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.

Sea Glass Summer
(Seashell Harbor #2)
by Miranda Liasson

My Rating:

Favorite Quotes:

Well, I’m going to give you the advice I wish someone had given me. You can’t allow fear to call the shots. Because fear has a really loud voice, and it will always talk you out of things. And listening to it will make you feel better, for a while. But then time passes and you see that you’re still exactly where you were before— stuck. Except suddenly you find that you’re a lot older and still haven’t accomplished what you really want.

He tried to remember at what age the good sense to be embarrassed kicked in. Hopefully not at age five.

My Review:

I always enjoy picking up a book by this author. Her emotive word choices, perceptive observations, and descriptive storytelling have an easy fluidity that effortlessly draws me in with completely depicted scenes scrolling like a smooth movie reel behind my eyes. The cast of characters was varied, authentic, easily knowable, and endearingly fractured with grief while struggling to find themselves again. I adore this unique grouping of friends and am eager to see what happens in the next installment.

Author Bio:

Miranda Liasson loves to write stories about everyday people who find love despite themselves because there’s nothing like a great love story. And if there are a few laughs along the way, even better! She’s a Romance Writers of America Golden Heart winner and an Amazon bestselling author whose heartwarming and humorous small-town romances have won accolades such as the Gayle Wilson Award of Excellence and have been Harlequin Junkie and Night Owl Reviews Top Picks.

 

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The Second Time Around
(Willow Bay #1)
by Kelly Collins 

My Rating:

Favorite Quotes:

I’ve got my regimen down. I wake up, get up, and grab my coffee, which I like with a little nip of whiskey. My sweet tea with a bit of Long Island, and my lemonade with a dab of vodka. At my age, they say it’s important to thin the blood.

What are you going to do about Margot? That girl is five dollars’ worth of ten-cent makeup.

Marybeth gave her a critical look. “Your ass cheeks are like two communion wafers in a paper sack, sweetie. If no one shook the bag, we wouldn’t know they were there.”

A woman sitting on the edge of the dock gasped, then punched the man sitting beside her in the arm. “Turn around, Hank. That’s how it’s done. You don’t pop open a beer can and say, ’Let’s get hitched.’” Hank made a face and shrugged. “You said yes anyway.” She shouldered him. “That’s because I didn’t have other plans that weekend.”

My Review:

I adored this! While I revel in and will never tire of her Aspen Cove series, I am delightedly impatient with anticipation for more of this new one as well. This installment was an excellent commencement for a new set of tales.

Kelly Collins just keeps honing her stellar storytelling skills, the premise was original, the pace was perfectly smooth, and the story threads were amusing, authentic, and easy to fall into with an endearingly flawed cast of characters that entertained as well as beguiled.

I was quickly enamored with Willow Bay and believe my favorite character is going to be the bird-loving Cricket, and I’ll just leave the type of bird as a smirk-worthy surprise for now.

ABOUT KELLY COLLINS   

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