The Secret Keepers by Trenton Lee Stewart

Benedict Society fans rejoice! This new book from Trenton Lee Stewart introduces new characters  who feel familiar and the writing is like a cozy blanket, recognizable and comforting. There were some rough spots but overall an enjoyable story.
Reuben is a boy who lives in a neighborhood ruled by The Smoke through the man's group The Directions, four men who  collect bribes to keep the neighborhood safe, mostly from them. He avoids thinking about his neighborhood life and how life for he and his mother has changed, gotten harder. Instead, he does a version of parkour, exploring the abandoned buildings around him. But then, he discovers a mysterious watch, one that enables him to turn invisible. A treasure The Smoke will do anything to get ahold of.
So Reuben will need help. He tracks down the family of the man who used to own the watch, more specifically, he finds Penelope, "Penny". Penny is related to another Penelope, one who was an adventuress (but not in the romance novel sense, a woman after someone's money, no- she is a female who had adventures. At least, until she disappeared). Apparently, Penny's family has stayed in the same lighthouse for generations, just waiting until the day that they will be able to find out what happened to the first Penelope and what she hid in the smugglers tunnels.
With The Directions quickly tracking Reuben, he and Penny and her brother Jack will have to work hard and fast in order to stay out of the hands of The Smoke.

Three and a half stars
This book comes out September 27

Comics Confidential by Leonard S. Marcus

I think you might really have to be into graphic novels to enjoy this book. I got it on a whim, not having read lot of nonfiction books at the time and was a little disappointed by the format. This is a book where it's a series of questions and answers rather than essays written by the artists themselves.
A nice look into the world of graphic novels and the people who create them, but a little hard to read since it doesn't really flow. It was really nice to see examples of the artists work and I'll probably still go look some of them up online or find more of their books. IT also seemed like a nice cross-section of artists.

Three Stars
This book comes out September 27

Timmy Failure: The Book You're Not Supposed to Have by Stephan Pastis

This was a weird and wacky book. I quickly realized (once I started reading) that I was coming into a series in the middle. While I was quickly able to jump into the story, I did wish I had the background from the first four books to help clear up some of the mysteries-- is that a real polar bear? or a stuffed animal a la Calvin and Hobbes? Why doesn't Timmy like Doorman Dave? Why doesn't Timmy seem to actually encounter very many mysteries if he's a detective?
I really enjoyed this book. I'm pretty sure I had no idea what was going on for most of it but enjoyed the ride all the same.

This book comes out September 27
Four stars

Home with My Sisters by Mary Carter

There were times when the writing was rough and the story didn't quite hold together in all the places, but this was overall a book that gave me some warm feels.
The book opens with an elderly woman revealing to her neighbor that her cancer is going to cause her death, probably before the new year. Then, she tells him that she has three granddaughters, about whom he's never known. And she wants them to come for Christmas. In order to get them there, he's to tell them that they will inherit her estate. And it's a pretty big chunk of change.
Hope is ecstatic. She's been trying to get her sisters together for the holidays for years. Her older sister Faith took off pregnant at seventeen and left them to the dubious care of their mother. The youngest sister, Joy, is flighty and also isn't talking to Hope at the moment. Hope is just trying to ride out the holidays so she can break up with her boyfriend when neighbor Michael appears on her doorstep. Well, not exactly her doorstep, at the shelter where she works. After having just taken in a bloodhound.
The three of them are off (since Hope's boyfriend decides to break up with her, Merry Christmas! (she's actually very relieved)) to find Joy. She's panhandling with her boyfriend but Hope and Michael are able to follow her and her boyfriend to the boyfriend's mother's apartment where Joy is at first reluctant to come up to visit their grandmother, but then learns of the money and decides to come along. And the portrayal of Joy was problematic. She was painted as being perceived as money-grubbing by her sisters, but we were supposed to be seeing her in this different light because of a side she wasn't showing them. And frankly, the money-grubbing was way more apparent than the other.
And Faith, the oldest, shows up with her two children, even though she was supposed to spend one last holiday playing Happy Families with her husband. It seems he caught her cheating and their marriage is about to be kaput. Faith was also a character that was difficult to like, since she is so concerned with staying thin and fit and not at all concerned about her children, barely even noticing that her son is on the verge of committing suicide.
There are some major themes in this book like suicide, mental illness, and racism (Joy's boyfriend is black) but many of them are dealt with rather perfunctorily -- here's a problem, it's bad, now we've fixed it. The swiftness of it bothered me but somehow the book overall charmed me.

This book comes out September 27
Three and a half stars

That Mistletoe Moment --Anthology

A Boyfriend by Christmas by Cat Johnson
Noelle has been dating the boy next door, George, for the past five years. This Thanksgiving, she's sure that he's going to propose. Probably at Christmas. But that doesn't stop her from checking out the cute guy who has the last two bags of cranberries and offers her one. And then her boyfriend announces that he really doesn't ever see them getting married. So she breaks up with him. Too bad her family is pressuring her so much to get married. Good news, her sister has gotten her a trial for this new app that lets you pretend that you have a boyfriend. You can great photos, get texts, and just go along your merry way. Except that Noelle accidentally texted  cute grocery guy instead of the app.
Nathan is totally fine with that. He's not even weirded out that a woman he met once is inviting her to her family's Christmas Eve party. They figure out the mistake pretty fast and then hop into bed. And then into love.

Two and a half stars

All I Want for Christmas... by Kate Angell
Daniel Hayes is a super-rich guy who employs a personal shopper. Well, he used to but she fell in love with him and it ended up being an issue. So now he's down to three interviewees.  And because of the last gal, he only wants women who are in a relationship. So Riley uses the app. Then she finds out each of the candidates is going to buy him a gift and the one who chooses best will be the woman he hires. Okay. What is this premise? Then pile a snowstorm where they get caught together... Oh, and Riley is all "Christmas, Yay!" and melts his frozen heart. yay.

Two stars

Her Favorite Present by Allyson Charles
Oh. And then there's the owner of the app. The one who thinks that all of his clients are losers. The one whose best friend and other employees dare him to meet one of their clients and see if he still thinks they're losers. So he meets this girl, under false pretenses, has whiplash changing his mind but then has to convince her that he's in love.
Ick.
This might have been a better story if we had seen more character development that just isn't available in an anthology.

Two stars.

Overall Two stars
This book comes out September 27

Christmas at Designers’ Homes Across America by Katharine Kaye McMillan & Patricia Hart McMillan

Do NOT buy this as an ebook. The font is small and the pictures are often hard to see on a small screen. I have a feeling that this is stunning as a coffee-table book though, of course, I can't judge it that way at the moment.
Was this book good? It was interesting. I really enjoyed voyeur-ing into peoples Christmas homes. And these homes were beautiful. Just perfectly prepped for the holidays.
What are the other reasons for only three stars? There are a lot of adjectives in this book. A lot. A LOT. And I get that a design book needs adjectives but it feels like someone sat down with a thesaurus and then regurgitated it. Also, not all of the pics are Christmas-y. There's a small percentage that are just home pictures. Is that to show that not every inch of a designer's home is decorated? I'm just not sure.

This book comes out September 28
Three and a half stars

The Trouble with Mistletoe by Jill Shalvis

Okay, the first book in this series, though by one of my favorite authors, just wasn't up to Ms. Shalvis' usual level of snuffiness. And I have to admit, the preview for this book wasn't making me any less nervous about the series. In the preview, we learned that Willa Davis, pet shop owner, was to be the next heroine. And her hero? A guy who had stood her up in high school (duh duh duh duh) and doesn't remember her now (duh duh DUH!) Too bad he needs her help. She'd refuse but she's nicer than me and has a soft heart for the kitty that Keane is watching for his sick great-aunt.
The dance between these two was fantastic. And when Keane told Willa that he didn't want to save her <swoon>.
And then.
And then.
One last Big Misunderstanding. I am NOT understanding this misstep by Shalvis. It is just so ham-handed and one of the characters seems to completely step off the path that s/he had been moving in. And then there was ANOTHER little misunderstanding. Like, why? why? So disappointing. It immediately dropped the book down from 4 1/2 to 3 1/2 stars. There's a lot of time before this book hits the shelves and I'm hoping a good editor will fix this before the book actually comes out (I read the book in May).

Three and a half stars
This book comes out September 27