August Rereads

As always, opinions are my own

Chaos Reigning by Jessie Mihalik

Consortium Rebellion #3

Follows Aurora Rising
This book came out May 19, 2020

Welcome to my World by Lincoln Peirce

Big Nate #14

This book came out September 15, 2015

Follows Say Good-bye to Dork City

Followed by Thunka, Thunka, Thunka

Ebook from Libby

Opinions are my own

Thunka, Thunka, Thunka  by Lincoln Peirce

Big Nate #15

Book came out March 1, 2016

Follows Welcome to My World

Followed by Revenge of the Cream Puffs

Ebook from NetGalley

Opinions are my own

The Vanishing by Jayne Ann Krentz
Fogg Lake#1
Three and a half stars (bumped up a half star on reread)
Followed by All the Colors of the Night
This book came out January 7th, 2020
Audiobook from Overdrive

All the Colors of Night by Jayne Ann Krentz

Fogg Lake #2

This book came out January 7th, 2021

Follows The Vanishing

Followed by Lightning in a Mirror
Audiobook from Libby

Lightning in a Mirror by Jayne Ann Krentz 

Fogg Lake #3

Three and a half stars

This book came out January 18th, 2022

Follows All the Colors of Night

Audiobook from Libby

The Girl Who Knew Too Much by Amanda Quick

Eclipse Bay #1

This book came out May 9, 2017

Followed by The Other Lady Vanishes

Audibook from Libby

The Other Lady Vanishes by Amanda Quick

Eclipse Bay #2

Four Stars

This book came May 8, 2018
Audiobook from Audible

Opinions are my own

Love on the Brain by Ali Hazelwood

Bree has just gotten the most amazing news about being the co-lead for the NIH on a project with NASA. Then she finds out who the other lead is... Levi Ward. He was a few years ahead of her at school and seemingly despised Bree. Now, some of that communication is figured out early (a third of the way maybe?) through the book but there is a LOT of miscommunication for awhile there. Through it though, Levi seems to be the perfect science-man standing up for Bree and making other men respect her (which has been okay in this and The Love Hypothesis but I'd love to start seeing Hazelwood's heroines standing up for themselves at some point.) It's just too bad that, even when these two talk, there still seems to be something further trying to destroy their project. Perhaps it's just bad luck but...

It would have been nice to have a little more of Levi's trauma explored. Oh, and then to throw some more miscommunication in when we had gotten past most of it. Overall a fine book but I hope that Hazelwood's next book breaks out of this formula she seems to have set for herself in the first two. I can take it in two books but it would be nice to have some expansion in the third book.

Four stars

This book came out August 23, 2022

Borrowed as hard copy from library

Opinions are my own

His Grumpy Childhood Friend by Jackie Lau

The book opens in the middle of Charlotte Tam's worst nightmare, her boyfriend proposing to her at a Toronto Blue Jays game on the big screen. She loves the Jays, hates the public. So why didn't her boyfriend get that? 

Years later and Charlotte is generally happy in her job that lets her work from home without having to put on real pants (we hear about that a lot; since I agree with her sentiment, it didn't bother me) and generally not going out except to occasionally meet her friends at a cider bar. One night, she recognizes the boy who used to live next door, Mike Guo. He left suddenly one night and she never heard from her best friend again. But now he's all kinds of grown up and hot. Surely he must have women crawling all over him. He'd be the perfect person to get her back into the dating game!

Mike isn't exactly the stud that Charlotte thinks he is but he has missed his old friend and is delighted  to spend more time with her. The fact that he now has grown up feelings for her is just icing on top of the cake. 

I loved that the fake relationship didn't last too long. I loved that most of the conflict from these two was external to their relationship because they talked to each other. The timeline was maybe a little fast but I really enjoyed this book.

Four stars

This book came out October 27, 2020

Follows Her Big City Neighbor

Followed by Her Pretend Christmas Date

Borrowed as audiobook from Hoopla

Opinions are my own

Death Down the Aisle by Verity Bright

Lady Eleanor Swift has really gotten herself into it this time. Her good friend Constance is getting married on Saturday but Ellie has just promised to help organize and lead a suffragette march to the police station with a petition to let women onto the force on the same day. And she has to go to the wedding. Poor Constance is already withering under her soon-to-be-mother-in-law's constant disapproval. But Eleanor can't let down the ladies of the village either. It's especially complicated that the wedding might not go off since the groom-to-be, Lord Peregrine Davencourt, was just discovered over the body of his dead former fiancee. Or maybe not so former after all. 

On a timeline, Eleanor has to figure out how to juggle the march, preparing to be in the wedding, solving a murder and doing it all without un-endearing herself to her beau, Chief Inspector Hugh Seldon. 

Not a lot of character development in this one but Hugh and Eleanor's relations does progress a bit. 

Three and a half stars

This book comes out August 31, 2022

Follows The French for Murder

Followed by Murder in an Irish Castle

ARC kindly provided by Bookouture and NetGalley

Opinions are my own

A Colorful Scheme by Krista Davis

We saw Professor Maxwell and his author and second wife Jacquie fall back in love with each other in the first few books of the series. Now, they are finally going to be married again. And Florrie's sister is planning the wedding and Florrie is helping. When the book opens, she is helping find Jacquie who has suddenly disappeared. Luckily, she does turn up in time for the wedding; the wedding that has any number of odd characters popping up.

Some of the guests include other authors. One in particular stands out, Arthur Bedlingham, as he is a former flame of Jacquie's. He wasn't actually invited but somehow managed to show up anyway. Also in attendance is a critic who has had harsh words for almost every author there. 

The characters are lively and interesting. The mystery is really loosely put together and there is a lot in this story that relies on coincidence but I think regular readers will enjoy this story and new-to-the-series readers will be able to follow along. 

Three and a half stars

This book comes out August 30, 2022

Follows Murder Outside the Lines

ARC kindly provided by Kensington Books and NetGalley

Opinions are my own

Three Kisses, One Midnight by Roshani Chokshi, Sandhya Menon, Evelyn Skye

If I had realized this was an anthology about high school kids, I may not have picked it up. But this was a pretty good trio of stories all revolving around Halloween, a night when the Lady of Moon Ridge is said to walk every 400 years. Perhaps, this year, she might bring a few high schoolers true love.

Onny believes that she belongs with Alexander-the-Great-Looking, but could she be overlooking someone closer to home?
Ash has had a crush on his next-door neighbor Cassidy, the track star, since she moved in. But could it truly be that she returns his feelings?

True was hurt by her last boyfriend, Brad (obviously Chad-adjacent). But can she find love with Orion? A guy who believes in ghost while she is science-all-the-way?

Great respect to the authors who managed to pull parts from each other's stories to really create a nice overlap of details. 

This book come out August 31, 2022

ARC kindly provided by Macmillan and Edelweiss

Opinions are my own

Pleasure of a Dark Prince by Kresley Cole

We've seen glimpses of this love story in other books of this series. A dark werewolf who has been watching over a Valkyrie archer who cannot miss or else she feels excruciating pain. The pain Lucia feels is the result of a pact made with a god when she nearly died. 

Many, many years ago, Garreth, prince of the Lykae, realized that Lucia was his one true mate. He also realized that she wasn't ready to acknowledge it. So he's been watching over her from afar (don't do this is real life, folks; this is stalking and super creepy). 

Lucia has a life mission and that is, every five hundred years, she has to make sure that an apocalyptic evil doesn't occur when Crom Cruach rises. As that time is nearing, she cannot be distracted by a werewolf right now, matter how intriguing she finds him.

There is a long stretch where we read about their history, another where they finally start to sort of get together, then a lot of travel over the world ending up with a long stretch in the Amazon where they awaken another potential world ender but end up with an arrow that can kill a god. Then, as usual, everything is wrapped up in a whirlwind in the last 50 pages or so.

Four stars

This book came out January 25, 2010

Follows Deep Kiss of Winter

Followed by Demon from the Dark

Hard copy I kept

Opinions are my own