The Vanishing by Jayne Ann Krentz

The book opens with Catalina Lark and Olivia Dayton, teenagers spending the night in the local cave, witnessing a murder. They save themselves but it's a near thing and they spend the night trapped in a nightmare. When they come out, the townspeople are happy to believe that it was a hallucination. After all, Fogg Lake was the site of a paranormal disaster fifty years ago and the people of the town have been dealing with psychic repercussions ever since.
In the present day, Catalina and Olivia are private investigators, using their psychic powers to help their clients. One the same night that Catalina goes to save a client, Olivia is kidnapped. Luckily, Slate Arganbright has already come to town looking for her. He is also psychic but is still getting over being locked in his uncles' "attic" after being dosed with an unknown chemical that they thought might be driving him crazy. He might've been for a little bit but now he's here to help Catalina find her friend as well as trying to figure out why collectors of psychic items are dying.
There is some overlap with the Arcane Society novels (Vortex is a "bad guy" in that series as well) but I think this might actually be a similar, but new, world. Because it is so very similar, it took some time to adjust to the fact that this is a new series but there is a LOT of world building so we don't really get to see the relationshp between Catalina and Slate develop.

Three stars

Followed by All the Colors of the Night
This book came out January 7th

ARC kindly provided by Berkley and NetGalley
Opinions are my own

Reread November 2020 as audiobook from Overdrive, August 2022, January 2024 as audiobook from Libby

Love Lettering by Kate Clayborn

Meg Mackworth has made enough of a name for herself to be able to support living in New York... NEW YORK. Her hand lettering has even netted her an opportunity to have her own line for a larger stationary (something to do with paper) line of her own. But her secret (putting codes into the designs she makes) is about to be uncovered.
Reid Sutherland was astonished to see the word Mistake spelled out on his wedding programs. It made him rethink the whole marriage. Now he's in the shop where Meg used to work (and is coincidentally filling in) asking her why she thought that it would have been bad for him to follow through.
The two opposites (Meg is into words; Reid works with numbers) start to lean on each other to see the world through a new lens which gives each time to relax.
A lot of people are loving this book and I can see why. It is a book that is going to make you start to notice things. However, there were two distinct points where I thought, "Wow, this is wrapping up to be a satisfying ending" and looked down to see that there were 50-150 pages left in the book. It felt as if there were chunks just pasted on to the end. Otherwise a lovely read.

Three stars
This book came out December 31st

Winter Takes All by M. L. Erdahl

Crystal Rainey starts every year with a list of new resolutions. This year, she creates her list and then accidentally opens her list from the year before. They are eerily similar. A year ago, she was in the exact same place. So she pulls a Jerry Maguire and quits everything. Too bad she actually needs money to live. So she bluffs her way into a job with an outdoor company. And her first trip's co-guide, Connor is pretty cute. Too bad the guests are fairly unpleasant and then, of course, one of them dies from means that seem less than natural. Crystal inexplicably decides that she should investigate the death and inserts herself right in, almost getting killed.
I could not get sympathetic to Crystal. She lies about her experience as an outdoor guide and, having worked with outdoor guides and knowing how easy it is for things to go wrong, it made me very hard for me to suspend my disbelief that everything would be "just fine." For other readers, this may not be a problem but it dropped my reading experience down a star. I also have less patience than I used to for well-meaning characters bumbling into an investigation but thinking that they are "helping."There are too many crime TV and podcast shows out there that mention that you should never mess with evidence and Crystal seemed like the type of character that would devour those shows.

Two and a half stars
This book came out October 23rd, 2019
ARC kindly provided by The Wild Rose Press, Inc. and NetGalley
Opinions are my own

F*ck No! by Sarah Knight

What a fun book! I never would have thought that there were that many examples of ways to say no. And that is the bulk of the book. There is a lot in the beginning about why saying no is good and how to divorce yourself from assuming that you need to help with everything. This was a little redundant to other books I had read but just enough difference to make it a fun read.

Four stars
This book came out December 31st
ARC kindly provided by Voracious and NetGalley
Opinions are my own

To Night Owl from Dog Fish by Holly Goldberg Sloan and Meg Wolitzer

What would happen if you were raised by a single parent and suddenly discovered that your parent was dating? What if it was serious? What if the other person was also a single parent? Would you want the other kid to know? Bett does. It's why she starts emailing Avery. Their dads are dating and it looks like lurv. Enough that the two men are planning on sending the girls to the same camp in the hopes that they will learn to like each other. But Avery and Bett aren't so sure about that and through the course of a year (plus a little), Bett, Avery, and readers will get to learn what it means to be family.

Four and a half stars
This book came out February 12th, 2019
Book from library
Opinions are my own

Panic Broom by Sara Bourgeois

Brighton is ecstatic. Six months (or so) after the last book and she's dating the man of her dreams, in fact, he's just proposed. Too bad there are shenanigans afoot. Well, if you can classify zombies as shenanigans. It seems that her fiance's family has been dabbling in dark magics and have caused a worldwide epidemic (is that the word for zombies?).
This book, like the others in this series, is short so it's light on story and character development but it's pretty fluffy and fast to read.

Three books
Follows A Clean Sweep
Followed by Sweep-Stakes
This book came out July 10th, 2019
Audiobook from library

Catch Me if You Can by Donna Kauffman

Tag Morgan is the oldest of four boys whose emotionally and physically abusive father has just died. He discovers that his father has been sending money to a woman in Scotland and it has something to do with the Morgan family history, the one his father tried to beat out of he and his brothers. But something about the letters the woman caring for the castle, Maura Sinclair, sent to his father draws Tag to Scotland. In a wild snowstorm, he meets a woman who takes his breath away but she leaves without him learning her name. He is shocked to find her again at the Sinclair castle; she is, of course, the woman who has so intrigued him.

The whole time I was reading this book, I was really trying not to judge Maura for stepping out of one man's bed into another. The ex was a complete scumbag anyway and she had just had a near death experience as well as dealing with the crushing responsibilities of being the laird of a clan that had little interest in staying put. And I think what kept confusing me the most was that this seemed so out of line with the Kauffman books that I had been reading recently.  Finally, I figured out that this was a reissue from 2003 and it explained So Much. If you have only read recent books by this author, please note that her style has changed a bit. Other than that, the relationship development is a bit thin (a lot of heat with some off-page talks but nothing that let us see why they would stay together) but it is a perfectly fun read.

Three stars

This book came out December 31st

ARC kindly provided by Kensington and NetGalley

Opinions are my own