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Book Review: An Unexpected Gift (Insta-Spark Collection #4) by Melanie Moreland

An Unexpected Gift
(Insta-Spark Collection #4)
by Melanie Moreland

Now Available exclusively on Amazon for only 99 cents

#Free to Read on Kindle Unlimited

Amazon: https://amzn.to/2pNxed5

Goodreads: http://bit.ly/UnexpectedGR

BookBub: http://bit.ly/UnexpectedGiftBB

GPS Failure? CHECK

No gloves, No boots? CHECK

Car malfunctions? CHECK

It appears that Santa’s elves may have a detour planned for Evan’s holiday. What he didn’t

count on Christmas delivering was An Unexpected Gift.

An unplanned journey

A change of direction

The meeting of two lost hearts

When Evan Brooks sets out to repair his fractured relationship with his family, a broken-down

car and an unplanned detour lead him to Holly Cole.

Her eyes captivate him.

Her words comfort him.

Her heart warms him.

Is she the unexpected gift he’s longed for?

Is this just a detour, or the road to happiness?

Find out in this heartwarming Christmas story.

 

 

My Rating:

Favorite Quotes:

“Your taste in strays is excellent.”

“You’re not odd. You’re Evan. You’re perfect.” Her words were like a small shock running through my system.

My Review:

 

This was a quick, sweet, easy to fall into, and sexy read that left my heart feeling light and satisfied. The main characters were lovably endearing and sweet enough to cause dental issues. I adored them as much as their supportive and passionate romance. Evan was a treasure.   Sigh, we all want a besotted and thoughtful husband like Evan, although admittedly, most of us don’t deserve one quite so devoted.

 

An Unexpected Gift is part of the Insta-Spark Collection!

What is Insta-Spark?

When you want a bit of naughty along with the nice.

Insta-Spark collection from Melanie Moreland are complete standalone reads with one thing in

common – lots of sweetness and a guaranteed HEA. Instant attraction, little angst – love and

happiness abounds in this series.

An Instant Connection #3: mybook.to/AnInstantConnection

Christmas Sugar Insta-Spark #2: http://mybook.to/CSrAmz

It Started With A Kiss Insta-Spark

#1: getBook.at/ItStartedWithAKiss

Available #Free to read on #KindleUnlimited

About the Author

New York Times/USA Today bestselling author Melanie Moreland, lives a happy and content life in a quiet area of Ontario with her beloved husband of twenty-seven-plus years and their rescue cat, Amber. Nothing means more to her than her friends and family, and she cherishes every moment spent with them. 
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While seriously addicted to coffee, and highly challenged with all things computer-related and technical, she relishes baking, cooking, and trying new recipes for people to sample. She loves to throw dinner parties, and also enjoys traveling, here and abroad, but finds coming home is always the best part of any trip. 
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Melanie loves stories, especially paired with a good wine, and enjoys skydiving (free-falling over a fleck of dust) extreme snowboarding (falling down stairs) and piloting her own helicopter (tripping over her own feet.) She’s learned happily ever afters, even bumpy ones, are all in how you tell the story.
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Melanie is represented by Flavia Viotti at Bookcase Literary Agency. For any questions regarding subsidiary or translation rights please contact her at flavia@bookcaseagency.com
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Book Review: Time After Time (Give Me Shelter #3) by Josie Kerr 

Time After Time
(Give Me Shelter #3)
by Josie Kerr 

Amazon US / UK / CA / AU 

Christine Dearborn met her soulmate in high school. They eloped shortly before he went to boot camp, allowing her to escape from her austere, loveless childhood home. But being a military wife came with its own challenges, and Christine fought her own enemies at home even as her beloved battled adversaries overseas.

William Cashton had always been a guardian. When he was eighteen, he promised to protect his wife and his country. Fighting a foreign enemy turned out to be the easy part, and the war at home has more devastating casualties than Cash ever imagined.

Five years after she let Cash walk away, Christine gets a phone call that changes everything. Can Christine convince Cash to try to salvage their marriage, or will their emotional wounds be fatal?

My Rating:

Favorite Quote:

 

I’ve come to believe that fate has a way of introducing us to things we don’t know we need until they’re in our lives.

 

My Review:

 

Getting through the holidays isn’t easy for everyone and can stir up and/or wring out the regrets for some, which can either result in completely ruining the holidays and further embittering the combatants, or being the impetus for real change. The first half of this tale was a rather tense and angsty read that was heavy on regrets while the characters were each quietly hopeful for clearing the air. I held my breath for this stubborn middle-aged couple, as they had successfully avoided all communication for five years after each had sullenly taken to their different corners of the country and licked their wounds while living in an odd form of marital limbo. The characters of Cash and Christine were endearingly flawed and near ruined with grief and contrition, yet still accessible; they prickled my curiosity to know all their secrets. I appreciated the realistic imperfections of these characters, they were well fleshed out and knowable to me while their reasoning and insights resonated as ringing true with their gained maturity.   The writing was emotive and heart-squeezing with welcome bites of humor while the couple worked through their issues and ultimately reinforced their foundation and reestablished their commitment while scorching the sheets and singing the ceiling tiles.

 


Josie Kerr   

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Josie Kerr is a transplanted West Texan living on the edge of semi-profoundly rural Georgia, a.k.a. the southernmost edge of the northernmost county in Metro Atlanta.

She has an M.Ed. in Secondary English Education but discovered that she hated high school more the second time than she did the first, so she decided to meld her love of technology with her education background and became an Instructional Designer. When not writing articles about how to fire someone without getting sued or why you should really not apply for jobs using your SexxyStud99@aol.com email address, she writes steamy romance novels that feature grown-up Heroes and Heroines.

 

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Book Review: One Christmas Eve (Cedar Street #2) by Shannon Stacey 

One Christmas Eve

(Cedar Street #2)

by Shannon Stacey

 

Amazon US / UK / AU / CA /

B&N / Apple / Kobo / Google

 

They couldn’t be more different. Or more perfect for each other.

New York Times bestselling author Shannon Stacey returns with a warm and cozy opposites-attract Christmas story.

Zoe Randall is busy living her life as she damn well pleases. She’s back in her favorite town, her divorce in her rearview mirror, and living out her childhood dream of running a bookstore with her cousin. She has no interest in the uptight nerd who opened his boring-ass business next to her shop…until he complains about one of her sexy window displays.

Then it’s game on.

Preston Wheeler knows he takes life a little too seriously. But when the saucy bookseller next door starts pushing his buttons, he can feel that changing. Beautiful, vivacious Zoe challenges him in all the best ways, and soon he’s pushing her buttons right back: teasing and flirting all the way through the holiday season.

As Preston loosens up and Zoe is treated to the man behind the suit (particularly his forearms), she realizes she’s more interested than she cares to admit. And Preston comes to see the beauty—the absolute delight—in adding Zoe’s bright splashes of color to his once very black-and-white existence.

My Rating:

Favorite Quotes:

 

Disapproval. Zoe knew that look. She’d divorced the man she’d thought she was going to spend the rest of her life with— a man who’d claimed to love and cherish her— because of that look, so she wasn’t about to accept it from a total stranger. Arching one eyebrow, she gave him her best bitch face.   And not the resting kind, either. Hers was a fully active bitch face.

 

“Just… be neighborly.” “Oh, should I run home and bake him a pie first?” “I’ve had your pie and I’m going to vote no.”

 

 My Review:

 

This was my first experience reading Shannon Stacey and I’m not sure what took so long for her to ping my radar, as she seems to have been quite busy with a veritable library of books listed under her name. I plan to make amends to the talented Ms. Stacey for my slacking as I enjoyed her easy-breezy writing style, snarky humor, and wily wit. I picked a nice place to start with this light, small-town, holiday romance with opposite attraction. The characters were endearingly quirky and likable while the story held my interest, was easy to follow, and developed at a good pace with tasty bites of steam, levity, and a sweet HEA for all involved.

About the Author

Amazon
Goodreads
Website

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New York Times and USA Today bestselling author Shannon Stacey lives with her husband and two sons in New England, where her favorite activities are writing romance and really random tweets when she’s not riding her ATV. She loves mud, books, football & watching way too much TV.

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Book Review, Giveaway: Bluebell’s Christmas Magic by Marie Laval

Bluebell’s Christmas Magic

by Marie Laval

 

Amazon US / UK / AU / CA / B&N

A gorgeous new Christmas story from the author of best selling novel Little Pink Taxi


A flick of a feather duster and a sprinkle of Christmas magic …
Cassie Bell is used to mess. Her cleaning business, Bluebell Cleaning, is well known in the Cumbrian village of Red Moss. However, now it’s almost Christmas and Cassie has a slightly messier situation to deal with than she’s used to.

She’s been hired to help Stefan Lambert, an injured army helicopter pilot who’s staying at the local Belthorn Manor whilst he recovers. Stefan resents Cassie’s interference and is definitely not looking for Christmas cheer. But Cassie prides herself on sparkling surfaces – so, can she bring some festive sparkle to Stefan’s life too?

 

My Rating:

Favorite Quotes:

 

Before she could move out of the way, Piers bent down, slid his arm around her waist and kissed her cheek, dangerously close to her mouth. His lips were warm and moist, and she tried to repress a gasp as she caught the whiff of beer, musky aftershave and sweaty socks that always seemed to cling to him.

 

‘We’re getting too old for dealing with overexcited children all day,’ her granddad replied. ‘Last time I dressed up as Santa… and I’m not even mentioning the fake beard that gave me a rash for days afterwards.’ ‘I fell asleep in the grotto and my snoring scared the children away,’ David Fern added, laughing.

 

‘Do you know what charms my husband gave me to thank me for the hard time I had giving birth to his three sons?’ Tim’s cheekbones flushed bright red. ‘It was a joke, Rachel…and I’m a farmer after all.’ Oblivious, Rachel carried on, ‘He bought me a sheep, a tractor and a cow! If he thinks that’s an incentive for me to produce baby number four, he is seriously mistaken.’

 

The shop and restaurant were boarded up, and padlocks and chains hung from the doors to the shower blocks and launderette. There was no sign of life in the office either. All that was needed to complete the desolate décor was tumbleweed blowing about and whining harmonica of a Spaghetti Western soundtrack.

 

My Review:

 

I was again enamored with Marie Laval’s breezy yet absorbing writing style and creative and amusingly descriptive storytelling. Her latest delightful tale kept me well entertained and had a bit of everything; an injured helicopter pilot with PTSD nightmares staying in the manor of the absent yet wealthiest family, a comedy competition, elder abuse, holiday festivities, a sudden rash of crime in the previously safe village, family issues, a blossoming romance, sexual harassment in the workplace, ghost sightings, and a century-old mystery to solve. I adored the main characters, especially the sweet and naïve Bluebell house cleaner Cassie, who took excellent care of her clients well beyond their cleaning needs and may well have used a bit of fairy magic during her dusting. The fairy riding a feather duster painted on the side of her van brought a smile to my face every time it was mentioned, and her clever grandfather was a treasure.

About the Author

Originally from Lyon in France, Marie now lives in Lancashire with her family. She works full-time as a modern language teacher and in her spare time, she loves writing romance and dreaming about romantic heroes. She writes both historical and contemporary romance and best-selling Little Pink Taxi was her debut romantic comedy novel with Choc Lit. She belongs to Authors on the Edge and writes short stories for the best selling Miss Moonshine’s anthologies. She is a member of the Romantic Novelists Association and the Society of Authors. Her native France, as well as her passion for history and research, very much influences her writing, and all her novels have what she likes to call ‘a French twist’!

Social Media Links –

https://www.facebook.com/marielavalauthor/

https://twitter.com/marielaval1

Giveaway

 Win a small canvas purse and a thick notebook

(Open to UK Only)

*Terms and Conditions –  Please enter using the Rafflecopter box below.  The winner will be selected at random via Rafflecopter from all valid entries and will be notified by Twitter and/or email. If no response is received within 7 days then I reserve the right to select an alternative winner. Open to all entrants aged 18 or over.  Any personal data given as part of the competition entry is used for this purpose only and will not be shared with third parties, with the exception of the winners’ information. This will be passed to the giveaway organizer and used only for the fulfillment of the prize, after which time I will delete the data.  I am not responsible for dispatch or delivery of the prize.

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Book Review: The Kill Club by Wendy Heard

 The Kill Club
by Wendy Heard

 

 

Amazon US / UK / AU / CA 

Fiction / Thrillers / Psychological 

368 pages

A haunting thriller about a woman who attempts to save her brother’s life by making a dangerous pact with a network of vigilantes who’ve been hunting down the predators of Los Angeles.

Jazz can’t let her younger brother die.Their foster mother Carol has always been fanatical, but with Jazz grown up and out of the house, Carol takes a dangerous turn that threatens thirteen-year-old Joaquin’s life. Over and over, child services fails to intervene, and Joaquin is running out of time.

Then Jazz gets a blocked call from someone offering a solution. There are others like her, people the law has failed. They’ve formed an underground network of “helpers,” each agreeing to murder the abuser of another. They’re taking back their power and leaving a trail of bodies throughout Los Angeles—dubbed the Blackbird Killings. If Jazz joins them, they’ll take care of Carol for good.

All she has to do is kill a stranger.

Jazz soon learns there’s more to fear than getting caught carrying out her assignment. The leader of the club has a zero-tolerance policy for mistakes.

And the punishment for disobeying orders is death.

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My Rating:

Favorite Quotes:

 

“Okay,” I say, and in that one word is contained an ocean of acceptance. This is where I am. This is what I’m doing.

I think about what the reporter said, that the people who have been killed have had records of stalking, domestic violence. It actually sounds like the voice on the phone is who they say they are. They invented a serial killer. The police are searching LA for a murderer that doesn’t exist.

I don’t know how I feel about this, morally. Is it bad to kill someone like Carol? Does she deserve the death sentence? Do I have any feelings about her being dead? … I remember the guy I saw die at Villains. I heard him scream. It’s definitely not painless. But then I remember Carol with her baseball bat crunching through my bones like glass, and I think, Good.

How is she so put-together at six in the morning? When I work early shifts at Trader Joe’s, I look like an orphan in a Christmas movie.

 

My Review:

 

This book was devilishly clever and fiendishly addictive, I was taut with tension and unable to put my Kindle down without deeply resenting the intrusion to my reading. The main character of Jasmine was deeply flawed and horribly unlucky, and though well-intentioned she was a total screw up in every arena. I cringed for her while simultaneously wanting to give her a smack to the back of the head. The storylines were highly active, heartbreaking, twisted, brutal, gripping, and fraught with tension with unexpected and greatly welcomed glints of snarky levity and sharply edged wit. This was my first exposure to the cunning storytelling of Wendy Heard and I was an instant fangirl, I greedily want to amass all her clever words.

About the Author

Facebook: @wendydheard

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Wendy Heard, author of Hunting Annabelle, was born in San Francisco and has lived most of her life in Los Angeles. When not writing, she can be found hiking the Griffith Park trails, taking the Metro and then questioning this decision, and haunting local bookstores.

 

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Book Review: Death at Eden’s End (DCI Satterthwaite #2) by Jo Allen

Death at Eden’s End
(DCI Satterthwaite #2)
by Jo Allen

 

Amazon US / UK / AU / CA /

Apple / GP / Kobo

 

A brand new DCI Jude Satterthwaite crime mystery from the bestselling Jo Allen.

When one-hundred-year-old Violet Ross is found dead at Eden’s End, a luxury care home hidden in a secluded nook of the Lake District’s Eden Valley it’s tragic, of course, but not unexpected. Except for the instantly recognizable look in her lifeless eyes… that of pure terror.

DCI Jude Satterthwaite heads up the investigation, but as the deaths start to mount up it’s clear that he and DS Ashleigh O’Halloran need to uncover a long-buried secret before the killer strikes again…

The second in the unmissable, Lake District-set, DCI Jude Satterthwaite series.

My Rating:

Favorite Quotes:

 

The last thing she needed was to display her weakness to a man even more senior and even less sympathetic than Jude, and Detective Superintendent Groves not only ticked those unwelcome boxes, but he also had a habit of running his eyes over her like a farmer deciding how much to bid for a prize heifer. Word in the office was that Groves was counting the days to his retirement, but he wasn’t counting them nearly as enthusiastically as his junior, female colleagues.

 

Violet Ross was a hundred years old and lived in a nursing home, so Klemmie really shouldn’t have been surprised. That said, the old woman had always given the impression of someone who would, if it were possible, live forever because she couldn’t bear to miss a tiny piece of someone else’s business by dying.

 

In her experience the dead so often looked peaceful, but Violet managed to look outraged, as if she’d fought death all the way and he’d only defeated her by foul means.

 

She shook her head, and the string of jet beads around her neck rattled beneath her accumulated chins.

 

She took a second, as she sometimes did, to think about the might-have-beens. Society needed people like Jude, high-minded seekers after justice. It was a pity they were so hard for ordinary people to live with.

 

 My Review:

 

I have greatly enjoyed Ms. Allen’s deft writing style, her compelling storytelling unwinds slowly while she shrewdly sucks the reader in with lots of juicy and cunningly observant ancillary details about the various players whether they be primary, secondary, or briefly making an appearance.   Being relatively new to the suspense genre, Ms. Allen has proven to be a rather clever minx with this curiously enticing series as the crimes themselves have been confounding and rather difficult to solve, leading me to devise and cast aside several theories while ultimately admitting defeat as I was unable to ferret out the correct combination or sequence of events. Jo Allen has made my list of favorite new talent to watch.

About the Author

Jo Allen was born in Wolverhampton and is a graduate of Edinburgh, Strathclyde and the Open University. After a career in economic consultancy, she took up writing and was first published under the name Jennifer Young in genres of short stories, romance, and romantic suspense. In 2017 she took the plunge and began writing the genre she most likes to read – crime. Now living in Edinburgh, she spends as much time as possible in the English Lakes. In common with all her favorite characters, she loves football (she’s a season ticket holder with her beloved Wolverhampton Wanderers) and cats.

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Book Review: Death by Dark Waters (DCI Satterthwaite Mystery#1) by Jo Allen

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Death by Dark Waters
(DCI Satterthwaite Mystery#1)
by Jo Allen

 

Amazon US / UK / AU / CA /

 B&N / Apple / GP / Kobo

The charred remains of a child are discovered – a child no one seems to have missed…

It’s high summer, and the lakes are in the midst of an unrelenting heatwave. Uncontrollable fell fires are breaking out across the moors faster than they can be extinguished. When firefighters uncover the body of a dead child at the heart of the latest blaze, Detective Chief Inspector Jude Satterthwaite’s arson investigation turns to one of murder.

Jude was born and bred in the Lake District. He knows everyone… and everyone knows him. Except his intriguing new Detective Sergeant, Ashleigh O’Halloran, who is running from a dangerous past and has secrets of her own to hide…

Temperatures – and tension – in the village are rising, and with the body count rising Jude and his team race against the clock to catch the killer before it’s too late…

The first in the gripping, Lake District-set, DCI Jude Satterthwaite series.

 

My Rating:

4.5

Favorite Quotes:

 

Aware of her inability to leave him be, she nevertheless couldn’t help herself, so that sometimes she thought she spent all her time watching out for him, not so that she could avoid him, but so she could give him grief. Sometimes when she looked at Jude, with his cool determination to stay civil, she realised she didn’t like herself very much, that there was a bitterness within her heart that surfaced only when she was with him. Three years after they’d split, she should have been over it.

 

She preferred someone a little less tempestuous and with a slightly sweeter nature, though experience and the wreckage of her marriage had taught her circumspection. Scott, her estranged husband, was living proof that sweetness and calm didn’t preclude a man being a two-timing bastard.

 

Laurie might, if called upon, prove a match for a baton-wielding thug or two, but it was evident that he had no weapons sufficient to repel a woman in her fifties who didn’t understand the meaning of the word no.

 

Clever, compassionate and mostly silent, his best friend was a bunch of contradictions. A vegetarian, teetotal, chain-smoking gay churchgoer, he was the model of common sense, the man who showed the importance of balance and sometimes, he felt, kept him sane.

 

… still staring out at the tiny garden in the house he’d bought just to be free of all his memories of her. But it didn’t work like that. Memories weren’t something you packed into boxes, unpacked when you were ready, or sorted into piles for keeping or reusing or recycling, or simply throwing away. They clung to you with the tenacity of the devil, and ambushed you when you least expected them to.

 

My Review:

 

Jo Allen’s clever debut was a well-crafted and slow-building tale of abduction, arson, and murder. The narrative was loaded with insightfully keen observations of human nature at both ends of the ethical and moral spectrum, as such, we were privy to the light and dark sides of Ms. Allen’s flawed, oddly compelling, and complex characters. As a new transfer to the team, Detective Sergeant Ashleigh was forced to hit the ground running and she quickly proved herself to be not only up for the task but a major asset, despite her uncanny tendency to annoy her new boss while doing so.   The case was complicated and compounded by difficult personalities on both sides of the law, and I found the characters’ backstories to be as compelling as the current case they were working. I am chomping at the bit to start the next in the series, Death At Eden’s End, which is already locked and loaded on my beloved Kindle.

 

About the Author

Jo Allen was born in Wolverhampton and is a graduate of Edinburgh, Strathclyde and the Open University. After a career in economic consultancy, she took up writing and was first published under the name Jennifer Young in genres of short stories, romance, and romantic suspense. In 2017 she took the plunge and began writing the genre she most likes to read – crime. Now living in Edinburgh, she spends as much time as possible in the English Lakes. In common with all her favorite characters, she loves football (she’s a season ticket holder with her beloved Wolverhampton Wanderers) and cats.

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Book Review: Why She Ran by Geraldine Hogan

Why She Ran
by Geraldine Hogan

Amazon US / UK / CA / AU

B&N / Apple / Kobo / GP

 

‘Rachel. They must have made a mistake. A mother would know?’ She let her words pour into the emptiness of the kitchen. She began to shiver. ‘I can’t feel anything,’ she said softly and rocked back and forth, as if she was a huge child, seeking solace in the simple gesture.

When young, pretty nurse Rachel McDermott is found murdered in the harsh lights of the hospital kitchen where she works, her mother can’t accept the news, and the small Irish town of Corbally reels in disbelief. Rushing to the scene, Detective Iris Locke vows to find the sick killer, whatever it takes.

The last person to see Rachel alive was her close friend, sixteen-year-old Eleanor Marshall, a troubled teenager, estranged from her family. Eleanor was spotted fleeing the kitchen where Rachel’s body was found and becomes the main suspect. Iris has a search party combing the endless woods near the Comeragh mountains where they believe she is hiding. But Iris is consumed with worry for the vulnerable girl and can’t shake a prickly disquiet that Eleanor shouldn’t be a suspect.

Eleanor’s sister agrees but a day later, when she is found dead in the area Eleanor is hiding, things don’t look good for the runaway teen. Iris can’t see Eleanor, who still sleeps with her childhood teddy bear, as someone who would kill her little sister and her best friend, but all the evidence seems to point that way.

Sleep-deprived and desperate to find the truth, Iris takes a closer look into Rachel’s background and discovers that she was keeping strange, shadowy company the night before she died. Convinced that Eleanor is in terrible danger, Iris sets out to find her, in the icy-cold woods, alone. But what if somebody else makes their way through the darkness and reaches Iris and Eleanor first?

This gripping mystery thriller is perfect for fans of Carol Wyer, Robert Dugoni and LJ Ross.

My Rating:

Favorite Quotes:

 

Even the way Pardy pecked her way around her food got right under Iris’s skin. Never trust a woman who doesn’t enjoy her food, or a woman who wants sergeant stripes so badly she’d walk over anyone to get them. Jo Pardy ate like a mouse, rationing it out in tiny bites, a speck here, a crumb there; at times almost bovine-like back chewing went on, and sometimes it was all Iris could do to stop herself force-feeding the girl a half a dozen biscuits at once just to get it over with.

 

He’d only searched for it half-heartedly, after all, where Slattery came from, real men didn’t wear jewellery –apart from the Bishop, but then since he wore robes that resembled an old woman’s dress, he was hardly the most obvious male role model.

 

I think Kit Marshall would sell his granny for a bunch of hydrangeas so he could come up smelling of flowers, that’s all.’

 

The words floated for a second or two in the air between them, like soft bubbles, perfect, honest. They’d never fit back in their box again.

 

Maureen was just sixty, but she was an old-fashioned sixty, with tweed skirts and a fondness for headscarves, knotted into submission between her first and second chin.

 

She’s as mad as a bag of weasels.

  My Review:

 

I was once again in awe not only of her Ms. Hogan’s oddly compelling plot and storylines, but also of her wily character development and captivating storytelling. Her evocative word choices and unique, keenly honed, and striking arrangements of words and ancillary details sparked sharp and smoothly calibrated visuals to scroll through my gray matter. The little pea in my brain must have been smoking and was definitely singed while working through this well-crafted, multi-layered, and complex tale that slowly and slyly unraveled with an unpredictable ending I never saw coming.

 

I admire and covet Ms. Hogan’s word skills and craftiness as much as I adore her oddly enticing, deeply flawed, strong, complicated, peculiarly intriguing and irresistible characters – who were so well developed and vividly described they virtually leapt from the page. I eagerly anticipate delving into more engaging and suspenseful tales from this talented scribe.

About the author

Geraldine Hogan was born in Ireland. She gained an Honors Degree in English Literature and Psychology from Dublin City University and a Postgraduate Degree in Training and Management from University College, Galway. She is an Irish award-winning and bestselling author of four contemporary fiction novels under the pen name Faith Hogan.
Silent Night is her first crime novel, her second is due out in December 2019.
She is currently working on her next novel. She lives in the west of Ireland with her husband, four children, and a very busy Labrador named Penny. She’s a writer, reader, enthusiastic dog walker, and reluctant jogger – except of course when it is raining!

 

You can find out more about Geraldine here:
Facebook
Twitter @gerhogan
https://www.instagram.com/faithhoganauthor/

 

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Book Review, Giveaway: In the Heart of Windy Pines by Holly Tierney-Bedord

In the Heart of Windy Pines
by Holly Tierney-Bedord

Amazon US / UK / AU / CA

 

From the author of Kindle Unlimited All-Star winner, Sweet Hollow Women, comes a new novella featuring characters from Murder at Mistletoe Manor, Carnage at the Christmas Party, and The Port Elspeth Jewelry Making Club!

Klarinda Snow is the innkeeper of Mistletoe Manor in beautiful, remote, Windy Pines, Idaho, where she brings her unique brand of hospitality to the tiny mountain town.

When she finds her inn unexpectedly fully booked on a snowy Tuesday night in November, it brings back memories of a tragedy years before. Before she knows what hit her, she and her trusty team of employees (Myrtle, Pierre, and her new night manager, Josephine), have found themselves back at the task of solving another mystery at Mistletoe Manor!

While this book can be enjoyed as a stand-alone novella, if you plan to read the books in the Windy Pines Mystery series or The Port Elspeth Jewelry Making Club, it’s highly recommended you read those first, as this book contains spoilers that could affect your ability to enjoy them.

My Rating:

Favorite Quotes:

 

Stop. Stop with the dad jokes, he silently begged himself as he trudged up the stairs. Like his heartburn and tension headaches, they’d become another constantly recurring infliction he couldn’t shake.

She’d been blonde and plump, only five feet tall, button-nosed and red-cheeked. The poster child for being underestimated.

She had that comfortably, happily hungover feeling that comes with spending time with someone special. When their presence still seems to be a part of you, even a day later.

And, like many an old man who still thought he was young, he fancied himself to be a bit of a Liam Neeson-type of undercover badass. Even when he was just running out to the hardware store for new weedwacker strings, he liked to act as suspiciously as possible.

My Review:

 

This tale was a continuation of the Windy Pines cozy mystery series, and although I have only read one of the previous installments I had no difficulty following the story. The quirky cast of characters including the Barbershop Reindeer Sweater Oldies Quartet carried over and expanded considerably with a new group of rude and oddly behaving guests to Klarinda Snow’s inn, the Mistletoe Manor, and the site of a murder in the last installment, which couldn’t have been good for her business.   Poor Klarinda, stumbling upon a frozen corpse, yet again.

The storylines were slowly built with sudden bursts of significant activity, secrets, and revelations. Clues and clever sparks of amusing levity were randomly disbursed with a few hidden like Easter eggs. The overall tone of this tale was more leaden than the last, due to the malaise and rather dispiriting personal issues the visitors were experiencing prior to and during their stays. To my great relief, the author wisely provided a quickly devised yet satisfactory ending to conclude the story on an upbeat, as I must have my HEA lest I begin filling the air with a tirade of invectives while stamping my little foot in pique, and surely no one wants to see that. 😉

 

About the Author

Holly Tierney-Bedord lives in Madison, Wisconsin. She’s the author of over twenty books including The Woman America Loves a Latte, The Port Elspeth Jewelry Making Club, and Kindle Unlimited All-Star winner Sweet Hollow Women.
For more information or to subscribe to Holly’s newsletter, visit www.hollytierneybedord.com.

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Book Review: Six Steps to Happiness by Suzie Tullett

 

Six Steps to Happiness 

by Suzie Tullett

 

Amazon US / UK / AU / CA / B&N

When Ronnie’s husband, Nick, leaves her for their next-door neighbor, Gaye, Ronnie’s life starts to fall apart.

Devastated by the break-up of her marriage, Ronnie is desperate for Nick and Gaye to set up home elsewhere. But Nick and Gaye won’t budge.

To add to her problems, Ronnie’s daughter and mother-in-law decide to stage an intervention. With her family keeping a close eye on her, Ronnie is forced to become more devious in her actions to get rid of Nick and Gaye.

But just how far will she go?

And is moving on ever that easy?

Six Steps to Happiness is a hilarious look at just how far one woman will go to recover from a broken heart and find happiness again.

My Rating:

Favorite Quotes:

 

That woman does have more neck than a giraffe.

 

“How could you do this to me?” she asked. Staring down at step one, she read the words again: Join a gym… Continuing to stare at the note, Ronnie sighed. The last thing she wanted to do was join the Lycra brigade and start pumping iron.

 

I’d wait until he was so enamoured by my presence, I could tell him I was Vlad the Impaler’s love child and he wouldn’t care.

 

“We’re the three amigos.” “The three musketeers,” Bea said. Ronnie laughed. “More like the three stooges.”

 

She smeared brick number six with cement and squashed her wedding ring into the mixture. “There,” she said, and forcing the whole thing back in place, closed off the last bit of the hole. “Finished.”

  

My Review:

 

This was my first experience with the deft and agile wordsmithing of Suzie Tullett and I am enamored with her crafty scribblings.   Her writing sparkled with deviously clever wit, insightful observations, and humorous descriptions that filled my gray matter with sharp visuals and kept a near-constant smirk on my face.   I adored Ronnie despite her flaws and enjoyed her journey as she schemed and wreaked her vengeance, found her footing, and forged a new identity separate from her ex-husband. For a previous homebody – and to my gleeful amusement – Ronnie seemed destined for one hapless and extremely embarrassing misadventure after another following the shocking betrayal by her worm of a husband.   I enjoyed her evolution and was rooting for her all the way.

Suzie Tullett is an author of contemporary humorous fiction and romantic comedy. She has a Masters Degree in Television & Radio Scriptwriting and worked as a scriptwriter before becoming a full-time novelist. Her motto is ‘live, laugh, love’ and when she’s not busy creating her own literary masterpieces, she usually has her head in someone else’s.

Suzie lives in a tiny hamlet in the middle of the French countryside, along with her husband and two Greek rescue dogs.