Must Love Familiars by R.E. Butler

This book was a really interesting mix of super sweet and innocent (yucky, make out, etc.) and sort of dirty (the sex is open door.) It took me awhile to get into the story but I'm really glad that I got to the end where I read about the publishers. This particular book may not have really resonated with me but I love what they are trying to do. 
It took me awhile to get into the book because a lot of the beginning sentences were so simple so there were a lot of stoppers. And there was a LOT of world building in there. But it was an interesting story between a vampire and a witch. He's a sheriff and she is in charge of the local shelter. And this particular shelter is for familiars only. I wish we had seen more of the shelters and the adoption process; there were no successes only one failure though that failure was well explained.

Three stars

This book came out February 1st, 2021

eBook borrowed from CloudLibrary

Opinions are my own

Hopcross Jilly by Patricia Briggs

This book focuses a little bit more on Jesse Hauptman though parts still are told from Mercedes "Mercy" Thompson's point of view. It is a nice addition to the Mercy Thompson series but I wouldn't suggest reading it unless you've read other books in the series.
Mercy and a pack of wolves discover a skeleton one night while they are out hunting. It turns out that there are actually four skeletons, pointing in the four cardinal directions. And as the police come in and start looking, those aren't the only four.
At the same time, Jesse is being ostracized at school because of her relationship with the wolf pack. But there is one new girl, Jillian, who seems interested in being her friend.  But she's just a little odd herself and Jesse isn't sure she's a friend worth having.

Three and a half stars

This book came out July 10th, 2015

Hard copy of mine

Opinions are my own

His Burial Too by Catherine Aird

Well. This was an odd one. We meet a young lady, just back from being a nanny in Italy, whose father was out all night. And he is discovered, somewhat incongruously, under a statute that was being moved in a nearby church. In comes Inspector Sloan.
As it seems is usual for Aird, the suspect ends up being someone who seems to be a secondary character but she starts to drop BIG clues as the story ends. If you can remember who everyone is. That can be hard to track in an audio book but I still enjoyed listening.

Three stars

Follows A Late Phoenix

Followed by Slight Mourning

This book came out 1969

Borrowed from Audible

Opinions are my own

The Stately Home Murder by Catherine Aird

This was an interesting beginning, following a group of tourists as they tour a "stately home". We learn about the history of the house and the family that owns it. The tour ends when a precocious child discovers a body stuffed into a body of armor. 
It turns out to be the family archivist who was on the verge of proving that the current lord of the manner shouldn't be in there at ll. But was that the reason he was killed?
The solution on this one was a little unfairly clued until the very end but I love Aird's word choice. Short stories tightly told.

Three stars

Follows Henrietta Who

Followed A Late Phoenix

This book came out 1969

Borrowed from Audible

Opinions are my own

The Lady's Guide to Celestial Mechanics by Olivia Waite

It took me a long time to warm to Lucy and Catherine. I almost DNF'd this book several times but finally made it through the first part of the story. There are so many blogs and podcasts that were singing the praises of this book that I guess I expected more from the beginning. But once we really started seeing the two fall in love and each getting to spread their wings in her own way. Did the last Big Misunderstanding need to happen? Not really. But the middle part of the book, seeing the Countess of Moth, an amazing embroidery artist, fall in love with a woman who looks at the stars, was finally the story that I had been expecting.

Three stars

Followed by The Care and Feeding of Waspish Widows

This book came out

Hard copy I didn't keep

Opinions are my own

The Nursing Home Murder by Ngaio Marsh

When one of the most powerful men in the land dies on a surgical table, it shouldn't automatically be labeled as a murder. But when his wife insists on an autopsy... and he's found to have been poisoned, Inspector Roderick Alleyn is called in. There is, of course, no shortage of suspects. The man's wife was a chilly woman who didn't love him, his sister pushed patent medicines on him, there was the young woman he had seduced and her potential husband (both at the operating table), as well as at least one radical who disagreed with the man's politics.
The solution wasn't exactly fairly clued but it wasn't completely out of left field either. An interesting book with just a few too many red herrings.

Three stars

Follows Enter a Murderer

Followed by Death in Ecstasy

This book came out in 1935

Borrowed as an ebook from Libby

Opinions are my own

The Murder at Mandeville Hall by Stephanie Laurens

Alaric, Lord Carradale, is finally ready to settle down. He doesn't want to spread the news because it means that he will be inundated with "help" from his three sisters. While he is a wolf of the ton, right now, no one knows the extent of his family fortune. God forbid the matchmaking mamas start to look into him if and, if he even hints that he might be looking at marriage, they will dig and they will start pushing their daughters at him.
He's at Mandeville Hall to show up at the house party his friend Percy throws every year but he's not ready to partake of the licentiousness as usual. Instead, he plans to retire to his own home at the end of every evening. But when he comes back after the first day, he discovers a body.
Miss Constance Whittaker has been sent by her grandfather to retrieve her cousin from a house party that is known to be rather... licentious. But she arrives too late; her cousin is dead. And Alaric is cradling her body. But she doesn't think that he is the one who killed her. Instead, she decides to team up with him to figure out what is going on. Unfortunately, there is another murder and Scotland Yard needs to be called in. As this is a titled group of people, of course, Inspector Stokes and Barnaby Adair are called in to help figure out what is going on.
This book mainly focuses on Constance and Alaric which is good for seeing their relationship grow but won't be good for the people used to seeing Barnaby and Penelope in the middle of the action. And the mystery wraps up early with a heavy romance on the romance for the rest of the book.

Three stars

Follows Confounding Case of the Carisbrook Emeralds

This book came out

Audiobook borrowed from Hoopla

Opinions are my own