Jane Litte's Blog, page 162

Jayne’s Best of 2019

This year I didn’t have as many A reads as I did last year but these B+ books are strong ones that almost made it. My list ranges from historical to contemporary, has fiction and non-fiction, and even a picture book of cats. In kinda, sorta chronological order in which I read them, more or less, here goes.

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When You Read This by Mary Adkins

My Review

Iris Massey is gone.
But she’s left something behind.

For four years, Iris Massey worked side by side with PR maven Smith Simonyi, helping...

REVIEW: Breath of Christmas by Linda Mooney

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After being gone for months, there’s nothing like being home for Christmas. Although Brindle has no family there to welcome her back, and the little town has grown since she left, it’s still home to her and exactly where she wants to be in these final days. With a little help from a generous stranger full of the Christmas spirit, the holiday is sure to be perfect for Brindle. Full of love and memories, both old and new. She just prays she’s able to enjoy it before she runs out of time and...

REVIEW: All Seated on the Ground by Connie Willis

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The aliens have landed! The aliens have landed! But instead of shooting death rays, taking over the planet and carrying off Earthwomen, they’ve just been standing there for months on end, glaring like a disapproving relative. And now it’s nearly Christmas, and the commission assigned to establish communications is at their wits’ end. They’ve resorted to taking the aliens to Broncos games, lighting displays, and shopping malls, in the hope they’ll respond to something!

And they do, but in a...

REVIEW: Roots of Evil (MerryChurch Mysteries #2) by K.C. Wells

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Many consider Naomi Teedle the village witch. Most people avoid her except when they have need of her herbs and potions. She lives alone on the outskirts of Merrychurch, and that’s fine by everyone—old Mrs. Teedle is not the most pleasant of people. But when she is found murdered, her mouth bulging with her own herbs and roots, suddenly no one has a bad word to say about her. Jonathon de Mountford is adjusting to life up at the manor house, but it’s not a solitary life: pub landlord Mike...

REVIEW: Captain Kempton’s Christmas by Jayne Davis

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Lieutenant Philip Kempton and Anna Tremayne fall in love during one idyllic summer fortnight. When he’s summoned to rejoin his ship, Anna promises to wait for him.

While he’s at sea, she marries someone else.

Now she’s widowed and he’s Captain Kempton. When they meet again, can they put aside betrayal and rekindle their love?

A sweet second-chance Christmas novella.

Dear Ms. Davis,

I seem to have the British Navy, Regencies, and Christmas on my mind so your book seemed to leap out at me...

REVIEW: Candle’s Christmas Chair by Jude Knight

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When Viscount Avery comes to see an invalid chair maker, he does not expect to find Min Bradshaw, the woman who rejected him 3 years earlier. Or did she? He wonders if there is more to the story. For 3 years, Min Bradshaw has remembered the handsome guardsman who courted her for her fortune. She didn’t expect to see him in her workshop, and she certainly doesn’t intend to let him fool her again.

Dear Ms. Knight,
After enjoying the trade/aristocracy novella “Lord Calne’s Christmas Ruby”...

REVIEW: The Flatshare by Beth O’Leary

Dear Beth O’Leary,

I read your debut contemporary two weeks ago, a book I think many DA readers would like. It’s an epistolary romance called The Flatshare.

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Tiffy Moore needs to move out of her cheating ex-boyfriend’s apartment, but can’t afford the rent in London. So when she stumbles on an ad seeking a flatmate for a one-bedroom apartment, at the very affordable rent of only 300 pounds, she’s encouraged. Until she notices the catch. She will have the apartment from evening to morning,...

REVIEW: Regency Royal Navy Christmas by Carla Kelly

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Even the squared away, efficient Royal Navy must surrender to the joys and misadventures of a Regency Christmas. Four stories shine a light on Christmas during the Napoleonic Wars on land and sea –

In Boxing the Compass, a homesick frigate captain shepherding a convict convoy to Australia wants nothing more than to hold his infant daughter in faraway England. Perhaps he can enlist a prickly pair of convicts with a new baby to help him.

Wait Here for the Present, finds a spinster, chafing...

REVIEW: Summer by Edith Wharton

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If I recall correctly, I’ve read just two Edith Wharton books: Ethan Frome and The House of Mirth. I recently reread synopses of the plots of these books to refresh my memory, and confirmed that they were both as depressing as I had recalled. Well written and compelling, but very sad. I gave The House of Mirth an A and Ethan Frome a B. Summer is set in New England, like Ethan Frome (apparently the only two of Wharton’s books with that setting and also rare in that neither depict New York’s...

REVIEW: Nine Goblins by T. Kingfisher

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When a party of goblin warriors find themselves trapped behind enemy lines, it’ll take more than whining (and a bemused Elven veterinarian) to get them home again.

Nine Goblins is a novella of low…very low…fantasy.

Dear Ms. Kingfisher,

I love this novella. Really, really love it. The cover is wonderful, the blurb is great (and what made me want to read it), it has goblins, elves, trolls, wizards, skeletal deer, a stuffed teddy bear who has better tactical ideas than goblin officers, and a...