Jane Litte's Blog, page 26

Sirius’ Best of 2023 List

As always I am doing my Best of 2023 mostly in no specific order. I remember the years when I could pin point my best of the year book out of the books that I reviewed here at DA, but even that does not always happen. You will also see some books which I gave B too, because my main criteria for the Best of the year list is how well I remember the book and how much I will want to reread it. Of course I will not put C or D books on this list, but sometimes I think about a memorable book with B gra...

REVIEW: The Secret Duchess by Jane Walsh

When the Duke of Stanmere’s will reveals a nasty secret, London Society is shocked—and so is his widow, Joan. Humiliated by the scandal, Joan flees to Inverley in disguise. Surely the quaint seaside town would be the last place anyone would look for a duchess on the run.

After her mother’s remarriage, fashionable spinster Miss Maeve Balfour must make a living with hands whose only labor has been arranging her hair into the latest style. With nowhere to turn and nothing to lose, she persuades m...

REVIEW: Emily Wilde’s Map of the Otherlands by Heather Fawcett

When mysterious faeries from other realms appear at her university, curmudgeonly professor Emily Wilde must uncover their secrets before it’s too late, in this heartwarming, enchanting second installment of the Emily Wilde series.

Emily Wilde is a genius scholar of faerie folklore who just wrote the world’s first comprehensive encyclopaedia of faeries. She’s learned many of the secrets of the Hidden Ones on her adventures . . . and also from her infuriatingly charming fellow scholar Wendell Ba...

REVIEW: Always Remember by Mary Balogh

Dear Mary Balogh,

I’ve been reading your books for ages now. I read everything you release and some of your older books (many of them actually) are on my keeper shelf and are books I go back to again and again. Of course I was going to read Always Remember. I can’t say I wasn’t a bit nervous about it though. It features Lady Jennifer Arden (sister of Luc, the hero from the previous book, Remember Me), who is unable to walk as a result of (apparently) childhood polio*.  As much as I love your bo...

Janine’s Best of 2023 List

I did not read as much as I usually do in 2023, and a lot of the books I read came out in earlier years. Therefore this is a list of the best books I read in 2023 rather than a list of the best 2023 releases I read. For clarity I have included the year of publication after each title.

This year I’m also taking a feature from Kaetrin’s lists and quoting from each of the books, although in my case it isn’t favorite bits I’m quoting, but opening lines. I feel that an opening line should at the ver...

REVIEW: You Only Call When You’re in Trouble by Stephen McCauley

Is it ever okay to stop caring for others and start living for yourself?

After a lifetime of taking care of his impossible but irresistible sister and his cherished niece, Tom is ready to put himself first. An architect specializing in tiny houses, he finally has an opportunity to build his masterpiece—“his last shot at leaving a footprint on the dying planet.” Assuming, that is, he can stick to his resolution to keep the demands of his needy family at bay.

Naturally, that’s when his phone rin...

Review: Hammer and Powder (Seven Brothers book 1) by Megan Derr

The Kingdom of Rinaha is all that stands between the violent, greedy Boorna and the rest of the continent, and they do so by way of their immense and heavily guarded Wall of Gamala, an enormous undertaking that runs the length of the southern end of the continent, standing strong for more than two hundred years.

Maintaining the Wall and the forces that guard it is an expensive undertaking, one that other countries are reluctant to contribute significantly to, despite the fact they benefit great...

REVIEW: The Seamstress of Acadie by Laura Frantz

As 1754 is drawing to a close, tensions between the French and the British on Canada’s Acadian shore are reaching a fever pitch. Seamstress Sylvie Galant and her family–French-speaking Acadians wishing to remain neutral–are caught in the middle, their land positioned between two forts flying rival flags. Amid preparations for the celebration of Noël, the talk is of unrest, coming war, and William Blackburn, the British Army Ranger raising havoc across North America’s borderlands.

As summer tak...

REVIEW: The Island Cottage by Jane Lovering

When Brid Harcus is sent to the Orkney Islands, in the far reaches of Scotland, she has high hopes for her trip being short, straightforward and lucrative.

Her mother has inherited a cottage from her Great Aunt Jennet which has been unlived in and unloved for decades, and the time has come to make it habitable and saleable. Easy, right?

But Midness Cottage has other ideas. For one thing it’s rather more ‘fixer upper’ than Country Living, with a resident goose and her goslings who have made the...

REVIEW: You’ll Do: A History of Marrying for Reasons Other Than Love by Marcia A. Zug

An illuminating and thought-provoking examination of the uniquely American institution of marriage, from the Colonial era through the #MeToo age

Americans hold marriage in such high esteem that we push people toward it, reward them for taking part in it, and fetishize its benefits to the point that we routinely ignore or excuse bad behavior and societal ills in the name of protecting and promoting it.

In eras of slavery and segregation, Blacks sometimes gained white legal status through marr...