Jess and Tegan’s relationship grew and changed over the course of the book, from the initial fracturing to something better and far stronger by the end. I enjoyed Adam’s family and his steadfastness – though I was perhaps 5% confused by his obsession with his best friend. Perhaps I needed just a tiny bit more for me to truly understand their bond.

I loved Jess and Adam’s connections and contrasts. Adam is the one who reveals things. He sees Jess. He finds the lead which started the podcast search in the first place. He revealed hypocrisy within the NFL community about his friend Cope when Cope first died and has plans to reveal more. Jess is the one who has people disappearing on her and who has disappeared. But then Adam sees her and everything changes. It’s beautiful.

I am a shell collector. I’m trying so hard to coat all these precious, fragile facts about Adam in something hard and firm and inflexible.

I’m trying to make a souvenir.

Grade: A-

Regards,
Kaetrin

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Note for Readers: The author and I follow each other on social media and have been friendly for some years. Regardless, this review is my honest opinion.

Content notes: Grief, depression, death of a child (off page but recalled in the book).

Dear Olivia Dade,

I look forward to your books every year – it’s not unusual for them to turn up in my best of lists – and you are a reliably good author for me. I know I’ll always like a book from you, possibly even love it.

At First Spite is a book I liked a lot but did not love. From what I’ve read online already I may be an outlier here.

When the book begins, Athena Greydon, 37, is engaged to Dr Johnny Vine, 31 and they are celebrating their engagement in Johnny’s home town of Harlot’s Bay, Maryland. Athena’s friends and family aren’t at the party so, apart from Johnny, Athena doesn’t know anyone. Johnny’s off talking to friends and at the buffet, Athena meets a handsome man around of about her same age or perhaps a little older and they hit it off, bonding over mutual insatiable curiosity and love of potato-based food. Then it turns out that this stranger is Dr Matthew Vine, Johnny’s older brother whom she had not met previously, the same brother who has been trash-talking Athena since the engagement began and who has made it clear he does not support the marriage.  She then overhears an argument between Johnny and Matthew where Matthew says more negative things about her, so it’s fair to say Athena is not in the Dr Matthew Vine the Third’s fan club. (By the by: what kind of self-respecting fiance leaves his betrothed alone for so much of the engagement party, especially when he knows she doesn’t know any of the other guests?)

Eight months later, Athena moves to Harlot’s Bay a single woman, Johnny having finally caved to Matthew’s urgings and broken off the engagement only weeks before the wedding. Athena had purchased the spite house immediately next door to Johnny’s house in the bay as a wedding gift for him. (Well, she used all her savings for the deposit but she still has a mortgage. Is it really a gift if you bring the mortgage too? I admit I was a little confused by this.) Now that they’re not together, Athena, having quit her job in preparation for moving to the area in order to live with Johnny once they were married, has no money and nowhere else to go. So, she moves in to the spite house.

Up until that point, Athena had been largely supported by her parents, who are well-off as a result of lucrative careers as paediatric cardiologists. Athena has multiple degrees and has been something of a career dilettante – staying in a job for a few years, and then moving on due to boredom or burnout. Matthew raised Johnny after their parents checked out following the death of their middle brother, Adrian, as a baby (only slightly older than Johnny was at the time). Matthew was eight. Johnny has been indulged and supported by Matthew for his whole life, perhaps to try and make up for the lack of other family. Matthew still pays half of Johnny’s student loans even though they are both paediatricians who (a) have jobs (Johnny works with Matthew in the practice he co-owns with his best friend Yvonna) and (b) own their own houses free and clear (Matthew’s house was gifted to him by his parents, Johnny’s house was willed to him by his grandmother). Why can’t Johnny pay his own loans?

Much of Matthew’s initial resistance to the relationship between Athena and Johnny was because he feared he would end up supporting both of them instead of just Johnny. (Johnny had told Athena he would support her until she found her next career and she should take all the time she needed to decide Which  makes me question that spite house mortgage again.) Plus, they’d only known each other a couple of months before getting engaged. From where Matthew is standing, it all looks very reckless and unwise.

After Matthew met Athena in person, his reasons changed, even though he feels ashamed about it. In any event, Matthew knows that Johnny would never make Athena happy in the long term. And, he couldn’t bear seeing her married to his brother and long for her for the rest of his life. Matthew feels a lot of guilt about his part in breaking them up but he still believes their marriage would not have been successful.

Athena is aware of the first reasons for Matthew’s objections, if not his later ones. She’s hurt and angry and stung. She’s determined she will not take more from her parents and hasn’t told them she has basically no money and no job and she’s in a house only ten feet wide by necessity rather than choice.

As it happens, while the spite house is directly attached to Johnny’s house, Matthew’s house is on the other side of a narrow alleyway on the other side. Athena’s and Matthew’s windows into the alley are effectively windows into each other’s houses.

Athena is initially very angry with Matthew but after a while they develop a friendship because Matthew apologises genuinely and because he feels so much guilt he accepts all of Athena’s pranks (signing him up for newsletters, multi-level marketing calls, etc) as his due. And, because, let’s face it, they belong together. After a while, Athena realises that Matthew is actually a really nice guy and they do have a lot in common. Johnny is away on the honeymoon-that-wasn’t and Athena and Matthew start to spend a lot of time together.

However, Athena’s mental health is at rock bottom and she falls into a deep depression. Matthew, already desperately in love with her, helps her see what’s happening, cares for her and helps her to get treatment. Those are some of the most beautiful and moving parts of the story.

Along the way, Athena falls in love with Matthew too.  But… she used to be engaged to his brother and how can Matthew betray his beloved sibling that way? How could they possibly be together?

I felt it was a reasonable thing for Matthew to be worried about, particularly given the dynamic between the siblings.

Athena’s thinking was a little different.

Yeah, it was weird that she’d been engaged to his brother. She got his hesitance. She didn’t share it—Johnny was a grown-ass man who’d dumped her of his own free will, and he’d get over any damage to his ego sooner or later—but she got it.

I thought that Athena was being incredibly naive and unrealistic.

It’s obvious all along that Matthew and Athena belong together. But I did have a disconnect. Why was she ever with Johnny? They didn’t appear to have much in common. There wasn’t a lot of Johnny in the book really. I was told he was charming and funny but I didn’t see much of that for myself. Mostly he was a sponge who expected others to do things for him and who didn’t have much of a backbone. What attracted Athena to him in the first place? Why were they engaged? There is a suggestion that perhaps Athena was looking for an exit from some unhappiness in her job and in her life’s direction and got together with Johnny to give her that off ramp but it was not really explored. And it doesn’t explain why Johnny was engaged to Athena. (I liked Athena very much. But why did Johnny like her?) Of course, me believing in Johnny/Athena runs the risk of me being conflicted by Matthew/Athena so this may be one of those dilemmas where there is no perfect answer.

Also, on page at least, it never bothered Matthew that Johnny had been intimate with Athena. Maybe I’m just weird but that would bother me. I’d at least think about it. I think I could  move on from it but it would not be a non-issue.

Matthew is a such a caretaker I was very very glad when I read this:

Matthew had spent his entire life protecting others and taking on their burdens. His parents. His brothers. His grandmother. His patients. Her. But who protected him? Who shouldered his burdens when he labored under their weight?

I’d have liked to see more of Matthew being taken care of actually but that wasn’t really the story. Still, there were glimpses enough that I could tell that Athena would be there for him in a way he had not experienced before.

Athena meets a number of people in Harlot’s Bay and makes good and strong friendships. One of the links between these friendships is a mutual love of erotic romance, particularly monster-fucking books. While I have read and enjoyed a few monster romances I can’t say they’re my go-to reads. The “excerpts” featuring an arachnid monster (shudder), a yeti and a guppy-man, were, I think designed to lovingly parody the subgenre. They were pretty bad – deliberately so but still, bad. At lot of the humour in the book comes from these stories. I suspect others will enjoy this humour better than I did. Me, I felt a little disconnected from it.

There were some beautiful things in the book. They way Matthew took care of Athena when she was deeply struggling and at her lowest with depression, for one.

“I know you’re lost right now, Athena. I know you’re damaged. But you’re seeking new worlds, sweetheart, and sometimes that’s what happens. It doesn’t mean you’ll never set sail again. And no matter what happened before, no matter what happens next, you couldn’t be anything less than glorious if you tried.”

I enjoyed the friendships Athena built so easily. Her curiosity about life and just about everything. Harlot’s Bay itself was fascinating; the backstory and it’s quirky street and business names. I’m very curious about the mysterious “Sadie Brazen” and her narrator. I’m glad that by the end, Johnny and Matthew had a much healthier dynamic. Up until then, even though based in love, their relationship seemed very unhealthy to me.

Perhaps because some of the humour didn’t quite land for me, I found the story more melancholy than intended. It does explicitly with some heavy topics. Those heavy topics are treated with care and sensitivity but there were times I found them hard going.

At First Spite has much to recommend it and I certainly liked it but other of your books have worked better for me.

Grade: B

Regards,
Kaetrin

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Note: Charlotte Stein have followed each other and have been friendly online for many years. This review is my unvarnished opinion regardless.

Content notes: parental abuse, childhood poverty, and alcoholism, fatphobia

Dear Charlotte Stein,

I admit I had some hesitation about reading When Grumpy Met Sunshine. Generally, I’m less excited to read about characters inspired by either real life people (this is harder for me) or fictional characters. I tend to find it difficult to separate the “original” (person or character) from the book version and can find myself importing a whole pile of things which don’t belong into the story. Alfie Harding is inspired by Roy Kent from Ted Lasso. Now, I love Roy Kent, (how could I not?) but I wasn’t sure how I felt about reading about a someone very like Roy Kent who was not Roy Kent. The thing is, while I totally heard Roy Kent’s voice in my head every time Alfie spoke, he wasn’t Roy Kent. Alfie Harding was the inspiration but that’s as far as it went. Which, I admit, was a relief. Unlike other books where I found the story being intruded upon by the original person, here, Alfie very quickly became someone totally new to me. Yay. Which is all to say I’m very glad I read it because I really would have been missing out.

Mabel Willicker is a would-be novelist and ghostwriter. She’s been put forward to ghostwrite the memoir of Alfie Harding, former football (that is, soccer for those outside the UK) star. Alfie is notoriously grumpy, hot-tempered, uptight and difficult. He’s gone through 17 prior suggestions already. Mabel doesn’t really hold out a lot of hope she will be lucky number 18.

One of his teammates was asked to use three words to describe him, and all three had been annoying.

Mabel is, of course, the “sunshine” of the title. Only, her bright and bubbly personality is most often a front so that people can’t see she is easily hurt and vulnerable. For some reason though, when she first meets Alfie, she doesn’t let him get away with his bad behaviour and puts a stop to the meeting promptly, telling herself she’s just dodged a bullet rather than missed out on a job which guaranteed her income.

The whole thing would have been a disaster.

A mess of a million scary arguments.

Him, coming up with increasingly horrible insults.

Her, eventually tossing him into the nearest wood chipper.

And she just didn’t have easy access to machinery like that.

Only, it turns out that Alfie does want Mabel to ghostwrite his memoir for reasons that are unclear until the very end of the book. From there, Mabel is in a kind of wonderland (of the Alice and the white rabbit variety), never really trusting her own eyes or ears, barely able to believe she’s becoming friends with Alfie, let alone anything else. 

More as a kind of preemptive armor than intention, Mabel starts as she means to go on and shows a fairly unfiltered version of herself to Alfie. Alfie does not wish to reveal too much in his memoir; it is Mabel’s job to extract all the things he doesn’t want to talk about from him and put it on paper and, to try and convince him to allow it to be printed. (Mabel would never put something in the book Alfie did not agree to.) She has some rather provoking methods.

He shook his head and blew out a breath. “You’re sadistic, you are. Like a really evil Mary Poppins.”

Mabel’s role is a secret, so when the media notice Alfie is spending time with Mabel, they need to come up with an excuse for it. Mabel is a fat woman and the internet has a lot of feelings about that as well (it has to be said that there is a vocal contingent of supporters, not just trolls). Alfie finds himself …enthusiastically defending Mabel to members of the paparazzi and next thing you know they’re fake dating.

Mabel is already having all kinds of feelings for Alfie – not just pants feelings either – but she knows better than to believe someone like him could really want to be with someone like her. He usually dates supermodels. The very idea of Alfie falling in love with Mabel for real is such a non-starter for Mabel that she misses every sign that’s right before her eyes. 

Of course, fake dating means spending additional time together in the public eye. Alfie has a bit of a reputation for kissing his girlfriends on doorsteps so, for the media to believe their really dating…  Mabel is beside herself.

And as she did she felt him lean down, and kiss her fucking neck.

Just straight up kissed her neck, like that was a normal thing people did all the time as they were trying to get indoors. Instead of something she was pretty sure she’d never even seen happen to Julia Roberts in eighty movies about people being really horny for Julia Roberts.

The story is told completely from Mabel’s POV so we don’t know what’s going on in Alfie’s head until right near the end. Mabel’s belief that Alfie could not possibly love her could have been annoying I suppose. It was, essentially, what was keeping them apart. But I understood it. Alfie Harding is a superstar. He’s rich, famous and yes, he usually does date supermodels. Mabel is a normal person who does not move in Alfie’s usual circles. Her whole life she’s been told, by various men, that she’s not good enough and not deserving of their attention. As a result, she’s built up a thick armor. It’s really no wonder that Mabel tries to protect herself or that she takes a lot of convincing that Alfie does in fact love her to the moon and back.

I laughed out loud so many times as I read. Actual guffawing and snorting occurred. Mabel and Alfie have such a delightful dynamic. Both of them are head over heels for the other but neither can or will believe it is possible for the other to feel the same so they are constantly at cross purposes and constantly trying not to let the other know what’s really happening*. (*it turns out that Alfie is much worse at this than Mabel is, to be fair.) The say preposterous things to each other – Mabel in attempts at misdirection and Alfie because he’s baffled and trying desperately to keep up.

“Holy crapola did you actually just say that?”

“No. I never. You’ve fallen asleep and me saying that is just a horrible nightmare. In a second I’m going to wake you up by telling you something completely normal, like you looked like a soft rabbit.”

“But that isn’t completely normal either, Alfie.”

“I know,” he groaned. “I heard myself saying it and my brain just started yelling.”

“Well, it obviously needs to get faster. So it grabs you before you do it.”

“And what are the chances of that? You’ve seen how I am. Stuck in the past, slower than an old man sucking a toffee. It’s a fucking miracle I can even keep up with you at all, conversation-wise. Never mind saying things that make sense.”

It’s not all laughs. Over the course of the book, Mabel finds she recognises in Alfie things that resonate with her own experience. She finds out who the real man is and he’s not very much like the public persona at all. There’s a reason he’s so angry all the time. And, he’s never angry with her. (Occasionally frustrated and yes, grumpy, but not angry.) Alfie is much more than a “football guy” in the public eye who gets in trouble a lot. There’s far more to him than that and Mabel, for her part, appreciates what it means that she gets to know the real him.

I highlighted so much of the text as I read. I enjoyed the turns of phrase and the banter and the baffling, charming absurdity of their courtship. I liked both Mabel and Alfie very much. I would like to be Mabel’s friend. Possibly Alfie’s too but he’s not big on friends so maybe not.

Even though I understood Mabel’s fear and belief, I did wish she had been a little braver near the end. I did wish that they didn’t have to spend so much time apart (in terms of temporal-time if not page-time). (I was reading an ARC which was clearly not the final version so I’m not exactly sure if the time frame I read is what’s in the published book. Still, I can only review the book I actually read.) Perhaps it is a sign of the book’s success with me that I reacted so strongly to things going pear-shaped. As it was though I experienced quite the disappointment.

Of course, this is a romance novel and things turn out right in the end. Just… did it have to take them so long? They were miserable for too much time!!

While my overwhelming memory of the story is laughing at how great they were together, there was no lack of the more earthy kind of chemistry either. Mabel is delighted to find that the tell-all stories from former girlfriends are all completely true: it’s huge and yes, he can go all night.

But, what sticks in my mind the most is how charmed I was and how much I laughed.

“Well, at least tell me why you did it.”

“As if I have the first fucking clue. Mabel, I don’t know why I do anything. A fact that you well know after the meeting debacle. And the phone call debacle. And the restaurant debacle. And the Starbucks debacle.”

She rolled her eyes. “I get it. You have a lot of debacles.”

“Yet you’re surprised this happened.”

Grade: A-

Regards,
Kaetrin

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Dear Sophie Sullivan,

Presley Ayers has been dating Emmett for months but things are not going well. In order to try and get things back on track and prove she can encourage him to do things he likes even if she doesn’t, she books a 10 day holiday to Get Lost Lodge on a small island in Lake Michigan. It’s all nature, hiking, fishing; things Emmett apparently likes (although Presley’s best friend Rylee notes she’s never see Emmett doing any of them) and which are not really in Presley’s wheelhouse. Her idea of sport is a long day battling other shoppers looking for a bargain in the Black Friday sales. But she’s a good girlfriend so she surprises him with the holiday he would want. And he does… except he doesn’t want to go on it with her.  Emmett, as we can all tell very early on, is a jerk.

Presley breaks up with Emmett (go girl!) and goes on the holiday herself. She’s determined to try new things and have a great holiday without Emmett so there.

Presley works at a hotel in Great Falls, Michigan (which I think isn’t real and may be a stand-in for Grand Rapids but don’t quote me; I’m Australian) and has been trying to work her way up to Concierge. It seemed to me that she was doing all the work but not being compensated for it and her boss is a bit of a weasel – super demanding and severely lacking in appreciation for Presley. Presley also is something of a low-key (her description) social media influencer, with 50,000 followers on Instagram and a growing following on Tik Tok. Her specialty is helping people find luxury on a budget. She was able to get free airline tickets to the place she needed to get the ferry to the place she needed to get the boat to Get Lost Lodge. (Getting there was complicated.)

Beckett Keller is a Smile (the local town on the mainland) local (I’d guess Smile is not a real place either – when I Googled it it was a dental association). His brother, Greyson, recently divorced and in the settlement (due to, I expect, romance reasons) he ended up with the Get Lost Lodge. It’s run down and in need of quite a bit of TLC. As he had been working for his father-in-law, he’s basically got nothing but the lodge now so he’s determined to make a go of it. Beckett, together with their sister, Jill (and her 7-year-old, Olivia aka “Ollie”), are helping Grey with the lodge. The siblings have always been close and helping each other out is what they do.  Beckett works in a sporting good store in Smile but is on vacation in order to help Grey as much as he can with the lodge. Beckett is also tossing up some further opportunities; his boss has offered him a role managing a second store. It includes a buy-in option but the downside would be he’d have to leave Smile and work further away from his family and friends. There’s something else Beckett is interested in though; he’s been keen to open a bike rental business in Smile. He’s been saving money and has applied for a business loan. The other option would be to give/loan Grey the money he’s put aside in order to assist Grey with the lodge and stay doing what he’s been doing. He’s torn and hasn’t said anything to the family because he wants to work out what he wants to do first. Also, he may be just a teensy bit scared of change but don’t tell Beckett I said that.

Presley and Beckett arrive at the lodge at the same time (although Beckett’s been there before of course). It’s Presley’s first time on a boat. She’s not a fan. Beckett notices her right away; she’s pretty and also obviously uncomfortable and scared but just as obviously trying not to show it.

The lodge is very much a family affair and the vibe there is welcoming and cosy, with all the Keller family bending over backwards to provide their guests with whatever they need. The main lodge has rooms and there are some cabins as well but they are in need of repair and so Grey and Beckett are using one each while they work on them and the others.

The AC is on the fritz in Presley’s room – it’s arctic in there – and all the other rooms in the lodge are either full or not ready for guests yet so Beckett offers up his cabin to her – he will sleep on the couch at Grey’s. Only, Presley is not an outdoors girl and she’s nervous being away from the main house so Beckett ends up sleeping on his own couch. I think we all see where this is going.

When I saw Love, Naturally on NetGalley I wondered if it might have the vibe of It Happened One Summer by Tessa Bailey; – someone wealthy and privileged, a bit (a lot) like Alexis Rose (Schitt’s Creek) is banished to a small town and falls in love with a bearded hottie who is a salt-of-the-earth grumpy type. (It’s one of my favourite books in recent years actually – super fun, charming and funny and my oh my the steam!). Love, Naturally is not very like It Happened One Summer in almost all the ways.  Presley is not wealthy or privileged. Yes, she has little experience with the outdoors but this isn’t used for laughs. She tries fishing (she likes it), hiking (not a huge fan) and biking (better than hiking and fishing, not as good as bargain-hunting) while on her holiday and she never comes across as shallow. (Piper Bellinger – comes across as shallow; she is not.) Presley’s skills and experience are directly relevant to what’s needed at the Get Lost Lodge. She knows where to get hotel quality bedding at bargain prices, she knows about marketing and promotion, she has a following on Instagram and uses it to promote the lodge. She’s respectful about offering her expertise to the Kellers (who are grateful to receive it).  Beckett is not grumpy. He’s friendly and open, a little shy even. When #HotMountainMan starts trending he’s embarrassed but not angry about it. The main similarity between the two books is the conflict – in both cases, the guy is certain the girl will not want to stay in their small town. That’s really about it.

I had initially tagged Love, Naturally “fish out of water” and I suppose the tag fits to a degree but really, Presley fits in so well at the lodge and in Smile and her own desires are are about belonging and family than bright lights and the big city so I didn’t really ever feel Presley didn’t belong or would be unhappy staying.

Perhaps because of a preconception about what the book might be like (and possibly wishful thinking, who can say) I was also expecting more steam. Love, Naturally is not steamy. There are some hot kisses but what happens after that stays off the page and is protected by a moat and portcullis. I read plenty and across the spectrum of steam levels. One of my favourite books from last year (I listened to it so it’s not in my top 10 here) was Hello Stranger by Katherine Center. Center writes a similar steam level to you and I barely noticed. I’ve been trying to put my finger on why I felt the lack of steam in this book but not others. I’m not sure I can articulate it but it just seemed to me like a book which should have had more heat and didn’t. I’m not sure if that makes sense.

Apart from Emmett, just about everybody in Love, Naturally is lovely – friendly, kind, generous and talented in one way or another. There is little by way of conflict. Presley fits in with the Kellers so well it’s not a surprise where things end up. Perhaps because of that and maybe that lack of heat, I found the book to be somewhat lacking in tension. I liked it but I didn’t find it compelling.

For readers looking for a low-conflict, fairly gentle story though it’s an enjoyably safe bet.

Grade: B-

Regards,
Kaetrin

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Content notes: disordered eating, death of a spouse, toxic parent, anxiety, panic attacks

Dear Jenny Holiday,

Aurora (Rory) Evans studied ballet in New York but left after realising that the demands of the ballet world had resulted in her developing disordered eating and anxiety. Her toxic mother was extremely disappointed that Rory quit and immediately ceased providing any financial support to her – unless she was prepared to go back to New York and ballet. Rory was not.  Now Rory is a  jazz/tap dance teacher/barista back home in Minnetonka, Minnesota. She loves her teaching at Miss Miller’s – mostly little kids who will never be professional dancers and fully embraces Miss Miller’s Morals:

Everybody is welcome at Miss Miller’s.

Everybody can dance.

Dancing is supposed to be fun.

The end.

It took Rory a long time to dance again but meeting Gretchen Miller at the Starbucks where she also works opened dancing up again for her.

Rory grew up very isolated from her peers. She was so busy with dance and so often away from school as a result, she developed a reputation for being a snob – even though she was just shy. She didn’t go to school dances or have friends. She was a very lonely child. So, when she was 16 and working at a coffee shop on weekends and met “Mike” a hockey player from Canada in town for the weekend, she decided to invent her “Canadian Boyfriend”. She wrote to him for several years – letters that were never sent of course – purchased gifts “from him” and used Mike’s hockey as the excuse as to why her peers never got to meet him. She never thought she would meet Mike again. Until she did.

Eleven-year-old Olivia Kowalski returns to Miss Rory’s Tap3 class after the death of her mother seven months earlier. Olivia’s dad is Mike Martin, a defenseman for the Minnesota Lumberjacks – and she’s pretty sure – almost-but-not-quite positive really – that Mike Martin is her Canadian Boyfriend.

Olivia and Mike are just beginning to find their feet after the death of their mother/wife, Sarah. Olivia is not biologically Mike’s daughter but he doesn’t care about that. He’s known and loved her since she was one and as far as he’s concerned, she’s his. There’s some tension with Sarah’s parents over custody but Olivia wanted to live with Mike and that was that. Both of them go to therapy and one of the things the therapist recommended was to identify two things which made Olivia happy and do them. One of them was dance class with Miss Rory.

Sarah told me once, when I asked her how she’d gotten through the hard times in her life—and she’d had some hard times—that the trick was to “look for the bright things and hold on to those.”

Aurora Evans was a bright thing.

I could see why Olivia liked her so much.

As Mike returns to hockey (one of his own happy things), he needs assistance with Olivia and Rory steps in. Before long, Rory is Olivia’s sort-of nanny and is living in Mike’s basement which leads to lots of proximity for their simmering attraction to take hold.

Rory is a delight. She is sparkling and vibrant, kind of quirky, a little chaotic in her energy, kind and generous. She’s also about to learn how to stand for herself instead of bending herself into a pretzel to please others. Leaving New York and the ballet academy/college was one of the hardest things she’d ever done and a rare time she’d stood up to her mother and for herself. Over the course of the book, she learns how to say what she wants, how to be herself – still kind and generous – but also not put up with other people’s bullshit. She gets some (more) therapy and deals with her remaining issues with food (her therapist specialises in intuitive eating and teaches her that food is morally neutral). She stands up to her mother, she advocates for herself and her own happiness.

I felt for child/teen Rory and understood what led her to create her Canadian Boyfriend. I was glad it wasn’t mentioned with quite as much frequency throughout the main body of the book as in the prologue because it was getting tired very quickly. It took me a long time to really understand what the problem was with Mike being her Canadian Boyfriend and her not telling him. After all, Mike was a guy she met in the mall for a couple of minutes well over a decade ago. He was the inspiration for her boyfriend but that’s about it. She never really knew Mike at all. Why did she need to tell him at all?

Mike has a think about honesty – Sarah had been lying to him about something before she died – and he is also quite hung up on people liking him for him and not for hockey. He dislikes being thought of as any kind of celebrity and actively avoids the spotlight. I still had to squint a little to understand why it would be the major conflict of their romance that Rory hadn’t told him about their earlier interaction and that she had manufactured a boyfriend as a teen, a boyfriend with his name. It just didn’t seem like a big deal to me. Rory was not with Mike because of any earlier interaction. She didn’t seek him out in some kind of weird stalker obsession. I could see that this was the conflict that was coming though so I tried to get my head around it. I only partially succeeded.

I did understand Mike’s issues. I’m not saying that he was weak or bad or wrong for feeling as he did about honesty or about celebrity. I just struggled to see what the letters Rory wrote to “Mike” had to do with him.

Mike is a great dad and a good guy. I liked him very much. I liked how he took on board the things he learned about in therapy – about emotional labour and all the things that go into planning a party or getting a child to school (for instance) and that he stepped up.

He and Rory are great together too. In Mike (whom Rory always refers to as “Mike Martin” in the book – always the two names. I didn’t mind it.) Rory finds someone she can spread her wings with, someone who will listen and allow her to come to her own conclusions while gently encouraging her and supporting her all the way. Rory is indeed a bright thing and she makes Mike’s life better in all the ways. Olivia adores her.

From the very first chapter right up until quite near the end, I was all in on Canadian Boyfriend. Where it fell down a little for me was at the end. It didn’t quite stick the landing. I had questions about Olivia’s reaction to what was happening (I’m trying to avoid spoilers) and found it unbelievable that she would accept the new status quo so easily. But there was just the one line about her feelings and it was far too mild for the Olivia I had come to know.  And, as I said earlier, that conflict seemed less problematic to me than it did to both Mike and Aurora (Mike always calls Rory her full name).

I loved Gretchen – the “Miss Miller”. Eight years Rory’s senior, she is kind of a big sister figure with, when it comes to Rory at least, a maternal undertone. Gretchen is practical, self-aware and direct. (Her book is next and I can hardly wait to discover who will be her romantic pairing. #hereforit)

90% of the book was fantastic. Funny, endearing, sexy and about 10% of the book (maybe less) was not as enjoyable for me and maybe also a little rushed (the two things may be linked). But overall, Canadian Boyfriend was mostly delight. I am looking forward to the audiobook – for all that I have some criticisms of the story, it is one I will no doubt want to revisit.

Aurora laughed. She had a high, melodious laugh that erupted out of her in little bursts that sounded the way light looked. Part of her bright-thing appeal, I guess.

Grade: B+

Regards,
Kaetrin

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Content Note:  anxiety, panic attacks, neglectful parents, discussion of non-fatal cancer

Dear Opal Wei,

I’d heard good things about Wild Life and Olivia Dade blurbed it which is a meaningful recommendation to me in itself, but knowing you are also Ruby Lang* made me even more inclined to dive in. (*Not a secret, I checked.)

Davy Hsieh, former member of a C-pop band and current hermit, bumps into Zoey Fong at the university where she is a Phd student undertaking cancer research. Davy is hoping to meet with a professor at the college to get some help starting a wild life sanctuary. Davy comes from a wealthy Taiwanese family and owns a small island off the Sunshine Coast of Canada. He rescued a cougar from a zoo and big cat Baby lives on the island with him. Davy has anxiety and a huge fear of letting people down (in part because his father told him constantly that he does let people down all the time. His father is obviously a complete jerk) and keeps away from others and very much to himself as a result. 

Zoey’s sister, Mimi, had bone cancer some years ago. She made a full recovery after treatment but Zoey, who as the older sister, had to step up quite a bit during Mimi’s illness, has dedicated herself to “The Plan” which involves getting both a medical degree and a doctorate in cancer research and curing the bone cancer from which her sister suffered. (Or, at least creating a better treatment). Only, she’s miserable. She’s worked hard for years and spent a lot of money but she’s very unsatisfied. Maybe The Plan isn’t what’s good for her? But if she does not have The Plan, what does she have? And, if she quits the program she will be letting people down and become a quitter – things that Zoey Fong is not a fan of.

When Davy and Zoey bump into one another (Davy never does meet the professor he’s looking for), Zoey asks him to hold an envelope for her. The envelope contains a slide of cancer cells of the kind Mimi had and is a kind of talisman for Zoey. After some confusion between them, Zoey and Davy separate – but Davy still has the slide. Zoey, desperate to get the slide back so she can continue with The Plan, tags along with Davy the next day to get it back only for reasons, the three never seem to be in the same place at the same time. The next day, Zoey ends up traveling to Davy’s island* with him in order to locate the slide which has been packed away somewhere among all the other stuff he’s shipping there. (*I admit I was a little surprised that the island where Davy was hoping to start a wild life sanctuary was not tropical. I guess I was influenced by the very tropical cover. )

Zoey refers to Davy in her mind as “the Handsome” even though she’s mad at him for not having the slide and giving it back to her straight away.  He’s very good-looking and very distracting. Davy, for his part, is immediately deeply smitten and guilt-ridden about Zoey being upset.

Davy Hsieh did not often know what he was doing. He didn’t operate with a plan—it was more a set of loose guidelines. And even then, he usually forgot about them.

This—this situation—however, seemed to call for some sort of forethought. While Zoey stood on the deck of the boat, talking on her phone, he jotted down a quick list.

1. Don’t screw up Zoey Fong’s life

2. Don’t screw up MY life

3. Help Zoey get the slide back

4. Win Zoey’s forgiveness

5. Get to know Zoey better

6. Let Zoey get to know me

7. That’s kind of scary that most of this list is about Zoey

But he had to make sure of a few things. She had to be protected and safe at all times. So even if she insisted on doing something foolhardy, like getting on a boat with a stranger (this plan was already going well), then he was going to object and stand his ground and not let her dark eyes bore into him until he couldn’t think straight.

There’s a kind of humour within the writing which I found very endearing.

Davy settled them onto the piano bench and thought of how nice it was to have contact with another person again, especially when that person was Zoey, so alive and snappish and vibrant and—

“I’m not joining in on a song I don’t know,” Zoey said snappishly and vibrantly.

While on the island, the story veers into something like caper territory. A little bit farce, a little bit ridiculous, mostly fun. A grumpy neighbour makes an accusation and Fierce Zoey comes to the fore. 

Meanwhile, Zoey and Davy give into their attraction and also open up to one another. So there was this mix of serious (discussion of anxiety and addiction to pills for example), romance and intimacy and zany set pieces. Somehow it all worked together. I have the feeling that the humour and/or the mix won’t work for everyone (no book will ever do that of course) but it worked for me. Mostly.

I did get a bit tired of Davy constantly leaping to self-blame. Fortunately, so did Zoey. And she called it out.

“I’m getting really tired of this. Is blaming yourself the way you keep people from getting close to you? Who needs an island when you’ve got that thick wall of self-regard masquerading as self-blame keeping people out?”

Thank you Zoey! If Davy never moved on from that, it would have made him hard to be around for very long I think. (Also, by the end, Davy was in therapy which was a very good thing.)

Davy needs to learn to let people in. Zoey needs something similar. She doesn’t always have to know everything. She doesn’t have to save the world. She doesn’t have to save her sister that’s for sure – her sister is fine. I really liked how Davy talked to Zoey about the possibility of moving on from The Plan and making a new plan.

“It depends on where you end the story, doesn’t it?”

Someone once gave me similar advice when I was struggling and it made all the difference to me.

I enjoyed the side characters, Li-leng – Zoey’s roommate and best friend, Davy’s good friend and former babysitter, George, in particular. George is exhausting but passionate and devoted to Davy.

Apart from the epilogue the story takes place over less than a week and it was that which gave me a little pause. Both main characters fall in love and completely change their lives after such a short time. I was prepared to go with it for romance reasons but it also seemed out of character for each of them so I had a bit of cognitive dissonance about it.

Wild Life leans heavily on the zany to leaven the more serious aspects of the story – at times, it was just a little bit too zany for me but for the most part, I was charmed.

Grade: B

Regards,
Kaetrin

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Dear Mary Balogh,

I’ve been reading your books for ages now. I read everything you release and some of your older books (many of them actually) are on my keeper shelf and are books I go back to again and again. Of course I was going to read Always Remember. I can’t say I wasn’t a bit nervous about it though. It features Lady Jennifer Arden (sister of Luc, the hero from the previous book, Remember Me), who is unable to walk as a result of (apparently) childhood polio*.  As much as I love your books, there have been issues with disability representation in them before. This time, disability is front and centre to the story. There is no way to brush it aside.

(*According to the WHO “the first known clinical description of polio, by British doctor Michael Underwood, was not until 1789, and it was formally recognized as a condition in 1840 by German physician Jakob Heine” so I guess it’s possible it was regarded as a mystery at the time Jenny was ill in the early 1800s?)

Ben Ellis is the firstborn son of the Earl of Stratton. He is also illegitimate. He came to live with the Ware family when he was three years old after his mother had died. Devlin, the heir, was a newborn. The Countess of Stratton was presented with another child and evidence of her husband’s philandering almost immediately upon giving birth to her first child. It was a lot for her to take in. Nonetheless, Ben was loved and raised as a member of the family. Almost. He always knew he was not really one of them.

You are treated as an equal as long as you do not behave like one.

Ouch.

It is a somewhat strange situation to be in. I don’t know if there are actual historical analogues but I expect if there were, they were rare. (I know there were illegitimate offspring of royalty (“Fitz-insert-name-here’s) and they sometimes had something of a special status because even illegitimate they were still related to royalty. This is different I think.)

Devlin left Ravenswood following a public argument with his father in Remember Love. Devlin joined the military and went off to war on the Continent. Ben went with him as his batman. When Devlin returned home, Ben did too – carrying a baby in his greatcoat. Ben had been in a relationship with a washerwoman during the war. She fell pregnant, he promptly married her and they had a daughter together, Joy. Then Marjorie died, leaving Ben a widower with a very young baby.

In the two years since he and Devlin returned to England, Ben has purchased (from Devlin) a property by the sea – Penallen – and begun to make a home for him and his now-three-year-old daughter. He’s a man who enjoys being in a steady relationship. He misses it. He doesn’t expect hearts and flowers but he wants a companion and regular sex. He wants Joy to have a mother and he wants more children. His ponderings about who to court among his neighbours are interrupted by a visit to Ravenswood for the first summer fete held in eight years.

The whole extended family are at Ravenswood in the lead up to the fete, not just Ben and Joy. Lady Jennifer Arden is there too.

Ben and Jenny (OMG I have just realised – Ben & Jenny! LOL) have met before but Ben usually keeps himself somewhat apart, making an effort to be inconspicuous and ordinary as a result of his peculiar status within the family and within society. And for his part, Ben realises, he has been uncomfortable with Jenny because of her disability. Once he realises this, he feels awful and determines to do better. Ben is a practically-minded man; he sees a problem and sets his mind to finding options to solve it. When he sees Jenny struggling to walk in the courtyard one day with crutches and gets to talking with her about her dreams of being more mobile, he starts to think of ways he can help.

I did like that Jenny very firmly set him straight and told him she was not a “project”. Ben tried to step into the role of saviour but Jenny wrested that away and “saved” herself.

But, the first thing Ben does is teach Jenny how to drive a gig. Jenny is delighted. For the first time since her illness she is moving freely on her own volition (of course she has the cooperation of the horse).

I did wonder, given how much Jenny is loved, that no-one else in her life had ever tried to help her be more mobile. It was never really answered in the story. I suppose it was put down to her being smothered in love and Jenny being determinedly cheerful so she would not be a mopey bother due to her disability. There’s a scene later in the book where Ben wheels Jenny’s chair around the lake at a picnic. She’d been sitting in one spot before then. Sure people would come and talk to her and she wasn’t ignored but no-one else even thought she might want to move. That seemed weird to me.

In Ben, Jenny finds someone she can confide in; she does not feel the need to be ever-cheerful and is open with him about her hopes and dreams and her struggles. And Ben in return finds someone who understands being different and not quite belonging.

“But I went and had that talk with Cam Holland when I had no business doing so,” he said.

“Yes,” she said. “And I might have rebuked you—as I did. I might have sent word immediately to Mr. Holland that I would have no need of his services, now or ever, thank you kindly. I did not do it. I went instead to talk to him myself, and I took Pippa with me. That whole matter was an issue that became mine, Mr. Ellis. I am a grown woman, and a woman, moreover, with a mind and a voice. I used both. I am becoming increasingly annoyed to find that you and I—both of us—are treated differently from other people by our families. I am coddled, as though I were still the child I was when I fell ill and was quite incapable of managing my own affairs. You are treated as an equal as long as you do not behave like one. If we wish to be friends while we are both here at Ravenswood—which will not be for very much longer—then why should we not be? I do not need permission from my brother or my aunt. You do not need permission from anyone at all.”

When Ben arrived at Ravenswood a letter is waiting which opens the possibility of finding out more about his mother and her family – something he had almost no knowledge of before. He can talk to Jenny about this in a way he feels he can’t talk to the Wares.

As Ben and Jenny spend time together the rest of the family become “concerned” because Ben is illegitimate and something something social damage if they get together. I admit I didn’t quite understand this. Surely a Duke and an Earl can stare (almost) anyone down about such things if they choose? What social situations exactly would Jenny be unable to participate in if she were married to Ben? Would she care? Would it actually do any damage to the rest of the family? For as much as the Wares have always loved Ben and said they regarded him as their brother, there was a divide. It is not until the book ends (with a HEA because of course) that I felt that gap was mostly bridged and only really because of his (spoiler!) marriage to Jenny. Which, when you think about it is a bit sad really.

There was a scene I desperately wanted but which was not in the book. Luc is concerned and warns Ben off. He at least is not a Ware and so I could understand where he was coming from (mostly?). Luc and Devlin go to town to check on something and I really wanted to know what they talked about. Did Devlin (as he should have) tell Luc to pull his head in and that he’s be lucky to have Ben as a brother-in-law? Or did he agree with Luc’s concerns? What did they talk about?

I don’t quite know how to feel about the disability representation in Always Remember. It wasn’t all bad. But I don’t think it was exactly good either. I’m not qualified to make any definitive pronouncement but there were some things I liked and some things I didn’t. Whether that adds up at a passing grade or not is not my call to make.

In any event, Jenny decides to think about her disability differently – as her incapacity only affecting “one leg” and that it ought not affect her whole life. She knows she will never walk easily but she longs to be less reliant on others. She decides to be more active in her own life rather than being a passive observer.

Ben finds out things about his mother and addresses some complicated feelings about his father. The family realise that Ben knows he’s not really a Ware. (Like, this is a revelation?) I felt a little out of phase with this part of the story. As if I could only fathom it if I looked quickly but the more I stared the blurrier it got.

By the end of the book however, both Ben and Jenny were better off and happy together and Joy was delighted with her new “mama”. I enjoyed the book while I was reading (even though I think some of the social mores the family chose to adhere to were just stupid, especially the one at the end – hello romance reader here) but I don’t think it’s a book I’ll read again.  I liked Ben very much. I’m glad he ended up with more than he thought he’d ever have. I liked Jenny too but for me the book was very much about Ben, his history, his place in the family and finding a place where he truly belonged. (Also, I’m a sucker for a single dad and Ben is an exceptional father.)

Grade: B-

Regards,
Kaetrin

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 In the order I read them, here are my top 10 reads of 2023 (of books released in 2023). Plus a bonus book just because.

Chick Magnet by Emma Barry

This would be a quick visit. He wouldn’t think about her hair. He wouldn’t confess anything. Under no circumstances would he flirt.

…

Inside, in worn jeans and Chuck Taylors, stood Nicole. She had her back to him, and her hair fell loose around her shoulders, long and shiny with the slightest curl to it.

Right, he’d already failed to ignore her hair. This was going to be disastrous.

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Off The Map by Trish Doller

“How are you still single?” I ask, for the third time since we’ve met, making him smile.

“Because you’re not mine yet.”

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The Secret Lives of Country Gentlemen by KJ Charles

Joss’s smile. The way they’d kissed. Even that stupid argument, about which Gareth had given himself some serious talkings-to, because of how Joss had listened afterwards. The touch of his hands, the wonder in his eyes, the astonishing sense of familiarity, as though he and Gareth had somehow slipped past one another all their lives and their meeting was long overdue.

It had felt like that with Kent too, and he’d told himself it wasn’t real. Now he’d started wondering if it had been, say, true in outline. As if ‘London and Kent’ had been a pencil drawing, and now it was being filled in with colours.

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Unfortunately Yours by Tessa Bailey

They fought like they hated each other, but somehow, Lord, he’d been ready to drop to his knees in front of her on that sidewalk last night.
“I’m better elsewhere. I’m something. I’m someone when I’m not here.”

After the shock of hearing that breathy confession had worn off, he’d just gotten mad.

Who the fuck made her feel like that?

How long had she been feeling like crap without his knowing about it?

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Trust Me by Rachel Grant

Why didn’t I put a quote in my review??

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The Summer Girl by Elle Kennedy

Our buddy Jordy and his reggae band play this venue most weekends, but they’re not here tonight. In their place is a metal outfit with a lead singer who’s scream-singing unintelligible lyrics as I sidle up to the boys.

Cooper, clad in a black T-shirt and ripped jeans, is sipping on a beer and wincing at the ungodly noises coming from the stage. His other half is nowhere to be found, and by that I mean Evan, his twin. Mackenzie would be his better half, the chick who got Cooper to smile more times in the last year than in all the years I’ve known him combined. Genuine smiles, too, and not the cocky smirks he’d flash right before we used to fuck shit up.

Chase is next to Coop, engrossed with his phone, while Danny listens to the band with a pained expression.

“These guys are awful,” I say, wondering who the hell decided to book them. The singer is now making strange breathing noises while the two guitarists whisper into their microphones. “Why are they whispering now?”

“Is he saying my skull is weeping?” Cooper demands, wrinkling his brow.

“No. It’s my soul is sleeping,” Danny tells him.

“It’s both,” Chase says without looking up from his phone. “My skull is weeping/my soul is sleeping. Those are the lyrics.”

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A Nobleman’s Guide to Seducing a Scoundrel by KJ Charles

Rufus had many times heard the phrase ‘he came out swinging’. It generally referred to a boxer’s fists, but there was a lot to be said for an axe.

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Time to Shine by Rachel Reid

If Landon were built differently, maybe he and Casey would hook up one night. Maybe one thing would lead to another, and they’d both say, “Hey, why not do this? Might be fun.” Maybe it wouldn’t mean anything more than watching TV together did; just something to do before bed.

But even imagining that filled Landon with so much anxiety he wanted to tear his skin off. He didn’t want to hook up with Casey.

So what the fuck did he want?

He supposed it didn’t matter. He wasn’t going to get it. He needed to pull himself together, go back to his seat, and pretend to be a much more laidback person than he was.

At least he and Casey would be separated a bit on this trip. They were in different hotel rooms, and clearly Casey had his own plans for their free time. Maybe distance would clear Landon’s head.

But when he returned to his seat, and Casey smiled at him and randomly asked if he thought walruses were weird, Landon really doubted it.

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System Collapse by Martha Wells

I had an actual gun, one of ART’s projectile weapons, but we knew from experience how many shots it took to down an enraged ag-bot, and getting up right on its processor for a point-blank impact was not something anybody wanted me to try to attempt, especially me.

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The Fairytale Life of Dorothy Gale by Virginia Kantra

“Women who tell the truth have always been called witches.”

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BONUS BOOK

The Graham Effect by Elle Kennedy – I didn’t do a formal review of this one but I loved it. It has all the vibes of The Deal and The Summer Girl, great banter and likeable characters with excellent chemistry. I had a couple of quibbles but overall, it was just wonderful. Grade A-

“Always. You fall, I pick you up. Always.”

 

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Dear Virginia Kantra,

I don’t think I’ve ever seen The Wizard of Oz – the one with Judy Garland in – from start to finish, just bits of it. I’ve never read the book. But I know the story of course. The main draw for me was you. I adored your Carolina series (especially Carolina Dreaming) a few years back (looking it up on Goodreads, that series finished in 2016). I haven’t (yet) read your retellings of Little Women but I intend to now. But for this book, your name attached to it was all I needed to pretty please request it.

Dorothy Gale is a 26-year-old graduate student, formerly at Kansas University. She had been in a two-year secret relationship with Grayson Kettering, a professor at KU. He didn’t directly teach her but he was in the same department (English) and it was nonetheless improper of him. Gray, the jerk, wrote a book “Destiny Gayle” in which a hapless professor was ensnared into an inappropriate relationship with a student and how his life unravels all because of her. Dorothy was very obviously the inspiration for “Destiny” and it was by no means a flattering comparison. Dee was humiliated, a laughing-stock – in school, with readers all over, in the media. She’d had no idea she was the subject of his book. Once the book was released, he ghosted her. Now the best-selling book is being made into a movie.

For the two years of their relationship, Dee put her own thesis on hold. Being gaslit by Gray did not help. Now, she has transferred to Trinity College, Dublin for a year to finish her dissertation and finally break free of Gray.

Dee never knew her father. Her mother was an artist who was away often. Dee and her younger sister, Toni, frequently stayed with friends of their mother, often on couches, or, they stayed with Aunt Em and Uncle Henry on their farm in Kansas. After their mother died when Dee was 12 and Toni was 4, they went to live permanently on the farm. Dee has always felt responsible for Toni. In many ways, she raised her. Their aunt and uncle are hard-working, practical people and not given to shows of affection. Dee always had the impression that Em and Henry took them in out of obligation and regarded them as burdens. Dee has always felt in the way, like she doesn’t belong anywhere, with anyone.  Gray’s treatment of her only reinforced that view.

In Dublin, Dee meets Sam Clery, a shopkeeper and would-be poet who missed his opportunity to go to Trinity to study English when his father died and Sam had to take over the shop to help his mother and four siblings. Sam is our Scarecrow.  She also meets Tim Woodman, a businessman and fellow student at Trinity (albeit in the business school) who was wounded in Afghanistan during his military service and who believes himself to have no heart – aka the Tin Man. And also, Reeti, a young British-Indian Sikh woman who is studying business at the college but longs to teach young Indian women in order to improve their lives and encourage independence in them. Only, she’s terribly afraid of disappointing her parents. She is our Cowardly Lion.

Dee forms a deep friendship with all three and a romantic connection with one of the men. As to which one – well, I’ll leave that for the readers to discover themselves. I will say that I was very happy with her choice. He was my personal pick too (although I certainly did not dislike the other one).

Reeti, a couple of years younger than Dee, quickly becomes Dee’s best friend and is wonderful at telling Dee things she needs to hear, with kindness and love. And Dee, for the first time, begins to find friends and her place.

“Dee, you don’t have to be useful to be liked. Not here, anyway.”

Dee has some difficulty with being connected to an advisor for her dissertation. Dr. Eastwick, the woman she reached out to in the first place, was unfortunately squished by a mobile house which tipped over and fell on her car when the house was being transported on the highway. Glenda Norton, the head of the program tries, somewhat reluctantly, to find someone to step in. Maeve Ward, who other students, past and present, refer to as “the witch” is an option but she’s terrifying and demanding. Later in the year, she is mentored by a children’s book writer, Oscar Diggs (our Oz), who inspires her to be braver with her writing.

Over the course of her year in Dublin, Sam finds wisdom, Tim finds his heart and Reeti finds her courage. And Dee rewrites her unfinished historical literary novel set in the dustbowl of Kansas, reimagining it as a story for children.

Maybe that was my problem. I’d been writing Rose’s story, but I’d forgotten to give her a companion on her journey. Someone she needed to protect, to force her to be braver, kinder, wiser. It wasn’t enough to defeat the dragon. Fairy tales—the ones I loved—weren’t only about survival. They were about hope and love and joy.

“She has a pet,” I decided. “A chicken.” I knew chickens. And a chicken would be funny.

“I don’t want to be a chicken,” Toni protested sleepily.

“What, then?”

“A dog.”

She had always wanted a puppy. Not a working dog, like Uncle Henry’s or one of the feral strays along the highway. So, yes, okay, a dog. I could see it in my mind, small and dark and bright-eyed.

“A dog named Toto…”

There was some talk in the book about imitation being a good starting point. But when Rose’s name changed to Dorothy I became concerned. “Who is going to tell her?” I thought. It took me an unfeasibly long time to work out that in the universe of The Fairytale Life of Dorothy Gale, The Wizard of Oz books by L. Frank Baum did not exist. (Note to readers: now you know. You’re welcome.) Once I worked that out, I felt so much better about Dee’s book.

Dee also confronts demons, old and new, including Gray, who like a bad penny, turns up again. She learns to stand for herself and be brave, confident, wise and kind to herself.

Angry. Yes. The word settled inside me, hard and sure. I was angry at my mother for leaving. Angry at Sam for pointing out her choice. Angry with myself, for all the times I’d given up or gone along or failed to speak up because I was afraid of being abandoned. Rejected. I was angry at Aunt Em for not loving me enough, at Gray for using me, at Toni for needing me and dropping out, at Dr. Eastwick for dying and Maeve Ward for being alive.

Oh God. I was angry all the time.

Dee also gains a new perspective on Aunt Em and Uncle Henry – maybe they weren’t as unloving as she had previously believed? And, from her good friends, on herself:

“Sometimes pretending isn’t an act of cowardice. Sometimes it’s a matter of survival.”

There are POV chapters from Dee, Sam and Tim. Mostly Dee. Dee feels romantic sparks with both Sam and Tim. But one man in particular wins her love.

“Dee.” He cleared his throat. Took my hands. “I like you. I want to see you. I want to sleep with you again. Tonight and as often as you want.”

I did have one or two questions about Dee’s mother. I picked up the hint of something maybe in one of the lines but maybe I’m reading in too much? I’ve never been much of one for subtext so I can’t be sure. I’m terribly curious though.

My own dad was a man who didn’t say he loved me very often. He was a doer not a talker. (I never had a doubt my dad loved me though!) So I felt like I understood Aunt Em and other characters in the book better because of it.

I got a bit of a kick out of the various Wizard of Oz references and the clever way they were weaved into the story (especially once I realised Dee’s book was, in this world, original). I enjoyed Dee’s relationship with Reeti and watching the changes between Dee and Toni. I liked Sam and Tim and watching them take chances on what would make them happy. I loved the romance, somewhat understated but kind and solid – there is something truly romantic to me about those things. I enjoyed Dee learning to listen to what was not being said and giving grace to others to open up at their own pace – something she later applies to herself as well. And, I liked Maeve, very much. Good witches are overrated I reckon.

“Women who tell the truth have always been called witches.”

Grade: B+

Regards,
Kaetrin

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Dear Martha Wells,

Murderbot is back!! Yay!!

System Collapse takes place immediately after the events of Network Effect (the previous book in the series, Fugitive Telemetry, covers events before Network Effect). Here’s a hint: a recap of Network Effect is very helpful when going into System Collapse if you’re anything like me and can’t remember much of what happened (there have been so many books filling my brain since then). In a pinch, this Wikipedia synopsis will help. I admit I was a bit lost at first (see previous). But, once I read that Wiki entry and a couple of Goodreads reviews of the earlier book, I felt oriented and that made this book much easier to follow.

Murderbot and ART and various of its humans have returned to the planet with the alien contamination from Network Effect and are trying to convince the colonists to leave and not sign up for indentured servitude with the Barish-Estranza Corporation. Murderbot is struggling because of redacted. Yes, that’s what it says in the text. For a good portion of the book, the SecUnit is not letting on what redacted is. We only know it has something to do with what happened before and it has made its humans (and ART) concerned about it and whatever happened has made has made Murderbot feel unreliable and a liability to the team.

SecUnit and a subset of it’s crew, together with ART-drone (it’s all ART but ART can split off into various different iterations) go to a remote area of the planet where there may be separatists who are unaware of what has been going on and who will be vulnerable to Barish-Estranza. While there, Murderbot is challenged to begin to face the trauma of its experience in Network Effect and what that means for it going forward. Plus, things get dicey with Barish-Estranza and Murderbot is called upon to use its knowledge of human behaviour (learned from all of its media-watching experience, particularly his beloved Sanctuary Moon) to protect an ever-increasing number of humans under its care. We also catch up with Three and other characters readers have come to know and like over the course of the series.

I adore the SecUnit and its reluctant but complete devotion to its humans and ART. I love the sarcasm and the way Murderbot refers to “I had an emotion” or “I made an expression” which both reminds me its not a human but also that its something very close to human. I love the way Murderbot shies away from emotions but feels them anyway, especially for people like Dr Mensah and Iris but also for its buddy, ART. I also love that those beloved human characters appreciate SecUnit for who it is, value its input and skill and treat it with respect. Murderbot’s dry humour is the best and it had me smiling and/or laughing out loud throughout the story.

I had an actual gun, one of ART’s projectile weapons, but we knew from experience how many shots it took to down an enraged ag-bot, and getting up right on its processor for a point-blank impact was not something anybody wanted me to try to attempt, especially me.

I feel a bit like Iris and Dr Mensah about SecUnit myself actually.

Murderbot ends the story in a good place – physically and mentally and ready for more adventures.

The best thing I can say about System Collapse is that it made me want to re-read (or re-listen) to the entire series again from start to finish and I’m planning to do just that soon – maybe over the Christmas break.

Definitely recommended (but remember what I said about the Network Effect recap). Grade: A

Regards,
Kaetrin

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Dear Andrew Grey,

I generally like a fake relationship story. For me it’s the modern equivalent of a marriage of convenience in many ways and forced proximity usually means a lot of the love interests together which also suits me. But I probably didn’t think through where the premise of Dragged to the Wedding would inevitably take me.  James Petika is a Chicago policeman who is going home to Missoula, Montana, to his sister’s wedding. He is gay but isn’t out to his very conservative family. His mother, in particular, is a force of nature and he wants to keep her off his back about “marrying a nice girl and settling down” while he’s home. His friend introduces him to “Daniella” – who turns out to be Daniel Bonafonte, an entertainer who performs as drag queen Lala Traviata. Daniel can tone down the drag makeup and pass as female and James ends up agreeing to pay Daniel $1,000 to be his fake date to the wedding, the festivities for which involve six days of family gatherings.

Daniel is not trans. When James introduces Daniella to his family he is not only lying to them about his relationship status, both he and Daniel are actively involved in a deception which can only end in tears once Daniel’s gender is revealed (and of course it will be). It’s one thing to pretend to be in a relationship but this deception takes things to another level. Had Daniel been trans and therefore actually been Daniella I would not have had this discomfort with the story – as Daniella would not have been lying about who she was. But Daniel is pretending to be a woman and it’s easy to see how James’s family would feel humiliated and hurt at being deceived that way.  As I read through the book, my realisation crystallised of just how badly the people I was supposed to be rooting for were behaving.

I found the writing style generally choppy and there were a number of times when an idea was introduced that was never resolved. For instance:

James could not explain to his father exactly what was going on, and that was part of the problem. He didn’t know what was real and what was an act any longer. This was all his fault, and now he had to find his way through this minefield of dresses, makeup, and deception all on his own.

“Ah, I see,” his father whispered knowingly as he sat forward. “I thought that I recognized something was amiss. You’re not telling us everything about Daniella, are you? You know, if you look closely enough, it’s pretty obvious.” His gaze bored into James, and for an instant he felt completely exposed and vulnerable. A cold chill ran up his back, and James held his hands together just to keep them from shaking.

“I…” He opened his mouth to try to explain, but his father continued. This was his worst nightmare. James’s mind raced in a million directions at once.

His father looked toward the kitchen and motioned for James to come closer. “What were you thinking?” The tone was barely above a whisper and knife sharp, and James lowered his gaze. “I’m not stupid, and don’t think for a second that I condone this type of thing. Lying to your mother…”

“Dad, I… There are things that you don’t know.” The ground beneath his feet turned to quicksand in a second, his heart raced, and James could almost feel the end of his life with his family approaching like a freight train.

His father’s face transformed with a smile. “You really care for this girl,” he said. “I can see it.”

“What?” James tried to make his head shift gears in a second as relief warred with the idea that he should just come clean and tell his father everything.

I still do not know what James’s dad was actually on about and nothing in the text that followed told me. I had quite a few instances of mental whiplash where I asked myself “what just happened?” I felt like key information was missing. If it had been a paperback I would have been tempted to shake it to see if any extra pages fell out.

James’s mother, Grace, is something of a caricature but she’s also a bit inconsistently drawn. Every now and then she will come out with something positively risque or be permissive of something unexpected, but most of the time she’s the stereotypical “no sex before marriage” super conservative Christian often depicted in media (and often found in real life too if social media is anything to go by). She’s also a mother-of-the-bride-zilla. She changes the order of service to suit herself, she changes the wedding dress order (when the dress was one the bride did not super-love in the first place) so it does not fit. (Aside: what kind of wedding dress seller would allow that??) She did not truly deal with actual consequences for this outrageous behaviour either.  Fortunately, Daniel is a whiz on a sewing machine and (somewhat very  unbelievably) he alters the oversized wedding gown in the space of 24 hours so it fits like a dream and James’s sister walks down the aisle as the princess she always wanted to be.

Between problems with the wedding and an obnoxious best man who keeps hitting on Daniella, a shady pastor and avoiding the truth coming out to James’s family, Daniel and James fight their burgeoning attraction. Well, they fight it for a while. Then they don’t. (Which, honestly, is fine.) It’s just that there’s an awful lot going on in a book which came in at 184 pages on my ereader. There were too many concepts and storylines for any of them to really get the attention they deserved and that included the romance.

And, when the big reveal inevitably occurred, neither James nor Daniel truly appreciated their own fault. James in particular leapt to blame his mother for being so demanding he felt forced to bring Daniel-dressed-as-Daniella to the wedding so really it’s all her own fault and then the conflict swiftly  moves to being about Grace’s homophobia. Truly, I felt James and Daniel owed James’s family a very sincere, grovelling apology but it did not happen. And, then, everyone got over it way too quickly for it to be remotely realistic.

I won’t give away the ending but I found it only added to the unreality of it all.

There were things I did like. For instance, I liked how James, apart from their very first meeting, always saw through whatever Daniel was wearing to the man underneath. He was unashamedly attracted to Daniel whether he was wearing a dress and heels and full makeup, was in full drag regalia as Lala or, presenting as Daniel in a t-shirt and jeans. There was something about that I found charming because it was presented as him really seeing the person he cared for. James just saw Daniel. I liked that James was not only unfazed by dating a drag queen, he actively reveled in it. I liked how he only had admiration for Daniel’s talent and skill.

Unfortunately a lot of other things didn’t work for me and Dragged to the Wedding was a disappointment.

Grade: C-

Regards,
Kaetrin

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Dear Sierra Simone & Julie Murphy,

I enjoyed last year’s A Merry Little Meet Cute so much it made my Best of 2022 list, so I was keen to read the (second) follow up book about Kallum (the “K” in INK, a boy band featuring Isaac, Nolan and Kallum which broke up some years before). Unfortunately, A Holly Jolly Ever After did not have the same charm for me.

In book one, Bee got the role in “Duke the Halls” when wholesome actress Winnie Baker was stuck at “Unfestival”. A Holly Jolly Ever After brings Winnie back, to star in a Hope After Dark movie, “Santa Baby” with Kallum. The Hope Channel has embraced the success of feel good (and at least slightly ridiculous) movies a la the Hallmark Channel but with Cinemaxx steam (well, nearly). Kallum, of the infamous sex tape, has the opportunity to star with his long time crush, the pure Winnie Baker.

Winnie starred in many Hope Channel movies as well as other movies and TV shows produced by a Christian production company. She grew up on a TV show something like “Seventh Heaven” (but without the underage sex scandal). She was extremely sheltered and raised to remain “pure” until marriage; dating was not allowed – courting (which leads to marriage) was. She married her TV co-star, whose family run the production company. It was not happy marriage. Now divorced, after he cheated on her, Winnie has decided to become “new Winnie” and accepts the role in “Santa Baby”.

Winnie has never had an orgasm so simulating one is a challenge and draws less than ideal reactions from the cast and crew, ranging from guffaws to horror.

Kallum is the “chubby one” from INK. He was the clown but not the heart throb. After the unsanctioned release of his sex tape (he later licensed it) he is praised for his “dad bod”.  Kallum’s sex tape involved a bridesmaid who almost immediately found her “one” (not Kallum). Since then bridesmaids and other women want a piece of Kallum as some kind of good luck charm to get their own HEA. Kallum is a means to an end and a good time on the way but he’s not, apparently, soulmate material. Kallum has some baggage about all of this, as one would, but it doesn’t really get much attention in the book. While specifically mentioned, he never has a conversation with Winnie about it. It’s magically fixed by being Winnie’s soulmate I guess.

Since INK folded, Kallum has created a career in Kansas as the pizza king with his “Slice Slice Baby” pizza shops. He loves pizza and his business but he’s also happy to do more acting and not averse to a comeback for INK somewhere down the line. Most recently there has been interest from an investor with deep pockets who wants to look at national and international franchising for SSB.  Kallum supports (to a large degree, albeit not entirely) his family with his INK/Slice Slice Baby income. He’s a generous person who is happy to be in a position to help his loved ones.

Winnie has narcolepsy. I know that because the book told me so. So far as I can tell, Kallum still does not know because not only was there no explicit conversation about it in the book between the two, it wasn’t even hinted that one had occurred off page. In the end, Winnie’s narcolepsy seemed like a gimmick – which was disappointing.

Kallum has a sex tape and Winnie finds him attractive. Winnie has never had an orgasm and needs to simulate them successfully to give a good performance in “Santa Baby”. I think we all see where this is going.

After some “sex lessons”, Winnie and Kallum date for real and fall in love. But Winnie has been let down by men before. Her parents aren’t talking to her because she divorced her husband – even though he was a cheating jerk and she deserved better and she’s frightened that good-time, fun-loving Kallum is not responsible enough for a relationship.  (IDK, surely the fact that he runs 4 successful pizza stores in Kansas ought to be a clue that he can in fact be responsible?) Anyway, the essential conflict of the story was about this and it took time for Winnie to believe in Kallum. I though it was a bit harsh, myself. I appreciated Winnie’s position but I think she didn’t really give Kallum a chance before she let her fears drive her. Still, it all comes right in the end.

Winnie has baggage from her upbringing and does a great job of letting go of the notion of “purity” and of sex outside of marriage being bad, etc. Perhaps this is unfair but I did not enjoy all the talk about purity rings and courting vs dating, religious and controlling parents and Winnie’s lack of autonomy until she was divorced. The narrative obviously rejects Winnie’s upbringing (and so do I, for the record) but it just didn’t feel fun to read about. It didn’t make me laugh like I did in A Merry Little Meet Cute. It felt heavy and glum and all too realistic and all to present-day. It was a bit of a downer for me. The earlier book had mental health themes but was so positive about the representation it was uplifting. Apart from Winnie getting out there wasn’t anything good about the religious stuff for me.

Between the things unsaid or left out and the religious stuff, I found myself less engaged in the read. A Holly Jolly Ever After was easy for me to put down.I did finish it and there were parts I enjoyed quite a bit. But overall, it was a disappointment compared to the high hopes I went in with.

Grade: C

Regards,
Kaetrin

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Dear Tessa Bailey,

Beat Dawkins and Melody Gallard are the (adult) children of the two women who made up the Steel Birds, an iconic band in the 1980s and 1990s. When the Steel Birds broke up in something known as “the Incident” both Octavia and Trina were pregnant with their respective children. Fans of the Steel Birds have been salivating for a reunion for 30 years but the two women apparently hate each other so the likelihood of it happening is approximately the same as hell freezing over.

Beat and Melody met once before when they were both 16. The media were very hard on Melody; criticising her body, her face, her hair, her clothes, but they loved Beat. He was always the media’s darling. When they did meet as teenagers, Beat, who is not an asshole, felt an instant connection to Melody and understood that she was being unfairly treated. Only the two of them know what it’s like to be Steel Birds children. It’s hard to make friends when often all those people want to know is the inside scoop about what really happened between their mothers. And the media spotlight for them is unique. Melody has an instant and life-long crush after that first meeting and it is cemented when Beat calls the media out on their behaviour toward her afterward and things start to turn around for her.

Now they’re both 30. They haven’t seen each other in 14 years but an intrepid producer who won’t quit has an idea for a reality TV/live stream show where Beat and Melody get the band back together for a Christmas Eve performance at Rockefeller Center. If they succeed, Beat and Melody will each get $1,000,000.

Melody has a fraught relationship with her free-living mother, Trina. The money will mean she can have a relationship with her mother on her terms – including not at all, and still be okay. For Beat the financial need is much more urgent; he is being blackmailed about something to do with his mother, Octavia – something that he believes will destroy their family – and he either needs to take out a massive loan or earn a million dollars in a couple of weeks.

Neither Beat nor Melody actually think they can succeed in their mission but each is willing to try. Beat agrees to speak to Melody to bring her on board but, ever her protector, makes it clear that he won’t do it if Melody is not completely comfortable. Melody, still starry-eyed over Beat, will do just about anything for him. She doesn’t know why for most of the book but she knows there’s a reason Beat needs the money, so she agrees.

For the next not-quite two weeks, Beat and Melody will be filmed for up to 14 hours per day and (almost) everything they do in that time will be live-streamed on the internet as they try and reunite the Steel Birds. Beat and Melody have always had a connection and when they meet again as adults it’s like something clicks into place. The internet is very quickly wild for “Belody” and the numbers the production company sees outstrip all expectations.

Beat is hiding an aspect of his sexuality and he initially tries to keep Melody at a distance because he does not believe they can be together. I found this aspect of the story a little hard to resolve; if it’s been such a big part of Beat’s life for so long, it seemed fairly easy to open up to Melody in the end. If it was so easy to open up to Melody, was it really that a big an issue in the first place?

The thing Beat is being blackmailed over was extremely under developed.

The whole book is leading up to this amazing Steel Birds reunion.

The relationship between Beat and Melody is the best part of the book. I do love a hero who is totally gone for his lady and Beat certainly is. Melody is similarly unable to hide her feelings for Beat. Melody was funny and it was great to see her come out of her shell and stand up for herself. It was good to see Beat let not only Melody but also some of his long-time friends in (although I would have liked a little more of the latter; it could have been more fleshed out but as it was it was fairly glancing).  Yes, their romance is very whirlwind but I bought their connection so that wasn’t a barrier for me.

I liked Wreck the Halls well enough but it felt a bit rushed in places and didn’t quite have the charm of Unfortunately Yours or It Happened One Summer.

Grade: B-

Regards,
Kaetrin

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Content Note:  grief over death of a close family member

Dear Rachel Reid,

Oh I’ve missed your books!  It feels like ages since there was a new one. (In reality it’s been 18 months. But it feels longer.) The best news is that Time to Shine was definitely worth the wait. It’s a delight.

Landon Stackhouse is a goalie playing in the AHL for the Calgary farm team in Saskatoon. He is called up to the NHL team when their backup goalie is injured. He expects to be in Calgary a very short time and then return to the Saskatoon Bandits. He’s 24 and eager for his shot in the NHL but he also doesn’t think it will really happen for him. In Saskatchewan he’s a big deal and his team are championship contenders but who doesn’t want a chance in the big league?

He loves his parents dearly but they have a somewhat strained relationship following the death of his older sister when she was 18 and he was 16. He perceives they’re constantly scared he will be hurt because of what happened to his sister and there is a lot of shared baggage they haven’t dealt with. He’s starting to feel it might be time to do something about that, maybe.

Casey Hicks is a 23-year-old winger for the Calgary Outlaws. He’s the scion of hockey royalty, naturally talented and friendly – like a giant puppy. He’s the shortest member of the team by a couple of inches at least.

His official listed height was five-nine, but Landon suspected that number had been stretched a bit.

Casey is super friendly and immediately welcomes “Stacks” to the team. Landon, who is extremely reticent is a bit nonplussed by this but he appreciates Casey’s efforts.  Casey is not the sharpest tool in the shed but what he lacks in book smarts is more than made up for in kindness and generosity. He’s genuinely interested in people and very, very likeable. He’s also pretty random and very goofy – which only made me love him more.

Casey was struck by a great idea. At least he was pretty sure it was a great idea. Sometimes he thought ideas were great and they turned out to be terrible, like the time he stirred peanut butter into his coffee.

Casey is bisexual and has a lot of good-hearted, friendly sex. He doesn’t like to be alone, he’s not a big fan of silence. He’s also afraid of the dark. Not as a result of some big childhood trauma; he just gets scared in the dark. It’s something he hasn’t confessed to any of his teammates. Mostly with them he’s an open book but this is something he guards carefully as he’s embarrassed by what he sees as a childish weakness.  Casey is almost always optimistic and upbeat. He takes a Ted Lasso goldfish-type approach to games – no matter what happened in the last game (good or bad) the next game is going to be the “best game ever”. He’s wildly talented on the ice, intuitive and skilled by equal measure.

Also:

His dick was not big by anyone’s measure, and he knew it.

Which I mention because he’s totally okay with that and both things are super rare in romance. So, yay for representation.

Casey has recently bought himself a big house and made what he now realises is the big mistake of moving into it alone. He hates it. So, when Landon joins the team and it becomes apparent his tenure will be for a few weeks at least, Casey offers him a place to stay in lieu of a hotel room. Mostly it’s self-interest; he hopes Landon will be company for him. So he’s pretty disappointed that Landon picks the bedroom furthest away and keeps to himself.

I got the impression that Casey maybe had ADHD and I felt Landon was neurodiverse though neither were specifically labelled so in the text. Landon thinks he might be gay but he’s also clearly demisexual and I had the impression he was possibly also somewhere on the ace spectrum (though I’m far from an expert here so that last is perhaps a bit rubbery).  Landon is tall and lanky; Casey is shorter and compact (but muscular because: hockey). Landon has no sexual experience and Casey has tons. Casey is tactile and talkative; Landon is standoffish and reserved. Romance readers know what that means of course.

Casey is too sweet and charming for Landon to dislike him and before he really knows it, Landon is spending more and more time with his house/team mate. Landon starts to wonder what it might be like to kiss Casey. To do more. Pretty soon, Landon has it bad.

If Landon were built differently, maybe he and Casey would hook up one night. Maybe one thing would lead to another, and they’d both say, “Hey, why not do this? Might be fun.” Maybe it wouldn’t mean anything more than watching TV together did; just something to do before bed.

But even imagining that filled Landon with so much anxiety he wanted to tear his skin off. He didn’t want to hook up with Casey.

So what the fuck did he want?

He supposed it didn’t matter. He wasn’t going to get it. He needed to pull himself together, go back to his seat, and pretend to be a much more laidback person than he was.

At least he and Casey would be separated a bit on this trip. They were in different hotel rooms, and clearly Casey had his own plans for their free time. Maybe distance would clear Landon’s head.

But when he returned to his seat, and Casey smiled at him and randomly asked if he thought walruses were weird, Landon really doubted it.

Even though Landon doesn’t really like to be touched and isn’t a touchy-feely kind of guy, he soon learns that it’s different with Casey. Casey’s touch becomes one he craves. They start cuddling before they do anything else and over time, the mutual lusting becomes overwhelming and, ever so slowly, Casey and Landon move from friends to lovers.

There were explicit conversations about likes and dislikes and consent and Casey was incredibly careful of Landon’s inexperience and his desires.

Of course, they fall in love. I mean, this is a romance. They think they’re stealthy but they don’t hide it well at all.

“Hey! Your couple name could be Sticks,” Westy said unhelpfully.

“I’m not in love with him,” Casey grumbled. It felt like a lie.

Oh no. It was a lie!

“I might be in love with him,” Casey amended.

(Seriously. Casey is just adorable. There was one thing Casey said to Landon in the book that had me laughing out loud for days but to quote it here would not do it justice. It’s kind of a “you had to be there” thing but it still makes me smile. It was just so completely Casey.)

But Landon is headed back to Saskatoon when the backup goalie returns from injury and between their two careers they would barely see each other. Landon doesn’t see a long distance relationship working. What to do?

There are sad things in Time to Shine. Landon and his parents have things to work through and they’re all clearly still (and will continue to be) grieving the death of Landon’s sister/their daughter. But overall, the book is very uplifting (even the grief storyline is uplifting in its way) and delightful.

There is more to Casey than a similarity to a Labrador puppy with separation anxiety and there is more to Landon than reticence. The two of them complement one another wonderfully.

I did wonder if there might be a problem on their horizon as it seemed to me that Casey and Landon’s sex drives were not very evenly matched. But then I thought: how much of Casey’s hookups were really about him not being alone? And, maybe, Landon isn’t on the ace spectrum at all and his sex drive is just awakening. I choose to think positively about their future.

Time to Shine is a feel good read and it left me smiling.

Grade: B+

Regards,
Kaetrin

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Readers please note: some spoilers for The Secret Lives of Country Gentlemen follow.

Dear KJ Charles,

I read and loved the first book in the Doomsday series, The Secret Lives of Country Gentlemen earlier this year and looked forward with anticipation to the second book (and alas the last from what I can tell) A Nobleman’s Guide to Seducing a Scoundrel. The first book was set in 1810, this one in 1823. While it is possible to read the second book as a stand alone, it does contain spoilers for the first book and the reading experience is richer for knowing the history. Both books are a delight and I recommend reading both in order for maximum enjoyment.

Luke Doomsday was mostly called “Goldie” in the first book (to his dismay). The son of Elijah Doomsday, a no-good man who got what he deserved but not before doing much damage, especially to his son, Luke was abused and mistreated in various ways. What’s more, the Doomsdays did not see it, or if they did, they did far too little about it. It took Sir Gareth Inglis to really notice and take steps to change Luke’s life. Luke was (and is) very smart. Gareth arranged and funded his education and, after 13-year-old Luke’s face was slashed with a knife by his father, he also gave him love, shelter and a home.  Now 26, Luke has returned to Romney Marsh as he’s between secretarial posts. He stays at Tench House with Gareth and hasn’t been back to the Revelation (the Doomsday pub/family hangout). Luke has complicated and not at all positive feelings about the Doomsdays in general. 

In book one, there was mention of the local nobility, the D’Aumesty’s, led by the Earl of Oxney. Gareth didn’t think much of them, for good reason. Rufus D’Aumesty, formerly a major in the army, is, as it turns out the new earl. Raymond D’Aumesty, second son of the former earl, married a (too young) girl who gave birth to Rufus and then promptly abandoned them. The old earl had disowned Raymond for the the sin of marrying a draper’s daughter and wanted nothing to do with his grandson after Rufus’s mother asked for help. Following the death of Raymond, Rufus’s mother remarried (a draper) and Rufus was raised happily in that family with various half-siblings. Even though the old earl knew full well of Rufus’s existence, he didn’t share it with anyone else. Following the death of the heir, Baldwin, the third son, Conrad, believed the earldom was coming to him. Imagine his great disappointment to find, on the earl’s death, that the new earl was in fact Rufus. Conrad (and his awful wife, Matilda) were determined to be the new earl and countess. Rufus has been forced to spend the prior seven months in court proving his claim to the title. Conrad pulled no punches before the Committee for Privileges, asserting that Rufus’s mother was a liar and a whore and that Rufus was therefore illegitimate and unable to inherit. The Committee found in Rufus’s favour but Conrad and Matilda are #notoverit. 

Conrad becomes aware that Raymond may have been married already when he married Rufus’s mother. Enter Luke. Luke explains he has no claim on the earldom but that his mother’s father, on his deathbed, asserted that there was a marriage between her and Raymond. Luke was left at the Revelation when he was only a few days old; Louisa Brightling had been raped by Elijah Doomsday. She left the child for the Doomsdays to raise and walked away, never to be heard from again. If Louise was married to Raymond at the time of Luke’s birth, notwithstanding that he is definitely the biological child of Elijah, he will be the rightful earl. Conrad has an ill-considered scheme in two parts; oust Rufus from the earldom by proving Louisa and Raymond were married and then (somehow) oust Luke from it too such that he, Conrad, will finally take his “rightful” place.

Rufus, who is an honest man, is content for the truth to be the arbiter. He invites Luke to stay at Stone Manor (the family seat) and search for any evidence which  may prove the prior marriage.

Luke is meticulous and organised. He’s horrified by the mess the earldom’s books are in. While it is clear early on that Luke has an ulterior motive for wanting access to the manor, he also very quickly likes Rufus and regrets any deception. He determines to help Rufus as much as possible so that when he leaves, he will leave Rufus with something good. Luke takes over from Rufus’s cousin Odo (who is very ill-suited to secretarial work but is an excellent archivist) and begins to sort out all the paperwork. Rufus very quickly comes to rely on him.

Apart from the secretarial assistance Luke gives Rufus, he is also an ally in a house where Rufus has precious few. The servants are mostly #TeamConrad and Conrad and Matilda are constantly making trouble. Rufus is very black-and-white in his thinking and honest to a fault. Luke’s ethics are more… flexible. He’s a Doomsday after all. Luke makes clever suggestions which assist Rufus greatly in managing the estate and his family.

Rufus has what seems to be dyslexia and struggles to read. This is something he’s ashamed of and which Conrad and Matilda use to sneer at him. Luke, who knows what it is like to be sneered at for something he can’t change (his face is badly scarred by the knife his father wielded), notices (because he notices everything) and sets about finding ways to  make it easier for Rufus to read.

Luke made things clear. That was what he did.

And, there is a physical attraction too – immediately on Luke’s part and a little later for Rufus. While the term itself is not used, Rufus is demisexual.

Rufus didn’t lust where he didn’t like. But he liked Luke Doomsday so very much, and now lust was flooding him in a way he’d never experienced in his life.

Rufus is big and broad and very shouty – used to bellowing orders in the military and frustrated by the machinations of the D’Aumesty family, upset by the state of the tenant farms and the books. But he’s kind and generous. He gives people second chances. He even gives grace to the Conrads, blaming the old earl for much of how current affairs came to be. He empathises with them being in expectation – for years – of inheriting only to have that hope dashed. He also is fully aware of his position as Luke’s employer and he’s not going to impose on Luke no matter how attracted he is.

He wasn’t going to think about what might happen if Doomsday welcomed his advances, because he wasn’t going to make any. It would be wrong, and stupid, and there were more important things than fucking, although he was having difficulty remembering what they were.

But Luke has other plans and Rufus is helpless against them. They have a frank discussion about power and privilege and Luke is able to convince Rufus he is not being taken advantage of.

I loved Rufus. Not being raised in the nobility, he didn’t look down on others. From his military experience, he well understood the duty of those higher in rank to look after those for whom they are responsible. He is naturally disposed to in any event. He takes his role as earl seriously but doesn’t fuss about formality. He’s kind and caring and, until Luke comes along, within Stone Manor, no-one is doing any taking care of Rufus.

I liked Luke very much too (although I admit to a preference for Rufus – I’m pretty literal myself and not good at subtext). He is wounded and the scars he bears are not all on his face. He is struggling with the events which took place in The Secret Lives of Country Gentlemen and the abuse he suffered even before 1810 at the hands of his father. There is a big part of him who is still a boy who isn’t seen – how could nobody notice how his father abused him?? He’s angry with the Doomsdays and at the same time longs to prove himself to them – he is worthy and better than they are and he’ll show them. He also has a bit of tunnel vision (I related to this myself) which leads him to continue on his planned course despite any number of indicators that it is a bad idea which will hurt others he cares for. Over the course of the book, Luke has to deal with the heavy baggage he’s carrying, face the consequences of his own actions and try to make them right.

I opened the book with little idea of what to expect. I hadn’t even realised the second book takes place 13 years after the events of the first. I was immediately immersed and delighted. There are some horrible characters of course and ones who start off a bit awful but who grow and change but the book itself charmed and engrossed me. There is something about the way the words on the page are put together which was a constant source of pleasure for me; turns of phrase, word pictures and the like. I’ve read many KJ Charles books and am always impressed by how skilled a wordsmith you are. I loved how Rufus played on Luke’s surname in his pet names for him “my end of days”, “my apocalypse”, “end of my world”, “my doomsday”. It spoke of how thoroughly Luke wrecked him in all the best ways.

Rufus and Luke were so well suited to one another, their strengths and flaws complement one another perfectly. They are both, in their own ways, caretakers. I quoted earlier that Rufus realises that Luke makes things clear. “That’s what he does.” But Rufus, in turn, makes things clear for Luke too. What is really important, worth holding onto and what it is time to let go. 

There is wonderful humour in the book too. The dryness of it suits me very well.

Rufus had many times heard the phrase ‘he came out swinging’. It generally referred to a boxer’s fists, but there was a lot to be said for an axe.

Basically, I enjoyed everything about this book. Recommended.

Grade: A

Regards,
Kaetrin

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Note: Mild spoilers for Battle Royal follow.

Dear Lucy Parker,

The second book in the Palace Insiders series, Codename Charming follows Petunia (Pet) De Vere, the sister of the hero from the first book, Battle Royal, and a bodyguard who works with her in the palace, Matthias Vaughn. By the end of the first book, Pet had commenced work as a PA to Johnny Marchmont, then-fiance of Princess Rose. She had also thwarted an attack by a stalker upon Johnny and had been seriously injured in the process. Matthias visits Pet in the hospital and brings her a teddy bear. (Obviously therefore, we readers knew this pair belonged together.) Codename Charming picks up around a year later.

Matthias isn’t exactly “grumpy”. He’s reserved and cautious, private and kind of starchy. Even on his days off within the palace he still wears a tie.

The man had probably laminated his copy of the protocol manual and carefully sponged the fingerprints from it every night.

He’s definitely in the right job because he’s also super protective.  (Yum.) Pet is quite sunshiney. In many ways, she’s Matthias’s opposite; she throws herself into things – quite literally on many occasions – she’s open and colourful and very not-starchy.

They’re also physically opposite. He’s huge – tall and muscular with a wrestler’s build and she is petite. More than one person comments on their almost comical height difference. She may be small but she is fierce and mighty.

Pet stopped trying to disappear into the couch and turned to look at him.

Matthias couldn’t see her expression, but Benji retreated with the haste of a man who’d just been metaphorically separated from at least one testicle.

But they have many things in common too. Like Matthias, Pet is also protective of those she cares about. And, both of them, through different family experiences, felt very alone growing up.

Pet has recently reconnected with her brother Dominic but for most of her life she felt unloved. She has had a few short-term flings but nothing serious. She’s wondered if she’s even capable of the kind of romantic love her brother and his wife, Sophie, share.

Matthias, for his part, lost his parents in an accident at a young age and grew up in the foster system. He was fed and physically cared for but he, too, felt unloved and unwanted. He had a childhood friend in Ireland, where he spent many years with one foster family, and became close to Padraig’s family as a result. Matthias and Padraig joined the King’s Guard and later went into private personal protective work together. But something happened and Padraig died which haunts Matthias. Since then, Matthias has been even more reserved. It feels like everyone he loves dies. (Oh my heart!)

Life on “Team Marchmont” is never dull. Johnny has an unfortunate habit of extreme clumsiness which often result in disasters which go viral online. One such saw Pet being launched from a stage basically onto Matthias’ head. Fortunately he caught her. The paparazzi have been sniffing around and have become attracted to the notion that Johnny and Pet are having an affair. Nothing could be further from the truth of course, but Rosie and Johnny are concerned about the rumours and especially their potential effect on Pet in the long term. They propose “Codename Charming” – whereby Pet will pretend to date Matthias so the media will stop linking her and Johnny. 

Pet had thought that Matthias didn’t really like her because he seemed to rebuff her attempts at friendship. Also, Pet has come up with a number of proposals for Johnny’s entertainment which Matthias had firmly vetoed as security risks. In fact, this is a regular occurrence so it’s not hard to see why Pet thinks Matthias disapproves of her. That’s not it of course.

Over the course of their fake relationship, Pet and Matthias come to acknowledge very real attraction and feelings – it doesn’t even really take long for  fake and real to become blurry. There are a lot of knowing looks and more than one viral video of some PDA. During this time, Pet helps Matthias reconnect with found family from his past and Matthias helps Pet on a quest to possibly-maybe find out more about her biological father. Plus, there’s a glitter wand war. Yes, that’s what I said.

While Matthias is not terribly bothered by anyone else’s opinion of his looks (anymore at least), he knows he’s not handsome. Online they are often described as “beauty and the beast” – something that infuriates Pet even as she tries to shield him from it. To Pet though. Matthias is more than good-looking.

His flush had spread to the tips of his lovely, generous ears. She’d never not be enamored with how all his features were so substantial, like his physicality was a direct reflection of his inner self and integrity, vast from his feet to his heart.

While I think it was very much a me thing, I did have a little trouble getting into Codename Charming. There was no actual reason for it other than a capricious reading mood. However, after a while even that ceased to matter (one sign of a good book) as I became more and more charmed by this couple’s journey to HEA. I am a hero-centric reader and Matthias is kind of my catnip so it’s not a wonder I felt the way I did about him. Really, when he started calling Pet “Button” I got all melty. Pet was also wonderful; the kind of woman I’d love to spend time with. She’s funny, smart, generous, talented and kind. She’s also no pushover.

The thing I liked best about this book is something I can’t really talk about because spoilers. I’ll just say that the I loved the way it ended and leave it at that.

Grade: B+

Regards,
Kaetrin

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