Jane Litte's Blog, page 5

REVIEW: In the Shadow of the Ship by Aliette de Bodard

Nightjar, sentient ship and family matriarch, looms large in Khuyên’s past. Disappearances drove teenage Khuyên from it, but death will steer her back.

Now an adult and a magistrate, Khuyên came for her maternal grandmother’s funeral but finds herself unwittingly reliving her past on the decaying Nightjar. Children are still disappearing as her childhood friends once did; and worse, her beloved Cousin Anh vanishes after pleading for her help.

Khuyên sets out to save Anh alongside Thao, a beaut...

REVIEW: Into Unknown Skies: An Unlikely Team, a Daring Race, and the First Flight Around the World by David K. Randall

The unbelievable history of the 1924 race to circumnavigate the globe for the first time by air, a nail-biting contest that pitted underdog US pilots against their better-funded European rivals, created technology that changed aviation, and convinced America that its future was in the sky.

In the early 1920s, America’s faith in aviation was in shambles. Twenty years after the Wright Brothers’ first flight, most Americans believed airplanes were for delivering the mail or performing daredevil ...

Review: Secondhand Skin: A Soulbound Universe Novel by Hailey Turner

Nothing says you can’t steal a heart. Keeping it though? That’s another problem.

Wade Espinoza knows a thing or two about hoards. As a dragon, he’s got plenty. What he doesn’t have is a relationship, and he swears he’s not looking for one. But when he’s sent to Boston to answer a cry for help from another pack, he’s drawn into a mess of fae bargains centered around a selkie who Wade instantly becomes obsessed with.

Riordan Maguire is struggling to keep his selkie clan out of the clutches of a f...

REVIEW: The Other Bridget by Rachael Johns

Content warning: history of/discussion of disordered eating, PTSD, cancer in a secondary character aged 15

Dear Rachael Johns,

I listened to The Other Bridget (narrated by Jane Mahady) in June this year. (I also own the ebook and the paperback – which I even had signed at the recent RWAus conference) as well.) I’m writing this review at the end of August. In June, The Other Bridget was only available to Australian and New Zealand readers. The way to annoy DA readers is to tell them about a great...

REVIEW: A Golden Life by Ginny Kubitz Moyer

Embark on a journey to 1930s California in Ginny Kubitz Moyer’s spellbinding historical novel in which a woman must choose between friendship and her own secrets.

It’s 1938, and twenty-five-year-old secretary Frances Healey is ready for a fresh start. Hoping to forget her painful past, she takes a job working for Hollywood producer Lawrence Merrill. She quickly becomes absorbed in VistaGlen Studios’s biggest project: a movie about Kitty Ridley, the legendary stage actress who disappeared from ...

REVIEW: The Night Before Christmas by Nicola Knight

Felicity Brooks is a bit of a Scrooge—but when she meets a man dressed as a giant penguin on Christmas Eve, could it spell a change of heart?

The ridiculous music. The excessive presents. The stupid Christmas sweaters. Felicity wants nothing more than to escape it all, and she pounces on the chance to work shifts over the holiday season at an animal rescue center. After all, it’s the only place that brings her true happiness.

But one day, her evening is disturbed by a stranger named James—dres...

Review: Board to Death (A Board Game Shop Mystery #1) by C.J. Connor

In a trendy Salt Lake City, Utah, neighborhood, Ben Rosencrantz’s board game shop has become a community hotspot for players of all ages—and for killer collectors.

Back in his hometown of Sugar House, running his family’s board game shop and café, Ben Rosencrantz just can’t seem to get his life to pass go, much less collect $200. Once he was a happily married English professor in Seattle. Now he’s a divorced caregiver, looking after his ill father and a Chihuahua named Beans while still figurin...

Reading List by Jennie for Summer 2024

The Return of Ellie Black by Emiko Jean

Detective Chelsey Calhoun has a complicated personal history. A transracial adoptee (she’s Japanese) whose father was the police chief of a small, very white Washington town, Chelsey experienced racism growing up and felt isolated from her peers. She did, though, have a close relationship with her sister Lydia; close in age, they were almost like twins.

Then, tragedy: Lydia disappeared at age 15, believed to be the victim of a secret boyfriend (he was foun...

REVIEW: Cold Peace: A Novel of the Berlin Airlift, Part I (Bridge to Tomorrow Book 1) by Helena P. Schrader

The economy is broken, the currency worthless, and the Russian bear is hungry.
In the ruins of Hitler’s capital, war heroes and resilient women struggle in the post-war doldrums — until they discover new purpose in defending Berlin’s freedom from Soviet tyranny. When a Russian fighter brings down a British passenger plane, the world teeters on the brink of World War Three. The first battle of the Cold War is about to begin.

Based on historical events, award-winning novelist Helena P. Schrader ...

REVIEW: The Christmas You Found Me by Sarah Morgenthaler

Sienna Naples’s family has taken care of their wild Idaho land for generations and Sienna can’t imagine any other life. But at Christmastime, with her parents gone and her painful marriage finally over, it’s full of memories…and incredibly lonely. Until a tall, handsome stranger and a little girl walk into her life and suddenly the holidays are alive again.

When single father Guy Maple shows up as the result of an ad meant to be a joke, the handsome Montana construction worker isn’t joking. M...