A clever con woman must convince a skeptical, sexy farmer of his property’s resident real-life ghost if she’s to save them all from a fate worse than death, in this delightful new novel from the author of Mrs. Nash’s Ashes.

Fake spirit medium Gretchen Acorn is happy to help when her best (read: wealthiest) client hires her to investigate the unexplained phenomena preventing the sale of her bridge partner’s struggling goat farm. Gretchen may be a fraud, but she’d like to think she’s a beneficentone. So if “cleansing” the property will help a nice old man finally retire and put some much-needed cash in her pockets at the same time, who’s she to say no?

Of course, it turns out said bridge partner isn’t the kindly AARP member Gretchen imagined—Charlie Waybill is young, hot as hell, and extremely unconvinced that Gretchen can communicate with the dead. (Which, fair.) Except, to her surprise, Gretchen finds herself face-to-face with Everett: the very real, very chatty ghost that’s been wreaking havoc during every open house. And he wants her to help ensure Charlie avoids the same family curse that’s had Everett haunting Gilded Creek since the 1920s.

Now, Gretchen has one month to convince Charlie he can’t sell the property. Unfortunately, hard work and honesty seem to be the way to win over the stubborn farmer—not exactly Gretchen’s strengths. But trust isn’t the only thing growing between them, and the risk of losing Charlie to the spirit realm looms over Gretchen almost as annoyingly as Everett himself. To save the goat farm, its friendly phantom, and the man she’s beginning to love, Gretchen will need to pull off the greatest con of her life: being fully, genuinely herself.

Dear Ms. Adler, 

Last year I adored “Mrs. Nash’s Ashes.” I was hoping for a repeat experience with “Happy Medium.” Let me just rip the review Band-Aid off and say, I didn’t get one. 

Gretchen Acorn is a con artist. She was raised to be a good one by her con artist father who cut her loose when she wouldn’t finish a long con with him. After building a reputation as a spirit medium among the ultra wealthy women of DC, she’s doing alright. Her best client asks a favor which lands her on a goat farm in Maryland with a man who believes she’s a fraud. Then she sees an actual ghost. A ghost with a life or death message for the farm owner. Can she get Charlie to believe her?

Okay, let’s get down to brass tacks. For the most part, Everett the ghost is a pervy asshole. He does have some good moments when he pops up to give Gretchen some words of wisdom but they’re few and far between. Although if I were stuck in the same place for 100 years, unable to talk to anyone, maybe I’d begin to get my entertainment by watching people regardless of whether those people were in the bathroom or bedroom. I think he’s supposed to add most of the “quirk” to the book but I just wanted to punch him. Even Gretchen gets to the point where she tunes out his non-stop chatter. Then at the end, he tells Gretchen something – and proceeds to blow off her valid criticism – that made me want to kick him in his balls if he still had corporeal ones. 

Gretchen, who in order to justify her actions has changed her con-artistry to only work with clients who she feels she can leave better off than when they first came to her, is so hesitant while at the farm. Yeah, she doesn’t want to be there, has never farmed, is unsure of herself but SO many times Charlie would ask her to do something that needed to be done RIGHT NOW and Gretchen would dither for half a page or more trying to work herself up to it. I would mentally yell “Just do it! The baby goat needs you!” at her. She does, I will admit, have great ideas for ways for Charlie to increase the income the farm makes and does something really nice for Charlie’s grandfather. That was sweet. 

Grumpy hero Charlie is barely in the book for the first third. And when he is, he’s simmeringly angry at Gretchen. Like that’s pretty much his only emotion. He does eventually show his good side and after that, I agree with Everett (and it pains me to agree with that asshole about anything) that Charlie is a good egg with a runny yolk. Hmmm, that description sounds better in the book. 

Miscommunication is a big part of this story. We’re told that everyone around Gretchen and Charlie can see that they’re falling for each other (even if I didn’t see much chemistry for a long time) but these two won’t give in because Gretchen won’t allow anyone close to her in her life and Charlie thinks she’s a fraud. Then this progresses to martyrish tendencies from them both. Ugh. 

The worst thing though is the endless telling instead of showing. We never do get any POV from Charlie but do get endless rounds of everything going on in Gretchen’s head. Plus descriptions. Cut those down and the book could have easily lost 75 pages of nothing. There also wasn’t much tension. Honestly, I was more underwhelmed with it than anything else. I did expect one plot point to be expanded on but that never happened, which is a good thing because I was dreading it, so yay for that. Also the baby goats are cute. 

Looking at other reviews, I am definitely an outlier. This book seems to be pleasing a lot of people but most of it just rubbed me the wrong way. Sadly I’ll have to hope that the next book wins me back because this one didn’t do much for me. C-/D

~Jayne      

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Expecting a relaxing getaway at her family’s summer estate, pampered socialite Elsie Foster-Quinn signs up for the Women’s Land Army. When she ends up at a Somerset dairy farm instead, Elsie immediately butts heads with the grumpy farmer she now works for. Being a land girl in a small town is far more than the city girl bargained for.

Ben Grainger hates asking for help. When two land girls unexpectedly arrive on his farm, he quickly learns he can’t simply make them go away. He finds amusement in tormenting Elsie whose privileged life certainly didn’t prepare her for farm life. However, nothing could have prepared Ben for the feelings that suddenly emerge whenever the haughty little princess is near.

Why can’t he keep his eyes off her? And why can’t she stop thinking about him? Opposites attract—but is it true love?

Between the Germans bombing nearby Bath and a deadly disease rampaging through local farms, Ben and Elsie’s trust in each other is put to the ultimate test.

Dear Ms. Hamilton,

Given that Elsie was a little bit snooty in “The Seamstress on Cider Lane,” I wasn’t surprised to see that her book would be an opposites attract, social differences story. I liked the way that neither Elsie nor Ben were immediately attracted to each other and that their relationship grows over a series of months, but I can’t quite say that I was totally convinced of it.

Elsie Foster-Quinn’s plans to laze away her time at the family country estate as a member of the WLA gets upended when the Army requisitions it. Now she’s off to a dairy farm in Somerset along with Cockney Sheila who was in the month-long training session with Elsie. Farmer Ben Grainger is less than thrilled when assigned the two women but with no POWs available, much less British male workers, he resigns himself to his fate. He’s surprised that not only Sheila but also posh Elsie turn out to be hard workers. Double his surprise when Elsie volunteers to go with him to Bath to help transport people after the Luftwaffe bombs the city two nights in a row. Other things begin to bring the two closer and it’s only after that they discover how little their attempts to fool the people around them worked. But can upper class Elsie fit into farm life for good?

I know that the Women’s Land Army has figured in many other British series written recently but I haven’t read them so this was my first taste of the hard work done by these women during the war. Frankly I’m astonished that a single, month long course would be enough but then I guess most farm workers before them learned on the job so that’s probably how most WLA workers managed it too. Imagine how much worse the rationing would have been without their efforts.

Ben’s initial antagonistic attitude quickly disappears although Elsie retains a bit of her posh “I’m used to things being easier” feelings for a while longer. Good for Sheila in calling Elsie on this a time or two. I also wasn’t surprised to see Ben’s poor sister Vera have to handle so much of the domestic work as the males in the Grainger household would probably not have been brought up to be expected to dry dishes.

There were a few things that were mentioned only to then sink beneath the waves. Ben’s snarky “name” for Elsie is quickly dropped, his cows didn’t seem to mind the milking machine as much as Ben said they did, and what happened to his feelings of being a coward? I winced to see how the American soldiers section played out but I don’t doubt it either. Wouldn’t Elsie have gotten some lessons in how to judge and handle difficult men during her deb season or would she have been too young to have had one? And then just when Elsie and Ben were succumbing to their passions, along came two final conflicts.

Yes there were many things that occurred in the first two books in the series but this one just seemed to be packed a teensy bit too full. Plus despite them working together for months, I never got over the feeling that Ben and Elsie’s relationship was more than passion and proximity. I enjoyed the book, especially Sheila, but the dropped threads and other issues made this one not quite as satisfying for me. B

~Jayne

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She puts everything on the line for her patients, but is this paramedic willing to risk her heart for a gorgeous doctor and his adorable son? Dive into the first story in the Paramedics and Pups duet from Harlequin Medical Romance author Marion Lennox.

Colleagues, housemates…

Soulmates?

After a disastrous relationship, paramedic Jenny needs this fresh start in remote Willhua. When her living arrangements fall through, gorgeous local doc Rob offers Jenny and the injured pup she’s just rescued a room. Their immediate chemistry is overwhelmingly intense, but it’s clear this single dad’s life is currently in limbo—placing him firmly off-limits! Jenny’s scared to open herself up again. Is this instant family worth taking a chance on?

Dear Ms. Lennox,

I find myself at a bit of a loss about grading this book. On the one hand, parts of it are lovely. Jacob, hero Rob’s four year old son, is a delight. I’m not usually a fan of children in romances but for Jacob I’d make an exception. Rob and Jen are caring and wonderful people. Rob made the decision to stay in small, rural Willhua because of the desperate need the small community has for a family medicine doctor. Jen chose to go there from Sydney after a disastrous break-up from a toerag (asshole). They click immediately both medically and personally. But wow, there is a big reason why Rob is “Off-Limits” and I’m torn about this.

For a small town, Willhua is packed with medical needs. It seems as if disaster after disaster after incident occurs. There are deaths, there are cancer patients, there is an unwed eighteen year old who has been hiding her pregnancy from her parents and the world because of how it occurred (and I needed to see

I didn’t get this), there are people frantic to make sure that their livestock are looked after, plus two dogs who lose their person who need (and yay, get) new homes. And that’s before the dam overflows after torrential rains and the whole valley needs rescuing. The hits just kept coming. 

But there are charming scenes of Jen getting to know irrepressible Jacob (and we can see how good a dad Rob is to have achieved this despite being run off his conscientious feet). Stubby the corgi is a sweet delight. I approve of the fact that Jen tells Rob the whole sordid truth of what she ran from, I approve that Rob tells Jen about his marriage and the horrible outcome of his wife’s pregnancy. There’s one thing that Jen doesn’t find out about until after she boldly proposes a night of mutual enjoyment (which they both enjoy a lot). That one detail sent me – and Jen – into a spin. 

It’s a small town and people sure do talk so I can understand why Rob might have just assumed that Jen had been told and that she knew. After what happened to her in Sydney, finding out what she didn’t know was devastating to her. She was told about how Rob’s grief stricken in-laws have acted over the past four years and Jen herself gets a taste of this. It’s …. a lot. It’s a tragic situation – there’s anger and grief enough to go around. And I’m still conflicted about Jen and Rob’s relationship. I mean really conflicted. On the one hand, these are two people who, along with Jacob, deserve to be happy. On the other hand … wow. This

might be a step too far for a lot of people. This is a bold authorial choice and I happily grade part of it a B+ but the rest, no matter how conscientiously and tenderly portrayed, is not what I’m looking for in a romance. B+/C-

I look forward to what people’s thoughts are.

~Jayne      

 

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