No review today so I can focus on watching 2020 in the rearview mirror and look ahead to a fresh year. May your New Year’s celebration be safe and fun, and may 2021 be far better for you than you can even imagine.
Be sure to stop by on Saturday when I will post my favorite books from 2020! See you then.
[I received a free electronic review copy of this book from Netgalley and St. Martin’s Press/Griffin in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.]
When Everly’s 30th birthday starts with finding her boyfriend in the middle of cheating on her, it’s just another in a string of awful birthdays and disappointing life moments. But when the story accidentally gets broadcast at her job on the radio, she realizes it’s time for some changes in her life. Her friend Stacey helps her come up with the Ten Rules for Faking It – ways to push herself out of her comfort zone and build the life she wants.
Chris is Everly’s boss, so his intense attraction to her has to be kept in check. With his dad’s ultimatum about Chris’s future with the company, and the key role the radio station plays, he can’t afford any distractions. He has to push the station to a new, more profitable level.
While Chris’ dad sees the debacle of Everly’s birthday story going out on the air as grounds to fire Everly and Stacey both, Chris sees things differently. First, he doesn’t want to fire either of the women. Aside from his feelings for Everly, both women are great at their jobs. Plus, the “debacle” has turned into ratings and social media gold for the station. This isn’t a crisis, but an opportunity. They can leverage the attention Everly’s birthday disaster has garnered to boost ratings and ad revenue.
Chris develops a plan to build a Bachelorette-style segment for Everly based on listener feedback. She chooses some dates, writes social media posts about how they go, and the public gets to vote on who Everly should see again. It’s a good idea – for the show and for Stacey’s and Everly’s careers. But Everly is going to need every one of her new Rules for Faking It to get through it.
This was so fun! I loved Everly from the start. Her relationship with Stacey is lovely, despite the rocky birthday situation. And her chemistry with Chris is excellent.
The Bachelorette dates were a smaller part of the story than I expected. I’ve read similar plots before, and the dates are usually a bigger factor. I loved that they weren’t here. It was obvious from the start that Chris and Everly belonged together. The question was how they would pull that off or if Everly would settle for someone else rather than push through the obstacles in her relationship with Chris. So the focus is more on Everly and her list and her personal growth, and that was just right for me.
There’s an inside joke in “Romancelandia” that readers latch onto any and every secondary character, demanding they all get their own book. This story is a perfect example of that. Whether it’s Stacey, or Chris’ siblings, or the friend with the bakery, if the author decides to turn this into a series with these characters, I am here for every single spin-off book!
Romance fans should not miss this one. It’s a terrific slow-burn with excellent characters and a story that kept me turning pages almost from start to finish. (Language, sexual references, TW: anxiety, panic attack)
*♥♥♥♥½ = I loved it! Would re-read.
[I received a free electronic review copy of this book from Netgalley and Kensington in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.]
Josie Way is on the run. She had a job at the Library of Congress in Washington DC. But something happened there, and now she’s in Wilfred, Oregon, determined to lay low. She’s been hired as the town librarian. But when she gets to Wilfred, she finds out that the library may get torn down to make way for a retreat center.
After only a few days at the library and in Oregon, Josie feels like she is finally where she belongs. The air is fresher, and colors even seem more vibrant. She has an almost magical connection to the library and its collection of books, not to mention the library cat. Josie doesn’t want to walk away from this special place.
But she can’t forget she’s in hiding. And the dead body she finds near the library is unsettling to say the least. Does it have anything to do with the trouble Josie is fleeing? Or does Josie’s new home have sinister troubles of its own?
This is the first book in the new Witch Way Librarian Mystery series, and it is outstanding! The author does a breathtaking job teasing out the story in the early chapters – Josie on the run, the experience on the plane, the change in her perception. Talk about “show, don’t tell.” I was hooked right from the beginning, marveling out loud to my husband about how well crafted the beginning of this book is.
That early high quality carried throughout the whole book – the library, the town, the story of Josie’s life back in DC, her family, the library situation. It was all so well woven together. I loved every bit of it! The mystery is well-constructed, with nice wrinkles and twists along the way.
For me, this was a perfect blend of mystery and fantasy. I love both genres and enjoyed how the author weaves both together. I can’t wait to see what will happen with Josie’s magic in book 2. Seven-Year Witch is scheduled to release in late summer 2021. And I can’t wait to get my hands on it! Paranormal mystery fans should not miss this one! (Magic elements: spells, powers, transfer of consciousness to the cat, tarot cards used as prop by nonmagical character)
*♥♥♥♥♥ = Outstanding!
While Uncle Budrick enjoys being a traveling troubadour, Max would rather be a knight. When Max and Budrick visit Byjovia – Uncle Budrick’s home – they discover that the kind king is presumed dead and his evil brother has taken over. But thanks to some new friends, Max – and the Midknights – might be able to save the day.
This was PURE FUN! I loved the whole story. The characters are delightful. The humor is pitch perfect – funny without beating you over the head with gags. The pacing of the story was excellent – every so often there was a new challenge and a new opportunity or friend.
If there’s a “message” to the story it’s that gender or family history shouldn’t force you into any role. Even though Max is a girl, she should get to train as a knight if that’s what she wants. And if her friend wants to be a writer instead of working with horses like his dad, so be it. But really, the message is secondary to the fun story full of magic and creatures and challenges and chances to be heroic.
I can’t say enough about how much I loved this book. Book 2, Battle of the Bodkins, is out now. Why not pick up both and check them out?!
*♥♥♥♥♥=Outstanding! Amazing! Special!
Here’s our final release week of December – and it is chock full of reading goodness! Take a look.
My Very Favorite Book in the Whole Wide World – A kid who doesn’t like reading has to find his “favorite book” for a school assignment.
Flying High: The Story of Gymnastics Champion Simone Biles – Picture book biography.
Fairylight Friends: Time to Shine – Book 2 in the Fairylight Friends early chapter book series from the folks at Scholastic ACORN. Enjoy 5 magical winter stories with friends Ruby, Iris and Pip.
Julie and the Phantoms: The Edge of Great (Novelization) – The Season 1 novelization of the new Netflix show about a girl who is about to be kicked out of her performing arts school when she starts a new band – with three ghosts. This sounds amazing! I have heard great things about the show.
Otto P. Nudd – When a beloved neighborhood inventor is in trouble, a girl, her favorite bird Otto, and a mother squirrel will team up to save the day. This looks darling!
Wings of Fire: The Dark Secret (Graphic Novel) – The graphic novel version of the 4th book in the original Wings of Fire series.
Show Me History: Harriet Tubman Fighter for Freedom (Graphic Novel) – Graphic novel biography of Harriet Tubman.
What Is the Civil Rights Movement?
Black Canary: Breaking Silence – Book 5 in the DC Icons series after Wonder Woman: Warbringer, Batman: Nightwalker, Catwoman: Soulstealer, and Superman: Dawnbreaker (♥♥♥). An origin story for Dinah Lance. (This story stands apart from the story about Black Canary in the middle grade graphic novel Black Canary: Ignite.) Growing up in the oppressive Gotham City under the rule of the patriarchal Court of Owls, Dinah has never forgotten the time as a child she heard the voice of a woman singing, something forbidden in Gotham. She wonders what it might mean for the city if women could start using their voices. I am very excited about this one! I’ve enjoyed the Icons series.
Just Our Luck – Even though family history says that the Paros family cursed his family, Leo agrees to Evey Paros’ offer to sign him up for a hot yoga class (instead of the self-defense his dad wants him to take) in exchange for a favor. This sounds fun!
Absence of Alice (Mass Market Paperback) – Book 9 in the Sarah Winston Garage Sale Mystery series. Sarah’s landlady is kidnapped, and the kidnappers have contacted Sarah with their list of demands.
Amish Secrets (Mass Market Paperback) – Book 3 in the River Haven series. When her wealthy new employer faces unusual accidents, Rachel reaches out to the only person she can with her suspicions that the woman is in danger.
Bait and Witch (Mass Market Paperback) – First in the new Witch Way Librarian Mystery series. A librarian hiding out in Oregon waiting to be the star witness in a corruption case discovers her family history of magic as well as discovering a body in the woods. I’ll be reviewing this one soon.
A Catered Book Club Murder (Hardcover) – Book 16 in the Mystery with Recipes series. When their friend doesn’t pick up the elaborate desserts they made for her monthly book club, Bernie and Libby are concerned. They start sleuthing when she is found dead.
Chilled to the Cone (Mass Market Paperback) – Book 12 in the Bakeshop Mystery series. Jules has the chance to open a pop up ice cream shop, but the death of an eccentric town favorite throws everything into disarray.
Fairy Godmothers, Inc. (Trade Paperback) – When the magic of Ever After, Missouri – which is powered by love – starts to dwindle, the three fairy godmothers in charge decide to turn Ever After into a premiere wedding destination. Their first task is to ask their goddaughter to promote a fake wedding to her ex. This sounds so fun! I’ll be reviewing this one soon.
Love at the Icicle Cafe (Trade Paperback) – Mina heads to Germany to facilitate a quick sale of her parents’ cafe, but an encounter with her childhood crush – Scott, the cafe’s chef who wants to buy their parents out – threatens to put an end to those plans.
Swine and Punishment (e-book, December 31) – Book 7 in the Bought-the-Farm Mystery series. When Ivy’s sow is the prime suspect for the latest murder in Clover Grove, her sheepdog Keats is all in to help solve the mystery even though there is no love lost between the dog and the pig. This series sounds so fun!
Ten Rules for Faking It (Trade Paperback) – After a string of bad luck, Everly find herself in the middle of a Bachelorette-style dating situation and the possibility of a relationship with her boss and long-time crush. She hardly knows what to do with all of this attention when she usually strives to avoid people as much as possible. I’ll be reviewing this one soon. I can’t wait!
To Fetch a Felon (Mass Market Paperback) – First in the new Chatty Corgi Mystery series. (How cute is that cover?!) Emma and her talking corgi, Oliver, leave the fast pace of London to settle in Cornwall and open a tea shop. But the woman who owns the building Emma wants to rent is difficult to say the least. When Emma later finds the woman dead, she and Oliver start playing detective. I’ll be reviewing this one soon!
A Wicked Yarn (Mass Market Paperback) – First in a new Craft Fair Knitters Mystery series. Lia and the Ninth Street Knitters dig into the death of the man who was determined to dismantle their spring craft fair. I’ll be reviewing this one soon as well.
The Case for Keto: Rethinking Weight Control and the Science and Practice of Low-Carb/High Fat Eating – An exploration of the health benefits of a low-carb, high-fat diet. You can read my review here.
Teach Reading with Orton-Gillingham: 72 Classroom-Ready Lessons to Help Struggling Readers and Students with Dyslexia Learn to Love Reading (Professional Book, paperback) – Materials for teachers wanting to incorporate Orton-Gillingham methods into their classrooms.
Win the Day: 7 Daily Habits to Help You Stress Less & Accomplish More (Hardcover) – I wouldn’t expect a productivity and goal-reaching book from pastor and speaker Mark Batterson, yet, here is just that. A spiritual self-help resource. I have liked some of Batterson’s previous work. I’ll be checking this one out.
No review to post today so that I can take some time to enjoy a birthday/holiday week with my family.
If you celebrate Christmas, I hope the coming days are a cozy, sweet season for you with loved ones near and on Zoom.
If you do not celebrate Christmas, I hope any December celebrations you have experienced or are experiencing are a comfort to you as 2020 comes to a close.
[I received a free electronic review copy of this book from Netgalley and Crooked Lane Books in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.]
Their friend, Kurt Kendrick, hosted a party for Amy and Richard to celebrate their upcoming wedding. It was a lovely event with good food and fine champagne. Both sets of parents were there as well as Amy’s mysterious brother, and many of their friends. There was also an art dealer there by the name of Oscar Selvaggio. He and Kurt were bidding against one another on a rare book, and he happened to show up on the day of the party to try to negotiate with Kurt over the book.
That was unfortunate for the happy couple because before the party was over, Oscar was dead.
Thanks to Kurt’s shady history, he is a prime suspect. But Amy feels if Kurt had really wanted to kill someone, he’d be too smart to have the person die on his own property. But there are other suspects and plenty of researching and sleuthing Amy can do. Kurt is her friend. And the best way to protect her friends and family is to help the police find the real murderer.
This is book 5 in the great Blue Ridge Library Mystery series that definitely should be read in order. I enjoy the characters in this series so much. While book 3 felt uneven to me, and I somehow missed book 4, this felt like the great series I loved from the first two books. The mystery here is layered and twisty. It adds to the history of Kurt’s mysterious past. It also ties back to some of the other events from earlier in the series, which is why I wouldn’t recommend newcomers start with this book.
I enjoyed the inclusion of Amy’s brother, Scott, here. He’s a bit of a plot tease because we never get a full reveal on what his job truly is. But I liked the addition of him to the core group. His love interest gives me hope that he’s going to make an appearance in future books.
Fans of this series should not miss this volume. The wedding-related pieces are lovely and satisfying for series fans. The author does a great job balancing the wedding threads with the mystery ones and keeping everything moving forward. Cozy fans should give this series a try! (LGBTQ+)
*♥♥♥♥=Great! Might re-read.
[I received an electronic review copy of this book from Netgalley and Knopf in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.]
This is an exploration and defense of low carbohydrate, high fat eating, often called “Keto.” The author is not a doctor, which surprised me at first, but instead he is a health and science journalist. The research in this book is top notch. There’s a lot of history regarding health, nutrition, and obesity here. The endnotes and citations were thorough.
The general premise is that obesity and diabetes as well as other health issues continue to rise even though we have had decades of “eat less, move more” advice. That doesn’t work for all body types. Some schools of thought are reluctant to remove any food group from consumption in an effort to remain “balanced.” But if a particular category of foods – high carbohydrate ones, for example – are causing the problems, it would make sense to eliminate them.
The author makes a couple analogies with smoking, alcohol/drug addiction, and allergies, which I found convincing and helpful. We don’t consider abstinence a “deprivation” if the thing someone abstains from is something they are allergic to or something they are addicted to. Thinking of carbohydrates that way can be helpful for those whose bodies would thrive without them. Following a ketogenic lifestyle to address a metabolic disorder is a way of living, not something you try for awhile before going back to “normal.” You would never recommend an alcoholic celebrate a sobriety milestone with a glass of champagne. If carbohydrates are problematic for a particular individual, they always will be problematic.
This is a dense, technical resource. I was probably not the right audience for this as a consumer. I did a lot of skimming in the early chapters. Still, I found the later chapters on what to eat and what to avoid most helpful along with the anecdotes from people interviewed for the book. Professionals – dietitians, medical professionals – are probably the proper audience for this book. If someone was curious about following a ketogenic diet, this would not be the resource I would hand them for their introduction.
That said, there was a lot here that I found fascinating about obesity, about research methods, and about ketogenic eating. I would highly recommend this for professionals, but I would probably steer the general public to one of the author’s other books (The Case Against Sugar, maybe) or to a different resource that explores a ketogenic diet in a less technical way.
*♥♥♥ = Good/fine/solid
It is a truth universally acknowledged that the middle school years are some of the toughest years of childhood. Hormones, friend drama, and family issues converge with academic stress and bullies and extreme self-consciousness. For the girls at Fisher Middle School, one of the added stressors is the dress code.
A few members of the school administration take the dress code very seriously. In fact, recently, one of Molly’s friends was humiliated by the dress coding practices at the school. And, since the principal had used the dress code as the criteria for a year-end camping trip for the 8th graders, he cancelled the trip and blamed the girl, which made many of the other kids turn on her without the full story.
Molly has plenty of her own middle school drama to deal with. Her brother’s vaping has gotten so out of control that her mom quit her job so she could supervise him more closely. This means money is super tight for things like a camping trip or a graduation dress that meets the dress code. But Molly refuses to let her friend take the fall for the camping trip – or let anyone else be humiliated by the dress code policies at school. So Molly starts a podcast. And soon everyone is talking about the dress code.
I was simultaneously horrified and delighted by this dress code story. The stories told in Molly’s podcast were so upsetting! But I was cheering the students on the whole time as they were brave and shared their stories. I loved that Molly refused to back down because she was going to graduate and move onto high school where no one enforced the dress code. She could not abandon her 7th grade friends or the next classes moving up. Her passion was inspiring.
The other threads here – vaping, family strife, friend drama, crushes, etc. – filled in around the dress code story. It was realistic in that the dress code obviously would not be the only thing going on in Molly’s life. I enjoyed the dress code story so much, though, that these other things – especially the vaping – felt at times like distractions. But the main thread got to be the main focus in the end. And all the pieces together helped Molly find and use her voice, both at school and at home. And I love a good story about a character finding her voice!
This would be a great story for young activists as well as for talking about dress codes, body shaming, sexism, puberty, and the rest. Young podcasters might also enjoy reading about how Molly uses her podcast to elevate the voices of the voiceless. Don’t miss this one! (LGBTQ+ and disability representation in the larger cast, TW: Bullying)
*♥♥♥♥=Great! Might re-read.
Not many new releases on my list this week, but you can see them here.
Curls (Board Book) – Four friends celebrate their different and beautiful hair styles.
Trouble at Table 5: I Can’t Feel My Feet (Early Chapter Book) – Book 4 in the Trouble at Table 5 series. Rosie, Molly, and Simon look for ways to keep their feet warm on the walk to school.
Franken-Sci High: The Good, the Bad, and the Accidentally Evil (Middle Grade) – Book 6 in the Franken-Sci High series about a school for mad scientists. Newton travels to the future where his friend has become accidentally evil. How have I never heard of this series before?
Super Easy Teen Cookbook (Teen/YA) – Recipes that don’t require prior cooking experience to prepare.
Crown of Strength (e-book, December 26) – Book 3 in the Hidden Mage series. Verene and Darius will have to deal with the rift between them if they want to have any hope of protecting the Academy and uniting the kingdom.
Rhubarb Pie Before You Die (e-book) – Book 2 in the Garlic Farm Mystery series. App developer Mabel Skinner is hoping to sell off the farm she inherited – Stinkin’ Stuff Farm. But when she finds the body of a local rhubarb farmer, dead in his green house after they had a disagreement over grass clippings, she starts sleuthing before someone decides she’s the culprit. This series sounds fun!
