I’m having a bit of a tryst with Katee Robert books lately and this one did not disappoint. After the events of Hunt on Dark Waters which I reviewed, I was desperate for what promised to be an epic sequel.

In book one, we are introduced to Lizzie, a truly fearsome vampire. At the start of book one, Evelyn (the heroine of book one) steals Lizzie’s family jewels and disappears into Threshold, a fantastical place between the different realms of which our world is one. For much of book one, Evelyn fears Lizzie’s retribution. Towards the end of book one, Lizzie makes an appearance in Threshold and …

Book two opens with Lizzie still on board the same ship as Evelyn. It’s a little crowded emotionally and uncomfortable, which makes sense if you’re familiar with book one, but nothing that steely, flint-like Lizzie can’t handle.

Nox, the captain of the ship and an agent for the Rebellion (which is fighting against the Cŵn Annwn (the bad people) has been tasked with saving a Rebellion agent from a nearby Cŵn Annwn ship. (I should add that Nox’s ship is on the surface also a Cŵn Annwn ship.) That agent happens to be Maeve, a selkie whose pelt has been stolen. She was out looking for it when she was captured by the Cŵn Annwn.

Nox and Lizzie murder/incapacitate (it’s a mixed bag) the entire crew of that bad Cŵn Annwn ship and save Maeve. Lizzie is intrigued despite herself, but Maeve is deeply unsure of this killing machine. Once Lizzie and Maeve reach a port, they decide to team up. First to get back Maeve’s pelt and second to get back Lizzie’s jewels that are theoretically still on the first ship that Evelyn travelled on in book one.

Lizzie is an anti-hero. She loves killing. Gets a visceral thrill from it. But with Maeve we see a different side to Lizzie. Not necessarily just softer, but a more rounded character. Maeve has trusted someone before and been badly burnt (the whole stolen pelt thing) and so she is slow to trust again. But something that these two do so well is always make the brave choice. This happens again and again. This is just one example of it:

My words are just as tentative; but they don’t sit right with me. The temptation to protect myself, to retreat from vulnerability, is nearly overwhelming. She’s baring a part of herself to me right now, something she’s never done before, and I refuse to do anything but match her energy.

This makes for wonderful reading. It would be so easy to cower, but NO! Not our two heroines! Through this bravery, they do a lot of growing. Lizzie has to choose between her family in the earth-realm and her relationship with Maeve. Maeve has to choose between stepping away from the comfort of her island home and taking on adventures with Maeve. Underpinned by all of this is their commitment to the Rebellion. Maeve is a true believer, but Lizzie only goes along with it because she wants to keep Maeve safe during the coming battles.

If you get a kick out of that ‘mine,’ possessive kind of love in books, then this book will tick that box for you. In real life, I can’t stand it, but give me a possessive paranormal creature and that really works for me.

I should add that Lizzie and Maeve’s growing closeness has the same feeling as slowly drifting into sleep. There is comfort and ease there as you nestle into the story, but more than that the process of our heroines falling in love is so gradual that you can’t really point to a single moment when things changed for them.

Our two heroines do have some real vulnerabilities, especially Lizzie, but they humanize her, and give her dimension beyond “Yay Murder.” Lizzie is deathly afraid of the sea. It would be so easy for such a ferocious predator to seem invincible, but this fear really softens her hard edges. Meanwhile, Maeve is a creature of the sea, and while she’s vulnerable without her pelt, and emotionally wounded by its loss and the betrayal of the thief, she grows stronger with Lizzie beside her.

When I review books, I stop intermittently to jot down notes. With Katee Robert books, I get so immersed so quickly that I forget to take notes. The story sucks me in comprehensively and this book is no exception to that rule. Yes, I am a sucker for vampires in all their forms, but Lizzie is something special. Maeve’s softness with a spine of steel really worked for me, too. If you’re interested in this series, definitely start with book one as the two are closely linked. I can heartily recommend both.

I am no stranger to m/m hockey romances and I’ve reviewed a few here. This one has been on my TBR for a while and my library hold finally came in yesterday. Yes, I read it that quickly, folks. It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that I devoured it.

Ezekiel Boehm, or Zeke as he is more commonly known, is a gym teacher at a relatively posh private school. (The school is a Quaker one and has fantastic politics.) He’s also a huge hockey fan, specifically of Spencer McLeod. He owns four of his jerseys, he daydreams about him, he watches all his interviews. Serious fan. So who is the new child in his class? None other than Spencer’s five-year-old daughter.

The first part of the book involves Zeke trying his best not to freak out too badly that his idol is talking to him, inviting him to games, etc. It was tough at this stage to imagine Zeke being anything other than a starstruck fan. The book does a masterful job of showing the fan element slowly fading away and being replaced by a relationship of two equals.

The journey to that status is punctuated with some seriously witty banter. Zeke has a flair for the dramatic sometimes and Spencer’s mumbled, shy, on-the-surface-abrupt utterances are charming rather than annoying. Spencer’s emotions are primarily communicated in half smiles and blushes. It’s very endearing.

As for plot, this book focuses on small events that lead to love like when Zeke helps prepare Spencer for this turn at leading the reading circle. Or Zeke helping Spencer choose a dog to adopt. What this book did differently to others is that there’s no tension building up to a dark moment that tests their relationship or commitment. It just kind of ends. Before this book I would have sworn up and down that I don’t enjoy reading the dark moments of books, but this book has made me rethink that stance. I really missed some indication that their relationship can withstand a test of some sorts.

If you’re looking for a book that will make you swoon from the giddiness of falling in love, then this book will hit the spot. Just don’t be too surprised when it ends abruptly.

I’m in an unusual position here. Usually, Cat Sebastian novels are endlessly charming and they have caused many a Bad Decisions Book Club over the years. This one didn’t quite hit that same high for me, but I did still enjoy it. Let’s unpack this situation together.

Eddie O’Leary found out on national television that he was being traded to the Robins in New York. His outburst in response to the news could not have been worse and made national news, which made him absolutely no friends on his new baseball team. Not only is Eddie lonely now in his new city, but he’s in a major batting slump, too.

Enter Mark Bailey, who is in a slump of his own. His partner, William, died just over a year prior to the book starting and the man has been absolutely beaten down by his loss. He’s kind of still writing for the Chronicle (yes, the newspaper that served as the setting for Nick and Andy’s love story in We Could Be So Good) but only writes book reviews.

Andy’s got a bright vision though and Mark is just the person to make it happen. Andy wants Mark to write a weekly diary from Eddie’s perspective. The Chronicle is also launching a new Sunday magazine and Andy wants Mark to write a feature article on the Robins for the magazine when it launches in October, the end of baseball season.

So Mark goes to the Robins locker room after a game and introduces himself. Mark is well-dressed, a tiny bit camp and a bit mean. Eddie is an absolute golden retriever with no filter and just desperate for someone to talk to. (His new team has been giving him the silent treatment). So Mark and Eddie begin their interviews that will form the basis of the newspaper article and the magazine article.

As is so often the case in Sebastian books, the two characters fall in love through conversations, but in this case, the conversations are initially rather short. In the first half of the book, or so, there’s not a lot of chatting between our main characters. Mostly they are interacting with the secondary characters (teammates, editors, friends, etc.) This was a little frustrating as I wanted to experience the magic of conversation-leading-to-love right off the bat.

But first, they have a lot of individual growth to complete. Mark needs to find purpose in life again and move forward despite the grief. Eddie needs to get his swing back and make friends with his teammates. Their lives are full.

At about the midway point, we start to have many many more conversations between Eddie and Mark. And I cannot believe I’m saying this, but I think there were too many conversations circling around the same central tension with no progress being made for long stretches. The central tension of the book was already identified in the blurb: “Mark has vowed that he’ll never be someone’s secret ever again, and Eddie can’t be out as a professional athlete.” This point is discussed ad infinitum. I appreciate that for the time period it would have been an impossible hurdle, but the circular discussions grew tedious.

At about 60% of the way through, I got thoroughly bored of it all. Without all the dithering, the story would have had a tighter, more propulsive conclusion. I can kind of see what the ‘dark moment’ of the plot might have been, but by that stage I was too bored with it to care. Maybe this was all a symptom of the book just being too long overall. It was just over 400 pages.

So these are my gripes in a nutshell: initially not enough conversation between our leads and then too many conversations on the same topic.

That being said, there is a huge amount to like about this book. I adored how nuanced and developed the secondary characters were. I enjoyed the historical detail and the introduction to a sport with which I am wholly unfamiliar. Incidentally, that did not stand in the way of enjoying this book, but I’m sure baseball fans will enjoy that aspect more than I did. I enjoyed Mark’s mean streak which is really thinly veiled vulnerability. I loved that Eddie is completely incapable of having a poker face or of filtering his words. It brought a lovely energy to the familiar trope of grumpy/sunshine.

I still read this book in a weekend and it’s really well-written too. I will absolutely be picking up Cat Sebastian’s next novel and I do recommend this one. I am curious, though, if others had a different experience with the sections of the book that bothered me.

Gretchen Acorn is a fake spirit medium. Raised by a conman and from a long line of con artists, Gretchen is in the family business because conning people is the only way that she knows how to make a living. Something happened in her past, though (you find out towards the end of the book what it is) and her nascent conscience kicked into life. So acting as her own moral bulwark, she has The Rule: Always leave people better than when you found them.

Gretchen uses this rule as her guide in setting up her spirit medium business. At the start of the book, the business in DC is thriving and one of her best clients (who has made so much progress in her grief that Gretchen plans to slowly wean her client off sessions with her) pays her a princely sum to help a friend of hers with a ghost problem.

The friend in question is Charlie Waybill, a goat farmer struggling to sell his farm about an hour outside of DC. Gretchen expects Charlie to be as old as her client. But he isn’t. He’s her age and he’s hot. Right, so that’s complication the first.

Complication the second has a delicious twist of irony: the ghost is real and Gretchen can see him and communicate with him. The ghost wastes no time in telling her that there is a curse on the Waybill family: they will die if they try to sell the farm and be doomed to haunt the farm forever. So Gretchen’s task is clear: convince Charlie to keep the farm. What follows is rather a lot of emotional growth for Gretchen as she navigates interactions with Charlie, the ghost, and the goat farm using an entirely novel and scary approach: being honest.

The ghost, Everett Waybill (a long dead ancestor of Charlie’s) plays a bigger role than a secondary character usually does in a romance. He has a kind of smarmy charm, but he’s mostly a likable character so I didn’t mind too much having him take such a central role.

What this book does very well is show the gentle softening of Gretchen’s heart and the strengthening of her conscience. This is a gradual process with Gretchen wanting to be genuinely known but terrified of the consequences. While sometimes the plot didn’t quite make sense to me (for example, I could think of a million ways for Gretchen to prove to Charlie that Everett is real, but she used hardly any of them) by the end of the book, things had fallen into place so beautifully that I could look back fondly on the ride to get there. The chemistry between Gretchen and Charlie is there almost from the beginning. Their first meeting is rather rocky, and while their conversations sizzle with their attraction, it is paired with this bone deep growing towards each other, too.

I really enjoyed my time with this book and recommend it for anyone who enjoys a contemporary with a touch of the paranormal and a big dose of growth.

I am a sucker for an interesting premise and this book certainly has one. In this series, the female leads write for a newspaper for women, by women. Specifically, young women. In this book, it is the reviewer who takes centre stage.

Julia Addison works as a companion to a sort-of related aunt-in-law. On the side, she secretly pens her reviews of plays put on in London under the nom de plume Miss On Scene. The subject of one of her reviews, Ransom Blackadder (the alias for Lord Graham Dunstane), takes offence at something she says in her review. Graham decides to retaliate by writing a play called ‘The Poison Pen’.

Right, but how do the two real people meet? Julia’s employer/aunt-in-law hires a box at the theatre for the season. Only when they arrive, it is occupied by Graham. The box manager, thinking to make a quick buck, hired out Graham’s box because it is so rarely occupied. Graham reluctantly accepts the aunt-in-law’s suggestion that they share for the evening. While their alter egos might be engaged in a war of sorts (although all the anger really comes from Ransom), their true selves are intrigued by each other.

While this is book two in the series, I had no trouble following the story despite not reading book one. I did have other troubles though. Several times, especially towards the end of the book, I found myself going huh? Some things aren’t explained fully (like Graham’s proposal) and other things seem to come out of nowhere. I couldn’t quite relax into the story because I kept being bounced out of it.

Julia is a difficult character to get a read on because she’s supposed to be this wide-eyed innocent, but she drops these saucy, worldly remarks. I suppose in real life that wouldn’t be so odd. People contain multitudes. But in the book world it meant that I felt I never quite got to know Julia all that well because I was often surprised by what she said. Graham is the grumpy, surly type which I usually enjoy reading, but in this instance it really brought home to me that if I had to interact with such a person in real life, I would cheerfully chuck him in the bin. At least for the first half of the book, the grumpiness came from a place of anger, which I don’t love. But also, the grumpiness seemed to be his sole defining characteristic for the first half of the book until he falls in love.

One final red flag for me. There are some transactional kisses in this. Graham agrees to let Julia watch the rehearsal if she kisses him. That she wanted to kiss him anyway is by the by. For me, I have no tolerance for transactional kisses no matter how teasing and sexy they’re supposed to be.

Based on this review, you’re probably surprised that I read the book in its entirety, but I did and I finished it in a couple days. Overall, it’s an okay read. If you’re needing an interesting premise inside a historical romance, I think this book might scratch that itch.

I sit here stunned. Yes, I have written this review twice. The first version was too overwrought because I was entirely overcome by this book. This is such a bracing, visceral story of deep thoughts and even deeper emotions that it left me wrung out.

Before I go any further, I need to beg you to absolutely delete this book’s cover from your mind. It is horribly misleading. Our hero is not a smug git. Our heroine does not spend her time in a dead faint.

Lord Dominic Kirke is a Whig MP and a well-known orator. His latest affair (i.e. consensual business arrangement) ended and in response his thwarted mistress tried to burn his house down, somewhat intentionally. So he seeks refuge at the Grand Palace on the Thames (the setting for all of the stories in this series), where he meets Catherine Keating. She is a country-bred lady in town for the season to catch a husband. Catherine is also a temporary resident of the Grand Palace on the Thames.

The impact they have on each other is immediate:

She stared, blinking, into the space he’d left, her ears ringing as if he’d been a cymbal clash, instead of a man.

In the opening chapters of the book, Catherine and Dominic have a few conversations in quiet corners of fancy houses during the balls they attend. These conversations are unlike any I’ve read in romance. Dominic is wry and biting and whip smart with a tremendous amount of passion for protecting the most vulnerable of society. Catherine has experienced great loss (her mom and it’s made her really appreciate the shortness of life and how precious it is, in a full-hearted way) so she faces the ton as both an innocent and as someone who struggles to find her place in this bright and shining London where things like the correct sleeves are apparently important. That innocence is matched with a biting wit of her own that she unleashes on Dominic often during their singular, secret conversations.

In Dominic’s eyes:

For such a soft-spoken person Keating’s wit had surprising angles and edges. There was almost nothing he loved more than angles and edges. They were the means by which puzzles were put together.

From the very start, he is confused and defensive and spellbound by this woman. Catherine is astonished by the ferocity of this, her first love – the ways in which it reshapes her, and makes her more herself. The backbone of this story is not a plot: it is two people falling in love through conversation, each one more delicious than the last. If pining is your thing, this book has it in spades. It sears the senses and the thwarted lust makes me blush. But if you need ACTION in your books, then this won’t be the one for you. The events are things like, ‘sitting quietly in a corner of a ballroom talking’ and ‘secretly sharing a cab’. There is rather delicious tension in how they have to secretly see each other and the central conflict between them is based on their need to let down their guard and trust that love is possible for each of them.

The one potential red(ish) flag? The age gap. Dominic is 35 and Catherine is 22. Their age gap is not shied away from; on the contrary, it is front and centre as they get the measure of each other. The story is honest about how one person in the couple has a lot more life experience than the other, but that knowledge doesn’t diminish the experiences Catherine has had. Because it is dealt with so forthrightly and in the open, it didn’t feel gross to me, though I don’t gravitate toward age gap romances so my experience there is limited.

Our hero and heroine are deep, philosophical thinkers, but that thought is matched by deep, honest emotions, so the philosophical questions about a state of being are never boring or pompous. These are questions that make up the stuff of life and they are asked with a clear-eyed sincerity about any number of topics.

For example, when faced with her first ball and her absent chaperone, this is how Catherine felt:

She felt undeniably a little melancholy, but it was also a bit dreamlike and delicious to be completely alone in a strange place. As if she was floating unmoored through space. As if anything could happen at any time.

If you need a heart-heaving historical in your life, I think this might be the one you’re looking for.

I read romance novels for a lot of different reasons. To feel less alone, to feel that surging bubble of joy in my chest, to feel connected to new and exciting lives. This book ticked all those boxes and more for me. I fell asleep reading it. Woke up, and carried on reading.

I write reviews for lots of different reasons, too. In this particular case, I’m writing this review because I want to keep that bubble of joy going for just a bit longer. And sometimes that bubble of joy is paired with a tinge of melancholy, or perhaps an awareness at how fragile and beautiful happiness is. Anyone else get that feeling?

Anyway, Peter and Daphne are engaged. Peter’s lifelong best friend is Petra, who is in a relationship with Miles. Something happens at Peter’s bachelor party and Peter and Petra break off their respective relationships/engagements in favor of a romantic relationship of their own.

Daphne had moved to Peter’s hometown and didn’t really know many people despite being there for a year already. So when both relationships fracture, Daphne has nowhere to go. A chance conversation has her moving in with Miles.

The two are heartbroken, for sure, and are also very different individuals connected by their former relationships with other people. Miles loves Celine Dion ballads and smokes the occasional joint. Daphne stuffs her wedding dress and decor in the hall cupboard and just wants the whole business to go away.

Within their forced proximity, Miles and Daphne strike up a friendship of sorts. Things are turned up a notch when Daphne lies to Peter and says that she is in a relationship with Miles. Miles goes along with it in the hopes of making Petra jealous. But this isn’t a classic fake relationship book. Or even a forced proximity book. This is a book in which two people have to face a reckoning with their pasts as they figure out their present and future. While this is primarily a story of two people healing in their own ways (and together), there is a lovely backdrop of Miles introducing Daphne to the town that she’s called home for a year but hasn’t really gotten to know. Every Sunday, Miles takes her to new and interesting places around town. Daphne works as a children’s librarian and is building up to a readathon at the end of the summer. At work, she strikes up a friendship with a coworker – a major accomplishment for her.

Daphne’s dad was hardly ever around and never showed up to things that he said he would so she’s grown up to be a closed book. She doesn’t think of herself as worthy of love. Miles had an abusive childhood and desperately needs to be ‘okay’. I won’t say more about that here, but they both need to do a lot of processing before they’re in a position to love again. They do this through their increasingly powerful friendship. If this book is any trope at all, it is friends-to-lovers. Not usually something that I enjoy but this friendship felt so real and important to me that I felt a little sad when they added romance to the equation as though they were inviting in potential for disaster. Even though I know it is a romance and there’s a beautiful HEA, the friendship was so real to me that for a moment I was sad. Of course then the swoony romance of it started and I was in raptures. Realistically the romance was there the whole time (certainly the sexual tension was present), but this friendship felt to me like I feel about my best friend: compulsory for continued living. In my reading, it is a rare and beautiful thing when there is such a wonderfully strong bond of friendship before things become romantic. Perhaps I should reconsider my stance of avoiding friends-to-lovers romances.

Both Miles and Daphne do so much growing separately and together. I have a book hangover because this book turned me inside out. No, I didn’t cry. It wasn’t like that. But its impact was nonetheless powerful and I can heartily recommend it. Be prepared for Daphne and Miles to feel so real that you want to reach into the book-world and be their friend in truth. Get ready to love the friendship between the two as much as you’ll love the romance. In truth, this book will feel so real, that you might need a little help reentering the real world afterwards. My emotions had a workout feeling all those big beautiful feelings: the power of true friendship, the unbelievable courage of being totally vulnerable with someone and the heart-filled glory of being truly known. If you’re sensitive like me, have a treat with your best friend lined up for after you read the last page. A gentle reentry to the world is something a best friend specialises in. Just ask Daphne and Miles.

Christa Liddle has led an interesting life. When the book opens, she is studying sea snails on a fictional island in the Indian Ocean. Her mom calls her frantically because her father who ‘died’ in a plane crash 25 years prior has come back to life. A complicating factor is that Christa’s dad is a Steve Irwin-type character – a famous TV conservationist. He also started a toy company called Liddle’s Liddles – a Beanie Baby-type affair. His plane had crashed in the Alaskan wilderness and he was never seen again. At the time Christa was only 2, so his disappearance from her life didn’t make much of a personal impact, but it had a huge impact on her two older sisters and her mom, which in turn affected Christa. She also grew up in the public eye with all the bullshit that that brings. She had found a temporary reprieve on her island with her sea snails, but events pull her back to LA.

The title suggests that Christa needs to come out of her shell but that’s not entirely accurate. If you’re thinking of the common idiom meaning that someone needs to gain confidence and stop being shy, you’d be wrong on that count. Christa is not shy. She’s pretty forthright, but she was absolutely hiding from people and from problems, too. She was hiding from the things she did and had done to her as a teenager in the public eye (think Lindsay Lohan and Britney Spears), she was hiding from her big emotions, and she was certainly hiding from her family, with whom she has a loving and complicated relationship. While the romance subplot is quite strong, especially in the last half of the book, I would categorise this book as closer to women’s fiction, due to the importance of the relationships that Christa has with her two sisters and her mom.

First person narration is often a miss for me, but Christa’s wit and personality really shine so it was a pleasure to immerse myself in her thoughts. Within the first few pages, I felt I knew Christa on a bone-deep level. My emotions were deeply invested in this story and it was very easy to empathise with Christa to the point I got angry when her mother would seem to make decisions for her around public appearances.

Back to that romance subplot: it is charming and gentle. Our hero, Nate, very much meets Christa where she’s at. For a brief moment at the start of the book I feared that it would be a love triangle (something I detest) but that is not the case. Christa’s HEA is only possible because of the growing she does as an individual. Nate is a pretty uncomplicated character in this story.

Much of the plot rests on the fact that Christa’s family was famous and their fame rises again with her dad’s reappearance. There are some really interesting reflections on the impact of that level of celebrity, especially because Christa detests being in the public eye, in part because of her terrible experiences.

In the wake of her dad’s disappearance, Christa and her mom went on many TV shows to talk about the conservation foundation and raise funds. Christa, as the youngest, was the most pliable and so was roped into these things. As a teenager, Christa rebelled and the media ate it up. The media got their piece, and fame has only ever had a downside for Christa. For example, her sisters were jealous of the time that Christa and their mom spent together. Not because the sisters wanted to be on TV. They just wanted their mom. There’s a lot to unpack in those relationships. In the wake of her dad’s reappearance, Christa is once again roped into the public eye and as a reader I got to see her navigate it as an adult this time.

I genuinely enjoyed this romance and will definitely be looking out for more Abbi Waxman novels! I devoured this book. It was charming and completely immersive, and after bouncing off many a contemporary romance lately, that is high praise indeed from me.

I enjoyed this book. I read it cover-to-cover in almost one sitting, but as I sit here to write this review, I’m left with distinctly meh feelings about it. Is this because I had a disappointing breakfast and that’s colouring my perspective? Or was the book meh? Let’s find out together.

This story is set in the Jewish community of London in the 1830s and is essentially a gender-reversed Snow White retelling.

Solomon Weiss is a rich businessman whose focus is ensuring that he makes his half-brother (who raised him) proud. To this end, he works for the family bank, and he knows he will have to marry soon. The trouble is that Solomon cherishes his ties to his Jewish heritage while his half-brother despises them. Solomon attends synagogue and fosters his connections with other Jewish people. However, within the Jewish community, there are, as the book describes, ‘good Jews’ (like Solomon is trying to be) and ‘bad Jews’ (like Hannah Moses). I think you see where this is going.

Hannah Moses isn’t quite an outcast, but she isn’t welcome either. She attends synagogue on holidays, but she is labelled a ‘bad Jew’ for her family’s criminal past. Hannah herself is certainly a criminal, there’s no getting around that. But she does it to build up a dowry for her younger sister so that she can live the life of a ‘good Jew’. She runs a pawn shop and occasionally sells stolen goods. On the side, she also finds out information about people and sells that information to bad folks.

This is a difficult life for Hannah and she faces a lot of sexual harassment. One night, she sees the neighbourhood thugs getting ready to beat up Solomon. Hannah saves his life through some quick-thinking on her part. When Solomon sees his saviour at synagogue at the next holiday, he is delighted. But his friends waste no time in filling in the blanks on Hannah’s past. Solomon wasn’t raised Jewish so he doesn’t know the community’s history well. This is one of the central points of tension in the book: the challenge of conforming to the boundaries of being a ‘good Jew’.

Of course, they fall in love! Cue sex scenes and parts of the Snow White plot! At this stage, I must admit some reservations on that first kiss between Hannah and Solomon. Solomon makes a cute wager of it, but for me, Solomon was a bit too bold with Hannah, and I felt he took advantage of their respective social positions. He had too much power in that scenario for Hannah to say a comfortable no. BUT the kiss is one that is electric for both of them, despite the small ick I felt. From that point on though, in their interactions with each other, the two feel like genuine peers despite how they are viewed by the broader community in the book.

Wake Me Most Wickedly is quite closely linked to the first book in this series, Marry Me By Midnight, so I would recommend reminding yourself of the plot of book 1 before getting into book 2. At least, that’s what I should have done. I was initially really confused because I had forgotten about Solomon’s role in Midnight and his place in the community. Hannah is totally new to this book-world, so her backstory was told in detail.

For me, the plot doesn’t quite work as well as it could. Most romance novels I read follow a pretty standard plot arc with tension building to a climax. This book had a few mini climaxes along the way with a bigger one at the end, but there wasn’t that building of tension ratcheting things up in between. So at some points I was left a little bored by events. BUT, I kept reading. I read this book well past my bedtime.

Because it is a gender-reversed Snow White, it wasn’t immediately clear who the characters were other than Solomon being Snow White. Hannah is the prince in the sense that she saves Solomon at the start of the book, but otherwise she’s pretty powerless throughout. It takes a while for the other Snow White plot elements to be revealed in the book. Most of it happens in the last third of the book, and I don’t want to spoil too much. For the first half of the book, the focus is on Hannah and Solomon finding excuses to spend time together which may or may not include climbing through a few windows.

In conclusion, this book sits in an uncomfortable grade zone. It’s not thrilling enough that I can unreservedly recommend it, but good enough that I will absolutely be reading book 3 when it comes out. If it’s about the couple that I think it’s about, it promises to be FILLED with tension, an ornery cat, and great banter.

Sister Boniface Mysteries

by Jude Tinall

I think there is a fine art to creating cosy mystery television. It’s so easy to make the mystery predictable or even outright boring. But at the same time, you don’t want to make it so thrilling that it’s no longer cosy. In my mind, Sister Boniface Mysteries gets the balance just right.

In Great Slaughter (the name of this English village) in the early 1960s, Sister Boniface, a Catholic nun, works as a scientific advisor to the local police. She’s sincere, loves puns and has an endlessly curious mind which takes root in her laboratory at the convent.

She works with two police officers: Detective Inspector Sam Gillespie and Detective Sergeant Felix Livingstone who is on secondment from the Bermuda police. Sam is a bit of a maverick while Felix is a stickler for the rules. None of the hard-hitting, hard-boiled detective business here. We have cheerful chaps sincerely engaged in finding the guilty party through the most respectful of means.

I was in raptures when I learnt the name of the village. That self-aware nod to the ridiculously high body count really tickled me. Yes, there are rather a lot of murders for a village, but aren’t there always in this kind of show? When you indulge in a cosy mystery, you choose to suspend your disbelief for the duration and accept the improbable number of deaths, the sheer volume of perpetrators, and the sturdy, steady presence of the investigators.

While this is technically a spin-off of Father Brown, as the character of Sister Boniface was featured in one of the Father Brown episodes, it very much stands on its own.

The premise of each episode is always interesting. We have a local festival, a serial killer using the lonely hearts column, an avant-garde art exhibition, an intrigue of state secrets with a cabinet minister, a pop supergroup, a garden allotment, a national cooking competition and so many more!

There are two seasons so far, and the internet tells me that season 3 is underway. I’ve loved every episode so far. There are hints at a romantic subplot but this is very minor. I’m going to hide the fate of that subplot behind a spoiler, just in case, like me, you need to know how things end up.

If you need comfortable, casual viewing that’s interesting enough to keep you entertained while knitting a jersey with no end (at least, mine seems to be unending. So many parts!) then this is absolutely the series for you. I watch a few episodes every night and I look forward to them ever so much.

…

In the US, Sister Boniface Mysteries can be streamed on Britbox, or purchased by season or individually on Amazon, YouTube, AppleTV, and Roku.

This book gave my emotions a workout in the best way. Aside from a slightly disappointing ending, it was a delight!

Lucy Peterson is an apothecary in London in 1843. She inherited the shop from her father when her parents died in a cholera outbreak. Lucy has two siblings, Juliet and David. Juliet is an apothecary at a women’s clinic in the East End while David seems to flit from investment to investment losing money.

The book opens with Lucy frustrated that her former lover has stolen her formula for cough lozenges and is making a fortune selling it at his father’s apothecary. The formula for her croup remedy is also missing, so she hires an investigator from Tierney and Co to get to the bottom of it. This investigator, Jonathan Thorne, has led a colourful life. He left behind his aristocratic roots to make his name as a prizefighter. His story unfolds in parts throughout the book, but suffice to say that after the debauchery he becomes a Methodist, a sober alcoholic and the father of a child born out of wedlock, Sadie.

Something this book has in absolute spades is interesting characters. Not a single one of the characters mentioned so far is flat. Jonathan is tortured by his past, but in such a visceral, nuanced way, that it quite wrenched my heart. He is so earnestly trying to do the right thing, but he’s not sure of what is right, so he clings closely to his faith. Lucy challenges his views and Jonathan isn’t sure what to do about it. He has drawn these self-described red lines that he never dared to cross. But perhaps he’s made a cage for himself?

Lucy herself is under a tremendous burden, trying to keep the apothecary afloat with precious little support from her siblings. The siblings are nuanced characters themselves, but I didn’t like how selfish their actions were. Another reader might not find their actions selfish though, so I think this is a mileage may vary situation. While Lucy is for the most part forthright and sure of herself, she is a bit undone by her need for affection and love. She finds this need in herself frustrating.

I usually detest romance novels that feature children, but Sadie was so well-written that she really added to the story rather than detracted from it. She’s earnest like her father, but so curious and truly child-like, which, if you’ve read other romance novels featuring children, you’ll know that’s not a given.

This is a new series but it features settings and characters from the previous series by the author. There was only one scene in this book that I was a bit confused by because of the sudden addition of a number of characters, but otherwise this book was easily read independent from the preceding series. That being said, I enjoyed this book so much that I will be reading the preceding series in full!

The other thing that I found a little confusing is the use of flashbacks. A scene will start with a character tidying a shelf, for example, but then immediately flash to the hours before that moment and tell the reader what happened to bring that character to that shelf-tidying moment. All it really needed was my full attention and it was easy to follow, but I confess that sometimes I was reading this book as I was falling asleep and then my mind slipped a little.

The science is very much of its time with discussion of balancing humours and bloodletting – not that Lucy does any of the latter on the page. The last third of the book is filled with spiky, difficult emotions that can best be described as the characters’ growing pains. For me, the resolution wasn’t as all-encompassing as I needed it to be to erase the hurt feelings of the third act. It happened much too fast, and I just needed a more detailed, slightly longer resolution. That is my only real gripe with the book.

If you are looking for a rich historical romance with life-like emotions, I think you’ll love this book. I know I did. Truly, the only thing that let me down was that rushed ending.

Do not be fooled by this cover. The cover says, ‘Look at me and my whimsy! My light frolic through life!’

No, dear reader, this is not light.

This is a book about persevering through tough times. The title should have been a clue for me. A phoenix doesn’t arise from a bouquet of flowers, after all.

The book is set in 1666. Plague had ravaged London the previous year and reading the characters’ reflections on that definitely had echoes of those early days of our pandemic and the grief and fear of it all. David Mendes is a Jewish physician who has left Portugal and moved to London with his father so that he can practice his religion openly. David is an earnest, serious sort who is dedicated to the job he loves. He is called in to treat Cecilia, a Gentile. Cecilia lost her husband to the plague and has sunk into a deep depression. Her twin sister Margaret fears that she is losing Cecilia and calls in physician after physician. Finally, David’s decoctions manage to lift Cecilia out of the gloom somewhat. In the process, David and Cecilia fall in love. Side note: There is a definite end point to David being Cecilia’s doctor, which happens before so much as a hand is held.

Yes, this is a romance. BUT if you’re looking for the typical romance plot arc of a couple gradually getting to know each other, spending a lot of time together, and falling in love, then you will be disappointed by this book. This love is a relatively quick one and for much of the book, David and Cecilia are separated by several circumstances, including their respective religions, and expectations that they marry other people. I don’t want to say too much because there are some surprises, but if like me, you detest love triangles. Don’t worry. It’s always clear where the true love lies. I did genuinely worry that a HEA was even possible for these two. But while the HEA is not a traditional one, it is certainly there.

My favourite character was certainly Cecilia. As she pulls herself out of her depression, we see more and more of the fire that makes her a phoenix bride. David is a bit more morose, understandably so as he endures quite a lot, and only seeks out happiness for himself towards the end of the book.

I enjoyed learning more about Jewish people in the early days of their return to London after the expulsions of 1290. While there is anti-Semitism in the book, there are no slurs spoken. David certainly faces anti-Semitism but we only hear about it after the fact or see it in suspicious glances from other characters. David himself is struggling with his faith and his identity. After being raised as a ‘converso’ in Portugal (his family ‘converted’ to Christianity in the face of the Inquisition), he is unsure of his relationship to Judaism as he lives openly in London. He has a small Jewish community but he chooses not to attend synagogue.

While both Cecilia and David are fully grown adults, the prose of this book has a bit of a tortured angsty vibe to it, with many a metaphor. Sometimes it has a poetic charm:

Ladies bunch together in laughing splotches of pink and green, while gentlemen brandish canes at each other.

And other times it gets a bit overwrought:

“You said your thoughts are like bees. Do they ever sting you?”

He cocks his head, eyes wide. He looks very much like his spaniel. “Why do you ask? Do yours sting you?”

“Yes. Quite often.”

It’s not enough to pull me entirely out of the story, but the florid word choices and dramatic language were a little jarring.

Overall, I really enjoyed this book. It’s a story of perseverance in the face of tragedy and the hardiness of true love. If you enjoy historical romance and don’t mind a romance that deviates from the standard arc, then I think you’ll enjoy this book as much as I did.

This is my first Olivia Dade novel and it certainly won’t be my last. It was emotional, grown-up and absolutely compulsive reading.

Athena has no direction in life. When the book opens, she’s working as a teacher an hour and a half away from Harlot’s Bay, the setting of the novel. She’s burnt out and really not sure what to do next careerwise. Her distress is particularly acute because at the age of 37, she really feels like she should have her shit together by now. At the start, she is engaged to Johnny, a pediatrician who is younger than her. He’s based in Harlot’s Bay and they have big plans involving her moving to Harlot’s Bay and leaving teaching as she hunts for what will fulfill her more. There is a problem though: Johnny’s brother, Matthew, is very opposed to the match and really wants Johnny to break off the engagement. Matthew is a pediatrician as well and works with Johnny and Matthew’s best friend, Yvonna, in a practice in Harlot’s Bay.

On a surface level, this story might seem a bit messed up. When Johnny calls off the wedding, Matthew swoops into Athena’s life. But to present the story as simply that does it a great disservice because heavens the EMOTIONS in this novel are intense and plentiful. It’s also a disservice to call it an enemies-to-lovers novel because while at one stage Athena and Matthew are enemies, and yes, they do become lovers, this is only one sliver of their experiences with one another. Yes, there is some banter and some hot sex, but for the most part this novel is packed to the brim with messy emotions. These messy emotions mean that the banter I might have expected from an enemies-to-lovers story would be inappropriate and while there are humorous moments, they accentuate the emotional journey rather than undermine it. In fact, there is a LOT of crying in this book. It didn’t make me cry, but it certainly gave me a heavy heart.

What Matthew does is pretty messed up, but when I look at things with a more nuanced lens, it is clear that Johnny and Athena were indeed poorly matched. Matthew is opposed to the marriage for a variety of really good reasons. Yes, Matthew does his best to break them up, but it’s clear even at the start that this is a good decision for all parties. There is a tremendous amount of hurt feelings, understandably so, when the engagement is called off, but the writing makes it so easy to see all sides of the story. For example, right from the jump you want to root for Matthew and Athena because it is clear that they are really well suited. Before the reader even meets Johnny on the page, Matthew and Athena interact before either knew who the other was and their chemistry was off the charts! (Incidentally, there is a very good explanation for how it is that Athena and Matthew haven’t met even though Athena is engaged to Johnny at that stage. I appreciate that kind of careful detail as it helps me stay in the story.)

There is also a rather beautiful extended metaphor of life being a sea voyage, specifically Athena’s search for meaningful, fulfilling work. At one stage, Athena is a shipwreck but Matthew quotes Gotthold Ephraim Lessing: “They make glorious shipwrecks who are lost in seeking worlds”. Matthew sees Athena’s search as a brave endeavour.

There is one instance that pulled me out of the story. I’m going to hide it behind a spoiler tag because it happens about midway through the book.

Readers who pick this up should note that I initially felt certain that this book was ‘women’s fiction’ rather than ‘romance’ because of the depth of the relationship between the two brothers. There’s a whole lot to unpack there. While the full story is only revealed much later in the novel, suffice to say that Matthew has a bit of a martyr thing going as he cares for his brother like he always has. They have more of a father-son relationship and so it always falls to Matthew to take care of Johnny. Matthew is worn down to nubs protecting his brother and trying to do the right thing. However, despite the father-son relationship that Matthew and Johnny have, when the romance between Athena and Matthew heats up, Johnny is pushed to the side and we don’t interact with him until the inevitable confrontation in the third act of the book.

If you’re looking for a book of sparkle and light, then this is not the book for you. It’s heavy going emotionally, but so well-written that I could not put it down. My normal routine went out the window because I NEEDED to know how things would unfold. The cast of supporting characters are sincerely charming and I do look forward to the next book in the series.

Anyone but You

by Ilana Wolpert and Will Gluck
Columbia Pictures

It’s D for Dick, I’m afraid. Specifically, it was a close up of Beau’s (Joe Davidson) penis which gave me my first genuine (albeit startled) laugh of the movie.

Bea (Sydney Sweeney) and Ben (Glen Powell) have a meet cute in a coffee shop and spend a lovely night together. The next day, Bea overhears Ben disparaging her to a friend and so the enemy part of the trope is set. Time passes until it turns out Bea’s sister is marrying Ben’s friend, so they all end up at a destination wedding in Australia. There they decide to go along with their relative’s attempts to get them together and they enter a fake relationship.

These are two of my favourite tropes so far: enemies to lovers AND a fake relationship. I should have loved this movie. Alas, dear reader, I did not. It was okay-ish.

The utterly wooden Sydney Sweeney stars as a hopelessly lost woman in her early 20s. She remains lost for much of the film and really the only thing she finds is love, which isn’t nothing, but she needs to take a serious look at her life and make some choices which will give her a sense of direction.

This lostness is only possible because of her privilege. Everyone in this movie is rich and if you are in an ‘eat the rich’ frame of mind, this movie will infuriate you. It is also an astonishingly White movie. While there are some people of colour, the best friend in particular plays such a caricature of a person.

Glen Powell as Ben is a blessing to this film. He plays the snarky but big-hearted finance bro to perfection. While there are running jokes in the film about his age (he’s 35), he is undoubtedly the mature one in this set up. This is the second romantic comedy I’ve seen him in and he’s blessed with a sincerity that cuts through any treacly sweetness.

This is a retelling of Shakespeare’s ‘Much Ado About Nothing’ with quotes that I’m assuming must be from the play showing up as graffiti on a wall or ‘spontaneously’ voiced by the characters. The movie was interesting enough to keep me entertained so that I didn’t get my phone out and google the quotes in the movie theatre. And of course, I didn’t write them down, so I can’t be sure. But the difference between the rather stilted dialogue and the highbrow Shakespeare was very evident.

The film gets much of its laughs through physical comedy. For example, there is the old favourite of the bathroom sink splashing water on someone’s crotch. Things of that ilk. For the most part the physical comedy was a damp squib.

Between Sydney Sweeney’s atrocious acting, the tired physical comedy and the sickly sweet plot, this movie did not delight me. But for a movie with very little in the way of skill, it has some charm (specifically Glen Powell) and I didn’t get up and leave the movie theatre (which I have been known to do) so it’s not all bad. If you’re able to find joy in something extremely sweet and as predictable as the most cliche-heavy Hallmark Christmas movies, then this rom-com might hit the spot.

CW: I’m going to quote the content note verbatim here: “Midnight Ruin is an occasionally dark and very spicy book that contains violence, murder, blood, guns, pregnancy (not the heroine) and abortion (off-page, not the heroine).”

I can’t be trusted to be objective and balanced when the book in question made me gasp repeatedly and then exclaim at my partner that the book was SO GOOD. This book gave me so much Good Book Noise!

BUT! It didn’t start out that way. The book had a slow start and it was only when the sex started (with all that that reveals about the characters) that things really took off.

With this being book 6 in the Dark Olympus series, it’s essential that you’ve read the preceding five books. Those books are good, but don’t reach the heights of book 6, I would argue. I would go so far as to say that reading the first five books is worth it just so you can enjoy the delights of book 6.

In this modern retelling of ancient Greek myths, each book explores a couple (or throuple or quad) while the larger story arc of Olympus’ imminent destruction unfolds. Olympus is split by the river Styx into the upper city (presided over by Zeus) and the lower city (presided over by Hades). There are thirteen ruling Olympians in total, with Zeus, Hades and Poseidon being hereditary titles passed from parent to child and the remaining 10 titles being bestowed in competitions, elections or other forms of selection.

Way back in book 1, Orpheus betrayed Eurydice’s trust. Since then she’s been living in the lower city under Hades’ protection. That protection came in the form of Charon, Hades’ right hand man. In the upper city, Orpheus was cut off by his brother and had to do some serious growing up. In the opening pages, Charon and Eurydice finally confess their feelings for each other. But there is a spectre between them: Orpheus. Despite the betrayal, Eurydice is not over Orpheus. She wants some kind of closure. So Charon goes to the upper city and tells Orpheus that he needs to make things right with Eurydice. Orpheus makes the very challenging trip to the lower city to talk to Eurydice. From that point things get wild in the best way.

As I mentioned, it’s really when the three start having sex that things get interesting and not just because Robert writes great sex scenes. I’m going to tell you what makes the sex scenes so good, but I’m hiding it behind a spoiler because if you can resist reading the spoiler, then you can really enjoy the way it is revealed in the book which is delightful.

I had one gripe with this book and that is that Charon calls Eurydice ‘baby’. In real life this makes me angry, so it’s tough to take in books. That’s very much a ‘me’ thing though and it’s used as a term of endearment and not an attempt to belittle Eurydice.

I also have one gripe with the series as a whole: none of the thirteen ruling Olympians seem very good at their jobs because the villains always win the skirmish. I know these are primarily romance novels, but a bit more competence from the Thirteen would be great. Even Hades gets outsmarted by the villains. The ruling Olympians are repeatedly described as powerful but they don’t seem to actually have any power to wield when it comes to the villains.

Book 7 promises to be an absolute belter and I cannot wait for its release later this year. Are you reading the Dark Olympus series too? Which book has been your favourite? I’m curious if I’m alone in thinking book 6 is the best one.

This book is CHARMING. C.H.A.R.M.I.N.G. I devoured it in just over a day and what a beautiful day it was.

Emily Wilde is a scholar of the fae, or ‘Folk’ as they’re called in the book. She’s serious, a bit curmudgeonly, dedicated to her studies, and utterly genius when it comes to studying and interacting with the Folk. The Folk are tricky and cunning, with some of them being outright gruesome and vicious.

In book one, Emily reluctantly works with Wendell Bambleby. He’s also a scholar of the Folk, and his carefree, charming personality are both the opposite of Emily’s, and serve to irritate her in the extreme.

For more on book one, there is an excellent guest review that can tell you more. You definitely do need to read book one before diving into this book.

In book two, Emily and Wendell plan a trip to the Swiss Alps to do a number of things:

1. Find a door to a faerie kingdom.
2. Solve the mystery of two scholars of the Folk who went missing decades earlier.
3. Work on the map of the faerie realm that Emily is writing.

There are two extra people joining them: Emily’s niece and the department head. They make lovely additions to the expedition, as both foils for Emily and Wendell and as characters in and of themselves.

There is another task that Emily alone needs to undertake:

This story is endlessly absorbing. For a while I really did live in a world in which the Folk are real and widely studied. The genius of the writing makes it all so vivid that I couldn’t help but believe. The footnotes are a particular favourite and gave me a distinct nostalgia for my years spent reading academic articles. (Although the content of these footnotes is a great deal more interesting than some of the dry articles I’ve had to read in the past).

I don’t want to say too much about how their adventure unfolds, so I’m keeping things brief. The plot is a delight with little twists and big twists and reveals aplenty. Each chapter is an entry in Emily’s journal and I’d often need to tell myself that she was writing the entry after the events I was reading about so she was safe and I didn’t need to panic.

For an immersive story, rich in detail and gloriously charming, give this book a go (after book one). It is such a great series so far!

CW: In the author’s words: ‘mild, non-graphic sexual harassment of both a female employee and a child’ More on that in the review though.

I hadn’t intended on reviewing this book. I absolutely devoured Half a Soul and this book was set in the same world, so I planned a few happy evenings of returning to that world. Perhaps my memories of Half a Soul aren’t accurate, but I didn’t expect to have my feelings hauled over the coals in this book so I felt compelled to review it. If you are looking for a comforting or cozy reading experience and a HEA, then this is not the book for you. If you are looking for an unsettling Gothic faerie tale, then you’ll love this book.

The blurb presents a rather sanitised version of events. The reality is a lot more grim. This is no faerie adventure caper. Oh no, it’s disturbing and emotional. Going into this story unprepared certainly made the twists and turns more compelling, but I would have liked to have a clearer idea of what lay ahead as I now sit writing this review somewhat shell-shocked.

As with all good Gothic stories, it starts with a creepy mansion in the countryside. The opening line says it all: ‘The hundred eyes of Witchwood Manor loomed above, grinning through torrential rain’. So far, so creepy. This building is extra creepy as it seems to be haunted by fairies and ghosts alike, although the true, full story of the house is only revealed towards the end of the book.

In fact, that is true of all aspects of the story. The mystery is maintained right until the very end. In addition to the complete history of the house, the characters’ true backstories are also only fully revealed in the last chapter or so. If you find this ‘not knowing’ suspenseful-in-a-good-way, then it will delight you. For me, it just left me with a gnawing fear of what’s to come and a frustration with flying blind in the story. And although it certainly may be that that is exactly what a good Gothic story needs, it wasn’t the reading experience I was anticipating

Winifred is taken on as a governess for a rude, entitled adolescent. Very quickly it is revealed that Winifred is no governess, but rather a “black magician” coming to the aid of a dowager who had been kind to her as a child in a children’s home. The dowager has asked Winifred to keep her grandson safe from faeries until he leaves for Eton in September. Winifred is strong of mind and resourceful. She’s a straight talker and I really enjoyed her approach to things in the book. Side note: In the cover copy, we learn that the grandson is kidnapped by faeries, but this only takes place halfway through the book. Quite a lot happens before that. Conversely, Winifred’s black magician status is revealed almost immediately.

The first person that Winifred meets at Witchwood Manor is Mr Quincy, the butler. But the skeleton (human) staff swear that there is no butler and hasn’t been for weeks. There is a romantic subplot to this story, but it is very minor and only really kicks in near the end of the book. Personally, I struggled to get on board with Mr Quincy’s twitching rat’s tail.

As for the book’s content warnings, the on-the-page action is mild as sexual harassment/assault goes, but I actually struggled more with Winifred’s fear of the perpetrator in question. Her frozen powerlessness comes through so viscerally that it unsettled me more than the passages describing the sexual harassment itself. The perpetrator walks that excruciating line between being ‘polite’ and issuing threats. The words that he says sound threatening to Winifred, but she doubts herself because the words are ‘polite’ enough that nothing is overt. Winifred is also acutely aware of how precarious her safety is with this perpetrator because if he were to decide to become violent there would be no help for her in that moment (or perhaps after it too).

I am undoubtedly too delicate in my sensibilities to survive an unnerving Gothic story with monsters aplenty. That being said, I absolutely devoured this book. Do I plan on reading the next in the series? I don’t think so. This story ends with a HFN but there are larger plot points with some serious monsters that remain unresolved. Honestly, I don’t think I have it in me to read stories in which it always feels like a losing battle because ever more monsters appear.

This book was tough to grade because it’s undoubtedly well-written (or it wouldn’t have freaked me out the way it did) but it’s difficult to give a mark to ‘creeping dread’. In the end, I needed to recover from the experience of reading it, and so I make a cautious recommendation to my fellow readers: be aware that the cover description doesn’t fully indicate the level of tension inside. This was not the book for me, but I suspect this may be the perfect book for many of you!

I’m a sucker for a historical mystery with an angry female lead. Can’t resist. Must read immediately. Fortunately, I discovered this series of books with exactly this type of sleuth on offer.

Rhiannon ‘Non’ Vaughan is auditing some lectures at Oxford in 1881. Women aren’t allowed to attend all lectures, write exams or attain degrees, but Non is determined to do as much as she can nonetheless. Non is a fearsome young Welsh woman studying the Welsh language and it chafes that she has to be ‘respectful’ and ‘respectable’ while women’s presence at Oxford is so tenuous. She’s determined to show that she’s just as capable as her male peers, but she’s perpetually made to be small. And boy, she hates that. And I love her.

Basil Rice is a Jesus College fellow, very secretly gay and a friend of Non and her family. One of his students dies unexpectedly and while the Oxford police force isn’t fully up and running yet, the principal of Jesus College asks Basil to figure out what happened before the inquest so that they can protect the college from any scandal. Not noble motives, sure. But it opens the door to an interesting mystery, especially once Non inserts herself into affairs (against everyone’s better judgement, it must be said).

Perhaps one of my favourite things about this book is how vivid the picture of the victim, Sidney Parker, is. So much is revealed and layer by layer, the picture grows ever more detailed. Sidney is a tangible presence in the story and not simply a plot moppet or a faceless victim. He has quirks and personality and challenges. He’s a well-rounded character for all that he isn’t alive during proceedings.

I won’t say too much about the mystery element of things because I would need to hide the whole thing behind spoiler tags. There are some very suspenseful moments, especially towards the end of the book. But building up to that, Basil and Non do their investigating separately so bits and pieces are revealed in a variety of ways which keeps things interesting during the ‘quieter’ chapters.

Aside from Non, the real star of this story is the rich historical detail. I had my eyes opened to the ‘patent remedies’ that were advertised so widely during the Victorian era. I gained a new appreciation for how Oxford ran at that time (and probably still does to some degree). The supporting characters are just as rich as the historical detail and I enjoyed them immensely too, especially Non’s second cousin and chaperone, Lily. Speaking of, there is a potential love interest for Non, but that romantic subplot is very minor and not quite certain by the end of the book.

If you’re looking for a historical mystery rich in detail and heart, then I think you’ll really enjoy this book. In the meantime, I shall be eagerly awaiting book two’s arrival.

For context, you need to know that I’m a big paranormal fan, I enjoy fake relationships a great deal, and I love a steamy book. So this book should have been perfect for me and the first 60% absolutely was. Unfortunately, it hit the skids at about 70% and didn’t really get back on track properly after that.

Mackenzie is an ER doctor in Denver and she’s a shifter and an omega. The rumours are that this makes her extra sexual which she has always rather resented as though she’s reduced just to a sex act. She half-heartedly dates, but they’re all pretty terrible and her gran is desperate for grandbabies. Isn’t there always a meddling older family member? I wish authors could find another way to force people into relationships.

So she asks Noah, an interventional cardiologist at her hospital, to be her fake boyfriend. Turns out Noah is in a tricky spot. He’s been pretending to be a normal shifter, but he’s not. He’s an alpha and this hospital has discriminatory policies against alphas*. But if he’s mated, or so the nonsense legends go, then he’s more docile and not as much of an alpha-hole. So they agree to be fake mates for the hospital and a brand new couple to Mackenzie’s gran.

(*Side note: I really enjoyed the world in which these shifters lived. Alphas don’t lead packs anymore; they’re just a bit ‘more’ than the average shifter. They can take suppressants that stop their pheromones from being spread and keep their emotions/hormones in check. This is how Noah isn’t outed to the hospital until someone does something nefarious.)

The first 60% of the book is a delight as they explore their fake relationship. The sex is steamy and there are some new-to-me things that are explored: Mackenzie’s heat cycle and knotting during sex. Both of those things along with the general learning-of-each-other that goes on were tremendous fun to read. At this stage I was reading with great happiness and with the occasional giddy smile directed to my Kindle.

Up until the book deteriorated for me, I adored Mackenzie. She’s funny and smart and teases the ever-so-staid Noah until he turns pink. It’s adorable! Noah isn’t so much a grump as he is a really serious dude. He’s so locked down that he neglects the importance of human connection. He lightens up considerably under Mackenzie’s influence.

Not all the characters are so charming though. Parker is Mackenzie’s gay best friend (I thought we left this trope in the 2000s?) and he is an actual grump and never quite as supportive of Mackenzie as I would like. He does get one truly excellent line when Mackenzie first tells him about her fake mate situation: ‘Oh, so now you’ve got multifaceted deceptions going on? Whipping ourselves up a tomfoolery tiramisu, are we?’ Undoubtedly the funniest line in the book.

So what happened after 60% that killed my joy? That’s just it. Nothing happened.

In fact, things stopped happening. The plot, which had been jogging along at a good clip, stopped and was replaced with lots and lots of confused navel gazing. All the tension and various problems they were managing as shifters resolve somewhat, and then what conflict is left is not compelling. Mackenzie and Noah hadn’t been honest with each other about their very real, growing feelings. There were hints, but for the most part, instead of a frank conversation, we have each character separately pondering their options and choices, but not actually talking to each other about it. At this point, I stopped reading because the story was really going nowhere, but a couple hours later curiosity won and I picked it up again.

When things started up again, we went right into the bleak moment which was … fine, as bleak moments go. But for me, the book had lost crucial momentum in the build up to that emotional climax and so it wasn’t as powerful as it could have been. The denouement was okay too, but my goofy smiles of the first 60% were long gone by then.

If this book had maintained its giddy pace all the way through, it would have absolutely delighted me. As it is, it’s a distinctly meh situation that I’m left with. Would I recommend it? Probably not. The first just-over-half is really fun reading, but it falls apart so dramatically after that, I ended up very disappointed.