My Rating:

Favorite Quotes:

I’m definitely over him– and baffled why I was ever under him…

Also, and I know this sounds ridiculous for a thirty-something woman to say, but it felt so wonderfully naughty, to be breaking the rules. I got a real kick out of it. In a similar vein, I also got a kick out of drinking from my mum’s favourite mug, sitting in my dad’s chair, and listening to his records that no one is allowed to touch. I even allowed myself a cheeky five minutes to touch my mum’s collection of crystal ornaments– basically, all the things I’ve been discouraged from doing my entire life, that I can only do today because no one is here to tell me off for it. To be honest, I’m sure neither of my parents would care about any of these things now that I’m an adult (allegedly), but just let me have this.

I dash to the downstairs loo and check myself over in the mirror quickly. I was eating cheese puffs about half an hour ago and I still feel like I’m covered in orange stuff. I know, I know, it’s unfathomable how sexy I am. How is Rex resisting me?

I tell you what, one thing I didn’t need to worry about, being here alone this past week, was running out of the important stuff like toilet roll or shower gel. There’s a cupboard full of tinned food and bottles of water– something my dad has lovingly dubbed her ‘zombie supplies’– which is supposed to be for worst-case, unlikely scenarios like extreme weather or wars or wars or God knows what– but you better believe she’s ready for them.

My Review:

This was a lively and fun read, laced together with breezy and amusing humor and witty observations. It didn’t matter one whit to me that I was reading a British story occurring in heavy snow during the Christmas holidays while I was experiencing a humid August day in the tropics. The engaging storylines were pleasantly entertaining, easy to follow, delightfully original, refreshingly unpredictable, shrewdly paced, and held my interest throughout. I enjoy this crafty author’s sense of humor and I plan to weave more of her work into my bloated TBR.

About the Author

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Portia MacIntosh is the bestselling author of over 20 romantic comedy novels.

From disastrous dates to destination weddings, Portia’s romcoms are the perfect way to escape from day to day life, visiting sunny beaches in the summer and snowy villages at Christmas time. Whether it’s southern Italy or the Yorkshire coast, Portia’s stories are the holiday you’re craving, conveniently packed in between the pages.

Formerly a journalist, Portia has left the city, swapping the music biz for the moors, to live the (not so) quiet life with her husband and her dog in Yorkshire.

Big City Little Rebel
by Kelly Collins

Opposites attract when a sexy builder falls for the little, blonde rebel intent on destroying his life.

When tragedy claimed the life of Beau Westhaven’s father, he didn’t just lose his dad, he lost his future. Now the project manager for Aspen Construction, Beau has two goals—to rebuild the family construction business and get his still-grieving mother out of her less than desirable circumstances. His plan was simple until a little blonde rebel named Bobbie Cruise arrived.

Bobbie Cruise lost everything to corporate greed. Despite a deathbed promise to her cancer-stricken mother, Bobbie wasn’t a real activist. But when the construction company responsible for her mother’s death showed up with yet another potentially lethal project, she chained herself to the front door to stop their progress. She wasn’t expecting the man in charge to be tall, dark, and unforgettable.

He’s focused on his success. She’s counting on his failure. Two lives pushed together by fate and torn apart by circumstances. Can they set aside their pasts in order to let love win and give them a future?

My Rating:

Favorite Quote:

“They were vagitarians.” He shrugged his shoulders and tossed back the second sample. “No way.” Beau laughed so hard the beer came out of his nose. “Leave it to you to find the only two lesbians in the room.” “I’m magical that way.”

My Review:

This was a quick and easy read with a satisfying, sexy, and supportive romance that every woman dreams of. The characters were endearing and instantly likable people who deserved all the good things in life, although those good things had to wait until they found each other. The storylines were easy to follow, active, amusing, and well-paced, and held my interest and curiosity in how their dilemma would resolve.

ABOUT KELLY COLLINS   

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Wild child Isidora Avramov is a thrill chaser, adept demon summoner, and—despite the whole sexy-evil-sorceress vibe—also a cuddly animal lover. When she’s not designing costumes and new storylines for the Arcane Emporium’s haunted house, Issa’s nursing a secret, conflicted dream of ditching her family’s witchy business to become an indie fashion designer in her own right.

But when someone starts sabotaging the celebrations leading up to this year’s Beltane festival with dark, dangerous magic, a member of the rival Thorn family gets badly hurt—throwing immediate suspicion on the Avramovs. To clear the Avramov name and step up for her family when they need her the most, Issa agrees to serve as a co-investigator, helping none other than Rowan Thorn get to the bottom of things.

Rowan is the very definition of lawful good, so tragically noble and by-the-book he makes Issa’s teeth hurt. In accordance with their families’ complicated history, he and Issa have been archenemies for years and have grown to heartily loathe each other. But as the unlikely duo follow a perplexing trail of clues to a stunning conclusion, Issa and Rowan discover how little they really know each other… and stumble upon a maddening attraction that becomes harder to ignore by the day.

My Rating:

Favorite Quotes:

We glared at each other, the distance between us seeming to thin and contract, pulsing like a heartbeat, as if our shared loathing were potent enough to actually distort the fabric of reality.

I glanced up at the massive gilded portrait of Margarita Avramov— our family’s ancestor and one of the four original founders of Thistle Grove— hanging on the flocked maroon wallpaper above the fireplace. She appraised the crowd of her descendants with black and lustrous eyes, set in the kind of gorgeous resting bitch face that could launch a thousand ships, probably mostly out of screaming terror.

A gratified glow fueled by pure pettiness lit just beneath my ribs. There’s a certain special exhilaration to driving the object of your loathing to soothing breathing techniques.

I was playing with the worst kind of fire here, and I knew it— but when had that ever stopped me before? When had it ever done anything at all, besides making me want to keep blazing my way down trails marked “forbidden”? For me, the forbiddenness usually tended to be the point.

Quit trying to salt my game.

My Review:

I rarely read this genre as I am far too lazy for all the world-building so I’m unfamiliar with the different roles and rules and types of magic, but despite the extra effort it took, I found the divisions and petty feuds between death magic and green magic quite clever. I was pleasantly surprised by the range and diversity of the author’s pen with keen snark, biting humor, and creepy curses and spells. The plot was intricate and slowly unfolded with unpredictable story threads and a bit of everything with thick and juicing servings of salty language, an entertaining macabre mystery, a fledgling romance, sensuality, and family drama. I enjoyed the change of pace and have decided I should indulge in this genre more often.

A single lie becomes a defining moment in a family’s life in an unforgettable novel of psychological suspense.

After being gone for two decades, Maddy’s half-sister, Emily, is back in town to settle their late father’s estate. Emily’s not the troubled girl Maddy remembers from their volatile childhood. Apparently, all is well. It can’t possibly matter anymore that Maddy married Emily’s first love, but the pictures Maddy finds on her husband’s phone tell a different story. Suspicions of an affair are hard to ignore.

Then again, Maddy hasn’t been herself lately. She’s increasingly confused. She’s losing items that are precious to her. She forgets where she’s going. The line between what’s real and unreal has become a blur. Even the damning photos have disappeared. Though her state of mind starts to become everyone’s cause for concern, Maddy refuses to believe she’s losing her grip on reality. But the one thing she can’t deny is the secret from the past that rewrote all their lives—a secret that’s ready to come out.

My Rating:

Favorite Quotes:

Maddy’s school reports often said, “Talks too much.” Her mom defended the trait as inquisitive. Her dad didn’t say much about it, but she could tell he wasn’t a fan of her endless questions. She’d never realized that talking could have landed her in this much trouble. Perhaps this was why everyone had been trying to get her to shut up her whole life.

Maddy looked around the waiting room, every last person with their head bent to their phone. There were no tattered magazines gracing the various chairs and tables of the room. No one wanted to read secondhand copies of People magazine anymore when they had their phone to gaze at, loaded with personalized content just for them. Maddy sometimes visualized people’s phones swapped out for mirrors, a whole world of people staring in silent awe at digitized versions of themselves.

He made it sound so easy. Find some sperm. As if by looking in enough of Joseph’s creases and crevices they’d dredge some up from somewhere.

“You could both be charged with statutory rape,” said Ivan, looking entirely serious about the whole thing, even though the notion that they were both simultaneously busy raping each other at the same time was clearly ridiculous.

My Review:

This book was heaving with unreliable, treacherous, untrustworthy, selfish, and horrifyingly fractured characters. I despised them all by the last page, yet I was undeniably hooked and invested in unraveling their heinous schemes. I devised multiple theories of gaslighting, mental illness, revenge, retribution, rage, hatred, betrayal, and abuse, but who was guilty? The community was apparently a viper’s nest of vile and self-serving individuals, which in reality, under the surface, every community is similarly populated.

The writing and storylines were original, sneakily witty, compelling, and perceptively detailed from multiple points of view. I was engrossed, annoyed, and biting my cuticles from the tension brewing from the petty, destructive, and deplorable manner the characters treated each other. They were all guilty of something, so what is wrong with me that I voyeuristically needed to know exactly what?

 Thomas & Mercer (July 1, 2022)

In this unforgettable psychological thriller, the dark is a terrifying mystery for a woman on the edge.

Seven hard-won months into her sobriety, sociology professor Maris Heilman has her first blackout. She chalks it up to exhaustion, though she fears that her husband and daughter will suspect she’s drinking again. Whatever their cause, the glitches start becoming more frequent. Sometimes minutes, sometimes longer, but always leaving Maris with the same disorienting question: Where have I been?

Then another blackout lands Maris in the ER, where she makes an alarming discovery. A network of women is battling the same inexplicable malady. Is it a bizarre coincidence or something more sinister? What do all the women have in common besides missing time? Or is it who they have in common?

In a desperate search for answers, Maris has no idea what’s coming next, just the escalating paranoia that her memories may be beyond her control, and that everything she knows could disappear in the blink of an eye.

My Rating:

Favorite Quotes:

“Everyone thinks old people are old except for old people.” Maris knew what she meant. When she was twenty, she thought forty-two sounded like you had a foot in the grave, but despite the math she still wouldn’t call herself middle-aged.

When she and Noel started dating, they called it second adolescence, only better than the first because they had high limits on their credit cards.

Maris felt like someone had told her the earth was flat, then strapped her in and sent her flying over the edge.

She missed her students. Two had emailed her to say Dr. Scanlon had fallen asleep at the front of the class while they were taking a test and had farted himself awake.

I am worthy, she thought. I am loved. And then, My god, it’s like I finally understand bumper stickers, and she hiccuped out a laugh.

My Review:

This prickly book had a bit of everything and was distressingly realistic with family drama, addiction issues, social ills, complicated yet frighteningly plausible neuroscience, a twisted mystery, and deeply flawed characters who were self-involved yet generally well-meaning while difficult to fully appreciate.

I battled with the slow and irregular pace as well as the self-admittedly poor decisions the main character continued to make – I wanted to smack her in the back of the head with my beloved Kindle – yet I was also unquestionably curious, deeply invested in the story, and compelled to know how it was going to resolve.

The Easter eggs hidden in the storylines were clever and twisty yet the various story threads kept me itchy and dissatisfied with the annoying behaviors of the struggling characters. Needless to say, I’m more than a bit conflicted about how to rate this one yet the inner musings and narrative style were insightful and perceptive with occasional glimmers of wit and brilliance.

My Rating:

Favorite Quotes:

‘And how old is Stefan?’ she asked. ‘Forty-five,’ said Jackie proudly. ‘Recently divorced. As fit as a butcher’s dog with a bone to match.’

Rogues and charlatans are all I seem to attract these days. And nobody wants a decrepit old woman with the memory of a stunned goldfish. I’m better off alone.

Zara was the last person she expected to see on her doorstep. She was standing there dressed to the nines and inspecting her finger as if by pressing the doorbell she may have picked up a communicable disease.

‘Lad? He’s an adult– that makes him fair game,’ said Jackie, her words a little slurred. ‘You’ve got underwear older than him,’ said Pauline, who had been rather quiet. ‘It’s not my fault that Marks and Spencer’s make them to last.’ Jackie jutted out her chin.

Her hair looked like she’d backcombed it with a hedgehog and she still had a full face of make-up although it was now rather patchy and smudged, giving her a certain Dalí-esque quality.

My Review:

I enjoyed this wryly humorous women’s fiction tale. While the characters weren’t always likable, they were well-nuanced and insightfully layered with realistic complications and foibles. The writing style was delightfully detailed with sardonic observations, sparring and snappy banter, and perceptive inner musings and narratives that tickled and taunted my curiosity as well as my funny bone. I had pages of cleverly written highlighted passages and was greatly pained to narrow the list down to the handful in this review.