Sapphire Flames by Ilona Andrews

When the Baylor family became a house, they all quickly realized that Nevada, the oldest, was not going to be a good head of house. So, Catalina stepped up. She's only 21 and her entire family is about to lose their three year stay of execution, the time when no other houses can come at them. So it's a very awkward time for her to take on the case of Runa Etterson whose mother and sister have been murdered. But Runa is a friend, of sorts, and Catalina wants to help both her and Runa's brother discover who would want to murder their mother and take out anyone else in the vicinity.
One big wrinkle, her teenage crush, Alessandro Sagredo is trying to stop her from investigating. He is more than the social media star that he seems and rushing Catalina and Runa out of the morgue where they went to test the DNA of the corpses found in the fire that destroyed the Etterson family mansion.
A wild ride, this book has some soft spots but was a fast read and will be enjoyed by regular Andrews readers.

Four stars

This book comes out August 27, 2019
Follows novella Diamond Fire

Followed by Emerald Blaze
ARC kindly provided by HarperCollins Publishers and NetGalley
Opinions are my own

Reread July 2022

Handle with Care by Marie Harte

During his "real life," Evan Griffith is a high-paid accountant. At the moment, he's helping out with the company he co-owns with his cousins, working as a mover. The physicality is a plus. Also a plus? Meeting the cute gal whose roommate is moving out.
Evan is immediately attracted to Kenzie Sykes but she comes with a lot of baggage. Her physical baggage is her thirteen-year-old brother who she's raised for a long time (although the timing wasn't always consistent in my ARC.) And she's got emotional baggage from the last boyfriend who said he didn't mind that she had sole custody of her brother but then left them both. Now she's just going through her days, running her computer company (details are a little sketchy on this), and trying desperately not to be attracted to Evan. But first she falls into lust and then love (that pesky emotion ever-present in romance novels.) Will she be able to trust that he has her, and her brother's, best interests at heart?
In the main, this was a very good story: I cared about the characters; the overarching storyline connecting the series advanced nicely, and the writing flowed well. Until the end when a few things that had great set ups earlier in the story got chopped down to one sentence resolutions. I had to go back and re-read the last three chapters because I wondered what had happened.

Three and a half stars
This book comes out August 27th
Follows Smooth Moves
ARC kindly provided by SOURCEBOOKS Casablanca and NetGalley
Opinions are my own

Party of Three by Sandy Lowe

One night can change your life as friends Sarah, Avery, and Kaitlyn are about to find out. None of them are incredibly excited about the party but Sarah doesn't want to go at all. Her last SO left her with some pretty significant emotional scars, especially surrounding sex. What she needs is someone who can show her that her ex didn't' know what she was talking about.
Avery, on the other hand, is okay with going. But she's startled that the birthday girl's sister is back in town and all grown up. Can this best-friend's-sibling trope work out into an HEA?
Kaitlyn is also in for a surprise. The girl she loved in high school, the one who left, is not only back in town, she means to stay. And to fight for Kaitlyn.
All three stories are fine but none really popped for me. I like a story where I can connect to the characters and I just couldn't.

Three stars
This book came out August 13th
ARC kindly provided by Bold Strokes Books, Inc. and NetGalley
Opinions are my own

Normal Sucks by Jonathan Mooney

Starting from the question almost every parent has to answer at some point, "Why aren't I normal?", Mooney uses his own experiences to build a framework around "normal" and how it is determined.  Studied for hundreds of years, humans have tried to find the norm of canceling from our physical selves to our sex lives. But during that study, many scientists have discovered that their is no one person who can completely match the definition.
This definitely reads like a speech that has been adapted into a book. I didn't realize that this was going to be so closely wrapped around Mooney's own experiences and that was a bit jarring for me. I tend toward the nonfiction books written by people who can take a good step back from what they're studying (obviously, autobiographies not included.) There were a half dozen or so studies included in this book but I wish more had been included. If this had been marketed more as a biographical book I may have been on board sooner and enjoyed it more.

Three stars
This book came out August 13th
ARC kindly provided by Henry Holt & Company and NetGalley
Opinions are my own

The Intelligence Trap by David Robson

We all know them, the forgetful professor, the absentminded scientist, and otherwise seemingly intelligent people who do things that make us blink. One example in this book is a prominent scientist who is convince that aliens are among us. This book looks at why it is very easy for experts in a field not belief the evidence that is right in front of their eyes.

I really enjoyed this book. Robson skillfully wove both anecdotes and larger data studies together to show why having a high IQ doesn't necessarily mean that you are the smartest person in the room.

Five stars

ARC provided by W. W. Norton & Company and NeGalley

Opinions are my own

Life and Other Inconveniences by Kristan Higgins

Taking a page from innumerable contemporary romances at the moment, this book is told from alternating first person narrators. The person we hear from the most is Emma London. When her mother died, her father dumped her with his mother, the incredibly well-known designer, Genevieve London. She never quite feels like she belongs. And it becomes official when, at 18, Emma gets pregnant. Suddenly, she is out on the streets without a penny to her name so she goes to live with her maternal grandfather.
Years later, Emma gets a call from Genevieve; Genevieve is dying and wants to surround herself with family in her last days. Emma doesn't want to leave her burgeoning psychiatry practice but a series of events, including her now-teenage daughter, Riley, being bullied by her former group of friends. Now Emma, Riley, and Emma's grandfather are all going to live with Genevieve.
Like many Higgins books, there's a lot going on in this novel. Maybe too much... there are a lot of Big Themes and trying to deal with all of these leaves little room for character or relationship development. I would have thought that Emma and her romantic interest would have been more of a focus... except that this book is categorized in Women's Fiction. And that made it less interesting than Higgins' other books. She's good at big emotions but they hit more with the reader when they're tied to people we care about. And that just didn't happen in this particular Higgins book.

Three stars
This book came out August 6th
ARC kindly provided by Berkley Publishing Group and NetGalley
Opinions are my own

Invitation to Die by Barbara Cleverly

It's 1924 and the Great War is over but no one knows quite what to do with the soldiers who came back, many of whom have seen conflict beyond what anyone has seen before. In Cambridge, one such soldier has been living on the streets. Well-known for being affable, Richard 'Dickie' Dunne is the latest man to be invited to dine with a group of Cambridge dons. It seems this group of six men enjoy feeding incredibly opulent meals those who they consider "less" (for a variety of reasons) and then slowly tearing them apart. But it's not just the dons who are at this meal, there is also a man with whom Dickie fought; one who shares a dangerous secret. And, at the end of the night, someone ends up dead.
This was very much modeled after mysteries actually written in the '20s - aka- it was very confusing to begin with, had a lot of references to Great Lit-er-a-chur, and lots of focus on the classes. Also, long-winded conversations that can make a person lose track of what, exactly, is going on in the book. I hadn't read the first book in the series but didn't feel like I was missing anything because of it. I did like the character development of Inspector Redfyre but didn't really connect with anyone else. Golden Age mystery fans will probably find this book quite entertaining but I'm not certain about others.

Three stars
This book came out August 6th
ARC kindly provided by Soho Press and NetGalley
Opinions are my own