A Nefarious Engagement by Lynn Messina

 Beatrice Hyde-Clare never actually expected to make a match with the Duke of Kesgrave. And suddenly, she's gone from wallflower to the center of attention in the course of an evening. She needs to distract herself. But how? Maybe by solving the mystery of her parents' deaths. It was widely accepted that it was an accident but was it really? Or was it something more sinister?

Like the rest of the series, the mystery is a little thin and most of the joy of reading this book comes from the building romance.

Three Stars

Follows An Infamous Betrayal

Followed by A Treacherous Performance

This book came out April 9th, 2019

Borrowed as ebook from Kindle Unlimited

Opinions are my own

Follow Your Heart by Brenda Jackson

Victoria Madaris is ready to be matched. Her great-grandmother has been matching people successfully for generations but Victoria is concerned. She knows that her grandmother is setting her up with her brother's friend, Tanner because they run into each other at a bakery, each having been given gift cards by her grandmother. It's just too bad that she has no sparks with him. Not like she does with a certain senator. 

Roman Malone knows that having a wife would make him more attractive to voters but he is not interested in the kind of political marriage that his ex-girlfriend is trying to force him into. Instead, he wants a marriage where he enjoys mutual loves... like fishing. 

Their romance is actually pretty straightforward except for Victoria thinking that she is supposed to be in love with someone else. We don't get as much of their story because Tanner has a story of his own and I frankly didn't like him as a character and couldn't understand why Lyric would fall in love with him.

Three stars
Follows Finding Home Again
This book comes out April 27th, 2021
ARC kindly provided by HarperCollins and Edelweiss
Opinions are my own

Southern Sass and a Battered Bride by Kate Young

I hadn't read the previous books in this series and wish that I had. Young did a good job of filling in some back stories but I was really struggling with why Marygene Brown would have ever been involved with Alex Myers. 

In this book, he's marrying another woman, Lucy. And Lucy is... well, let's go with she's a jerk. And a bridezilla. When Lucy ends up dead after the wedding, Marygene becomes an obvious suspect but Alex also wildly accuses his own cousin, Betsy, who is Marygene's best friend. 

The book is a wild romp with some pretty outrageous exploits on the part of our heroine who is pulled into the mystery, not by her own curiosity, but because she seems to be part of some collateral damage.

I hope that future books don't fall into the love triangle that could result as a part of the end of this book but I think Young is sidestepping that possibility (thank goodness.) I did enjoy the fact that Marygene's ghostly mother was used lightly.

Three stars

Follows Southern Sass and a Crispy Corpse

This book comes out April 27th

ARC kindly provided by Kensington Books and NetGalley

Opinions are my own

You'll Never Believe What Happened to Lacey: Crazy Stories about Racism by Amber Ruffin

I highly recommend listening to this book as Ruffin is an engaging narrator and we even get to hear from other people like her sister Lacey. This book reminds me strongly of Phoebe Robinson with stories about the Black experience in America that are comedically told but nonetheless somewhat mortifying that people in this day and age still might think some of these actions are perfectly normal. Not all of the stories are about Lacey and the do span several decades. They range from the fairly ridiculous (a woman patting Amber's hair, getting her hand stuck, and then hanging from Amber after tripping) to the horrifying (an old man waving a gun at young Amber and Lacey because they were walking on his sidewalk.

Four stars

This book came out January 12th, 2021

Borrowed as audiobook from Libby

Opinions are my own

Hidden Valley Road by Robert Kolker

I went back and forth between listening to the book and reading it. I liked the audiobook better but both were very good. The bold at the beginning of each chapter helped let us know which family members the chapter would focus on. 
This book looks at the history of the study of schizophrenia, interweaving that with a deep dive into the Galvin family. 12 children (that poor woman!) where 6 of the boys ended up being diagnosed with schizophrenia. This studies of this family gave a lot of insight into the disease but that doesn't help them much as they struggled to deal with it while they were growing up and even into the current day.
Kolker's writing painted a very clear picture of not only the Galvin family but also the tolls this disease took on them. 

Four stars

This book came out February 1st, 2021

Hard copy I didn't keep

Opinions are my own

Farewell My Herring by L C Tyler

I had never read a book in this series before but I a) didn't feel like I was missing anything and b) am now very intrigued about the rest of the series. The ending was a little mushy and sort of left open like there might be more to the story in later books and there some plot points were sort of glossed over but generally I liked the well-built characters and the descriptive creation of setting.

Though it is hard to believe, there are still places in the world where people cannot get wi-fi or cell service. I live near one of them so there was no suspension of disbelief for me when this mystery was set in a remote old house, Fell Hall. Ethelred and his agent Elsie have been invited to a conference where they will discuss writing mysteries and how to get your book noticed, respectively. There are only supposed to be the three authors (Elsie and Ethelred have had interactions with both of the other writers but I'm not sure if it was in other books or not.) They are there to confer with the woman, Wendy, who runs the writing seminars with one other person, Jenny who helps with the cleaning and cooking, in the building. However, two of the participants have shown up early. It is that evening that the snow begins to fall. This very much annoys Wendy who is the type of regimented person who wants things to not only run smoothly but to run her way. Even worse, one of the two participants seems to be causing consternation among the authors.

Added to the mix another participant shows up the next day, even with the deep snow, and he seems to have some sort of information about Wendy. Then one of their number dies. And one disappears. Elsie and Ethelred take it upon themselves to investigate the murder.

It was really interesting being in the head of both of these characters, especially since I didn't actually like either one all that much. But they are both fully formed, this being the 9th book in the series, and Tyler certainly has them so down pat that one book really gives the reader a full idea of who they each are.

Four stars

Follows The Maltese Herring

This book comes out on April 22nd, 2021

ARC kindly provided by Allison & Busby and Netgalley

Opinions are my own

She Drives Me Crazy by Kelly Quindlen

This looked like a cute book and it definitely was. I have to admit that I was disappointed because the cover looks like this would be a comic book but it was a good story nonetheless. Lots of familiar romance tropes (enemies-to-lovers, fake relationship) that wove together nice in a book that is probably generally aimed at the high school crowd. It was great that Scottie, our narrator, had an incredibly supportive family and Irene, her love interest, did too, just in a different way.

Scottie is a basketball player whose ex broke her heart by breaking up with her and moving to the fancy, snooty school. When the story opens, her basketball team has just lost in an exhibition game against her ex’s new team. So Scottie is understandably upset. When she and Irene get in a fender-bender, the result is that Scottie is going to be driving Irene to school every morning. The resulting furor at school gives Scottie the idea that the two should fake date in a win-win situation to them both. But then pesky real feelings get involved.

The exploration of Scottie’s heartbreak as well as how she works through her feelings and deals with a bully in an appropriate manner showing the adult that she is becoming were the best parts of this story.

Four stars

This book comes out April 20th

ARC kindly provided by MacMillan and Edelweiss

Opinions are my own