Carmen Devereaux is a witch. But that doesn’t mean she’s not susceptible to heartbreak. Divorcing her husband might not quite reach that level but it still sends her home to North Carolina. It may not be entirely where she grew up but it’s where her family is now. And Fate has decreed that Carmen will no longer be working granting permits. Instead, she will be an Influencer, helping to age sure that people get to where they should be in life. Her first two people are both in the town she’s moving to and one is her stepbrother. She struggles a little, even going through time to help them out.
This was just a nice book. Is the solution for the friend a little bit of a cheat? Yes. Are all the solutions she comes up with a little too pat? Yes. Is Carmen just a little bit of a Mary Sue? Yes. But this is just a nice story at a time that I needed to read something light and sweet.
Meg wasn't expecting to be single at 34 but that's what has just happened. She and her husband have just uncovered a fundamental difference and they have split. When she calls her mother to let her know, Meg discovers that Sally has left Meg's father. After years of floating, Sally has decided that she may only have a little time left but she doesn't want to spend it with someone who doesn't want to travel and who grumbles when she does. He doesn't even realize that Sally is serious about leaving.
Martha Wood is a perpetual volunteer. She has an inability to say no and therefore doesn't get paid to take on the worst jobs at the library, watching her sister's kids, even washing laundry for one of her library patrons. Her life stopped when her parents needed her and she's been put upon ever since. But at a low point (she spent all day making cookies for a library event that was cancelled, though no one told her), she discovers a book that has been left on the library doorstep. But this isn't just any book, it's one inscribed to her from her long-dead grandmother. One that is dated two years after her grandmother supposedly died. Finding out more about the book threatens to shake up Martha's life and to reshape her past when long-hidden secrets are revealed.
Jessica Stone is not having a good day. She took the role of Princess Amara in order to further her movie career, not to become the queen of the Cons. And yet, here she is. Well,sort of. Because the girl answering questions about being Princess Amara on the Starfield panel is decidedly Not Her.
This book is exactly what I thought it would be - light and fluffy but with a peek into a culture I know nothing about. Raina Anand is a likeable character who is more or less ready to get married but is not ready to be pushed into it by her family. Her Nani has a list of potential suitors ready for her but Raina tells a lie (to help a friend) that changes everything. 
Charlotte Gorman doesn't understand her twin sister. An elementary school librarian, Charlotte doesn't often get dressed up as opposed to her sister who regularly competes in beauty pageants. Ginny is REALLY into beauty, even keeping a popular Instagram series about her competitions. She throws herself into her causes, just recently adopting a dog in order.
The premise of this book, a Groundhog Day Agatha Christie murder mystery with a touch of Quantam Leap thrown in, really intrigued me. I like all of those things. But would the author be able to make it work?
The subtitle for this book is "Once. A pun. A time." I think that give fair warning that this book is not going to be a very traditional fairy tale nor is it going to be very serious.
When she was twelve, the uncle that Miranda Brooks had always idolized disappeared from her life. She never really knew what happened to him. Over a decade later, she's shocked to learn that he's dead and that he's left his bookstore, Prospero books, to her. Also included in his will? A series of clues leading her to uncover a deeply held family secret.
In a tragic mirror of real life Serenity Hammer is a librarian who has to fight for every penny to keep her library open. But the Powers That Be won't oil just any squeaky wheel, just the ones that oil them back. So Serenity decides that she's going to take matters into her own hands, whether it's legal or not.
In this gender-flipped, updated version of the beloved P&P, Darcy Fitzwilliams is high-powered, beautiful, and rich. She doesn't get home to Pemberley, Ohio very often but her mother has suffered a heart attack so she's back for the Christmas season. She's been "dating" a family friend, Carl for eight years on and off but hasn't been able to commit. It is that lack of commitment that caused an estrangement between she and her father. It's at her parents annual party that she realizes another reason she hasn't committed, there are no sparks. At least, not like the sparks she's getting with Luke Bennett. They've had a contentious relationship since high school and it's morphed into... well, one hot kiss. But then they get engaged quickly afterward. To other people.
This was everything that I wanted from a British Christmas novel. Though I wouldn't have minded a little more mayhem. I do love a nice, gentle novel that then ranges into mayhem. Anyway.
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 the world-building in this book, where orphans can't become adventurers if they have no last name (like Anvil, "Anne") or if their families are notorious (like her friend Penelope Shatterblade). But that doesn't stop Anne from applying to as many adventurer schools as possible. She's pretty much given up hope that she'll be taken before she's kicked out of the orphanage on her thirteenth birthday. Or will she? At the last moment, Anne is informed that the train will be leaving before midnight on the day before Anne's birthday rather than 10 minutes into it, which means that Anne has to stay at the orphanage for another year. But Anne has different plans. And the world has different plans for her as, while she is walking the matron's fire lizard "Dog," a woman appears and tells Anne she has been accepted into a school.
I definitely think that this book of entwined novellas is going to be compared to Love Actually. And this works just as well. The book opens with a southern girl who has just moved to New York to become a model and gets to wear THE dress of the season. It's a dress that touches the lives of many people whose stories are all told in the first person (not all of them women, despite the title of the book.) We get to meet the designer of THE dress, several people who work at Bloomingdale's, a Muslim girl visiting New York, a widower lawyer who is dating a much younger woman even though his loyal assistant has loved him for years, a private detective and a host of others.
It was an interesting story. The scavenger hunt connected to books is not a new idea but this is certainly a new tack to take. I generally liked the story but got honestly confused in places. And I never quite connected with Sam. Probably because of her general social awkwardness, having been home-schooled in such an odd manner. So, it's a treasure hunt, but there is an underlying romance, and then LOTS of delving deep into literary criticism and general criticism of scholars and writers. All of these themes fit together, but roughly, like puzzle pieces forced into particular slots.