Blazing Summer Darling Investigations by Denise Grover Swank

I am really liking this series about a teen star turned reality star/private investigator. Summer Butler's first season of "Darling Investigations" was a surprise hit and she's back for the second season. Too bad she still has the same sadistic producer, the one who doesn't seem like her very much. In fact, Lauren has hired Summer's arch-nemesis, the boy who convinced her to fake a scandal that led to her downfall. Then, there's the fact that mysterious fires are starting all over town and everyone seems to be looking at Summer's cousin, Dixie. And then there are those pesky murders, also happening.

This book comes out June 5
Four stars
ARC kindly provided by NetGalley
Follows Deadly Summer 

The Great Sherlock Holmes Puzzle Book by Dr. Gareth Moore

This was fun book full of interesting logic puzzles. The links weren't all correct which led to some frustrations but I would hope that would be fixed by the time they published the book.

Four stars
This book came out May 11
ARC kindly provided by NetGalley

A Passion for Haunted Fashion by Rose Pressey

Cookie Chanel is helping out as a costume designer at the local theater. One night, she's in the basement when she meets a 1950s ghost named Peggy while a man is murdered upstairs. The main suspect? Cookie's friend Heather. So she has two murders to solve.
I was a bit bummed because Cookie didn't spend as much time with Heather as would have been nice and Peggy's murder was solved incredibly quickly just to wrap up the end of the book. Not a horrible addition to the series but not one of the better ones.

Three stars
This book comes out May 29
Follows If the Haunting Fits, Wear It 

So Close to Being the Sh*t, Y'all Don't Even Know by Retta

Following the path of many famous people, Retta has released her biography. While it seems like this would be my catnip -- written in her own voice, telling the story of a normal person made good -- it just wasn't hitting the spot. I realize that this was a good book and I started getting into it when she started describing her unexpected love affair with hockey.
I think that, if you want to read this book, you should buy the audio. I missed hearing her voice in my ear.

Three stars
This book comes out May 29

Rainy Day Friends by Jill Shalvis

Lanie Jacobs isn't running away from life per se. She's just sort of licking her wounds, recovering from the discovery that her husband was not just her husband. He had, in fact, married at least three other women that we hear about within the first 50 pages or so. Her choice of hideout? The Capriotti winery. She's spending two months living and working there, helping them to rebrand. What she didn't expect was a tight-knit family unit that invites this stand-offish woman into their fold.
Mark Capriotti is a single-dad who is working to make a good life for his six-year-old twin daughters. They are pretty much plot moppets but not super-annoying.
I didn't love Lanie's story. The B plot in this book was not really needed, especially since it was what took up most of the drama in the last third of the book and took away from us seeing Mark and Lanie developing.

Three stars
This book comes out May 30
ARC kindly provided by NetGalley
Follows The Good Luck Sister

Too Wilde to Wed Eloisa James

In the first book of this series,  Lord Roland "North" Northbridge Wilde tried to impress Miss Diana Belgrave by becoming the most fashionable man in London. But she left him anyway. An heir to a duke and he was dumped. He ran away to the war on the Continent. Two years later, he's back... and finds that his family rescued her from poverty. She's been working as his stepmother's governess.
Diana doesn't mind working. It allows her more freedom than living as a debutante ever did. What she does mind is the thought that she may have run him away from his family.
The time they have together lets them get to know each other much better than the time they spent as an engaged couple ever did.
I liked that these two finally did talk to each other... but it took a long time. The ending was a little twee but I've read worse.

Four stars

Follows Wilde in Love

Followed by Born to be Wilde
This book comes out May 29
ARC kindly provided by Edelweiss
Followed by Born to be Wilde

Reread as hard copy from library May 2024

Bitten Under Fire by Heather Long

Bianca Devlin's boss thinks that she needs a vacation. Which is why she's at a posh resort which got attacked and she was pulled into a kidnapping when she instinctively tried to protect a diplomat's son. Bianca is used to dangerous situations. She travels around the world helping people who are less fortunate than she is. But she never expected to end up here. And definitely did not expect that she would get bitten by a wolf.
Carlos "Cage" Castillo didn't mean to bite Bianca. She just accidentally got in the way of the bad guy he was trying to take down. He admired her guts but now he feels like he has to follow her to make sure that he's bite didn't cause any unintended consequences.
I'm somewhat new to shifter books and, while I didn't like this book as much as the Laurenston series, this was an okay read that I think regular readers of shifter novels will enjoy.

Three stars
This book comes out May 28
ARC kindly provided by NetGalley

Mystifying Mathematical Puzzles by Joseph S. Madachy

This book was pretty disappointing. From the description, I thought it would be a book of puzzles for the reader to solve. Unfortunately, 3/4 of the book was descriptions on how famous puzzles have been solved. For someone who is more interested in the explantions, this would be a good book. If, like me, you are more interested in being the solver, I would skip it. Also good to know, this book was published first in 1966 so some of the puzzles are a little dated.

Two stars
This book comes out May 16

Hot Asset by Lauren Layne

Lara McKenzie has one goal in life. She wants to work for the FBI putting white collar criminals away. And the SEC is a stepping stone to get there. If she can get one big case, she's guaranteed entry.
Ian Bradley made a killing on a stock that everyone else lost their shirts on. Lara's boss has a tip that it's because of insider trading. Just because the man is super-hot doesn't mean that Lara is going to fall under his spell like so many other women.
This was an okay start to a new series. I didn't love that Lara and Ian were supposedly falling in love during such a stressful situation. We didn't get to see much of the relationship.

Three stars
This book comes out May 22
ARC kindly provided by NetGalley

Fowl of the House of Usher by J.R. Ripley

Amy Simms' ex is in town. Along with the young and gorgeous psychologist he dumped Amy for. The young and gorgeous psychologist who has invited Amy (and her beau) to a dinner party. A dinner party at the Usher House, known in local parts for its... rather eerie atmosphere. Amy's boyfriend can't come and neither can her best friend Kim's. So it's the two of them, headed up the mountain at the start of a snow storm for the most awkward dinner party. Besides the ex and the redhead, there are two couples that Craig is trying to woo into a business proposal and then the caretaker couple that is at the house. The snow builds up, everyone is trapped in the house, and then there's a murder. And another. It's up to Amy to try to figure it out. As long as she's not next on the list.
I didn't love the resolution of the book, it was a little outside what was fairly clued and didn't make much sense. But as locked room mysteries go,  it wasn't bad and I'll keep an eye out for the next in the series.

Three and a half stars
This book comes out May 15
ARC kindly provided by NetGalley

Charmed Bones by Carolyn Haines

Cozy at home, Sarah Booth Delaney is not happy to called out to the Sunflower County Board of Education meeting by Tinkie. It seems that three sisters are applying for state recognition for a boarding school they're opening. The reason people are upset? It's going to be a Wiccan school.
The Harrington sisters have bought a load of property from Trevor Musgrove, a local artist who will be allowed to live on the property until his death. And this isn't a problem until people start dying and the sisters get blamed.
A decent story. The ending was a bit overwrought but I don't think that regular reader's in this series will mind at all.

Three stars
This book comes out May 15th
ARC kindly provided by NetGalley

Happiness Hacks by Alex Palmer

This is an attractive repackaging of ideas I've read elsewhere. There are nice breakdowns of chapters like Happiness at Home, Happiness in Love, etc. with subsections underneath each. They include some simple hacks like creating creativity by working in the room with the highest ceiling or journaling or taking an eight day vacation. There is also a lovely chapter on the downside of happiness that you don't usually see in most books. For the most part, it is just a repackaging of ideas that you've probably read if you're a self-help junkie but that last chapter brought it up a star for me.

Three stars
This book comes out May 15
ARC kindly provided by NetGalley

Pairing a Deception by Nadine Nettmann

Though this is the third book in the series, it's the first one I've read. I didn't feel like I needed to have read the first two. There was enough backstory without an info dump to know what was going on with the series. Katie Stillwell is volunteering at a wine and food festival the weekend ahead of her advanced sommelier exam. Her beau John Dean is with her as well, taking well the fact that he was signed up as "Dean Stillwell" and generally proving himself to be a really, really good boyfriend. Too bad the rest of the weekend is moving as smooth. There's a young woman chasing down the emcee. He's avoiding her for most of the day but Katie leaves them at a table together at the end of the evening. Too bad the young woman ends up dead outside his door the next day.
The ending didn't make a lot of sense to me but it was overall a pretty good book.

Four stars
This book comes out May 8
ARC kindly provided by NetGalley

The First Time at Firelight Falls by Julie Anne Long

Eden Harwood - florist, harried single mother, ardent admirer of the elementary school principal, Gabe Caldera. Luckily, he's a big admirer of her too. I loved the way Long portrayed real life; snatches of flirting lived between moments of parenting/principal-ing. I didn't love the way that a whole bunch of drama was dropped into the middle of the book after a pretty steady romance. But it was resolved in a fairly grow-up way that you don't often get in romance novels.
While the second half of the book was way more tangled than the first half, regular readers of Hellcat Canyon won't be disappointed.

Three and a half stars
This book comes out May 8
Follows Dirty Dancing at Devil's Leap
ARC kindly provided by Edelweiss

Down the Aisle with Murder by Auralee Wallace

A return to the Wallace that I enjoy reading.
The book opens with Erica Bloom attending Candace's bachelorette party. Is it weird to celebrate the wedding of the woman who dated Erica's one true love? Not in a small town. The big hit of the party though is the maid of honor, Lyssa. That would be the same Lyssa who turns up dead the next day.
Erica and Freddie would normally insert themselves into the case but Freddie is acting strangely; in fact, he has told Erica that they need to have a break.
And there are a lot of strange things going on at Otter Lake. Erica's mom has brought in a new guru, Zaki, and there is... something strange about his seminar. Like, the fact that it's for singles but Erica's mom isn't forcing her to go. Grady, Erica's erstwhile love of her life, is taking a vacation; something he's never done before. Sheriff Bigly is there in his place and she's not amused by Erica and Freddie.
I liked this book so much better than the last one. Yes, Erica is still a little immature but she seems to be getting better. I wish that the murder victim had been better fleshed out.

Four stars
This book comes out May 1
Follows Ring In the Year with Murder
ARC kindly provided by NetGalley

Today I'll Be a Unicorn by Dana Simpson

Would've been five stars if this book had been longer (8 pages!). There is a nice story of Marigold deciding that she is going to be a unicorn for a day but then deciding it is not for her. I'd call it an entrance drug to the Heavenly Nostrils series.

Four stars
This book comes out May 8
ARC kindly provided by NetGalley