Death Meets Cute

 

This post contains affiliate links. If you buy through them, I earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. It just helps keep this space going.

She’s failing at evil in the most charming way possible. 

I read this one purely because it was nothing like what I usually pick up, and it turned out to be an incredibly fun surprise.

Iris Weyward wants to be a proper villain. The problem is her new bodyguard is a reanimated orc named Talon who’d rather bake cupcakes than terrify anyone. Iris spends this book trying to build her wicked reputation while accidentally helping her neighbors, falling for Talon, and working with her sisters to figure out why their magic keeps fading. She’s failing at evil in the most charming way possible. 

This was such a sweet, funny listen. Talon stole every scene he was in, and the slow burn between him and Iris had me smiling the whole way through. 

It’s got found family, a little mystery, and just enough of a hint of danger to keep things interesting without ever losing that cozy feeling. Samara MacLaren’s narration matches the tone perfectly, she gives Talon this warmth that makes him impossible not to love. 

If you’re in the mood for a witchy romance with heart and humor, this is a great pick. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Thank you to Sourcebooks Audio for the gifted listen. Death Meets Cute by J. Penner is out now.

Grab a copy of Death Meets Cute at Bookshop.org and help out an indie bookstore while you're at it.

If you enjoyed this review and are interested in another romantasy, check out my review of Shield of Sparrows.

About the Author

J. Penner writes cozy fantasy books filled with magic. She lives in San Diego where she can be found with her cat on her lap and a pen in her hand. Follow her on Instagram or visit her website for more news and information about her books.

IG Live | a conversation with author Julie Carrick Dalton

 

This post contains affiliate links. If you buy through them, I earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. It just helps keep this space going.

If you weren’t able to catch us live earlier, here's the replay of my conversation with Julie Carrick Dalton. We dug into The Forest Becomes Her and talked about the Concord setting, the three women who end up fighting for one tree, and how she let the magic creep in so slowly you almost don’t clock it until it’s already got you. Julie also talked about her background as a beekeeper and organic farmer and how that shaped the way she writes about land and what we owe it.

If you loved this one as much as I did, or you’re still deciding whether to pick it up, the replay is a good place to start. You can grab a copy of The Forest Becomes Her at Bookshop.org and help out an indie bookstore while you're at it. You can check out my full book review here.

About the Author

As a journalist, Julie Carrick Dalton has published more than a thousand articles in The Boston Globe, BusinessWeek, The Hollywood Reporter, Orion Magazine, Electric Literature, and other publications. A former beekeeper and organic farmer, she is a frequent speaker on the topic of writing fiction in the age of climate crisis and is a member of the teaching faculty at Drexel University’s MFA Program. When she isn’t reading, writing, or teaching, you can probably find her skiing, swimming, kayaking, working in her garden, or trying to keep track of her four children and two dogs.

Follow Julie on Instagram and visit her website for news and information about her books.

Habits of the Sea

 

This post contains affiliate links. If you buy through them, I earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. It just helps keep this space going.

A man out of time. An island that shouldn’t exist. And a girl who spent decades trying to convince herself she imagined both.

Clay Lockhart is a fable. Except he’s real.

Ellie Mills has one brief encounter with Clay and his impossible island when she’s twelve years old. Then she spends years telling herself it never happened, that it was a dream, a story she made up. Her heart knows better. Decades later there’s another sighting of the mythical island, and Ellie realizes she has to find out the truth about the timeless man and the place that vanished.

This is a beautifully written novel about grief, healing, and love. It's atmospheric and lyric. It’s about choosing love and choosing your fate even when it seems impossible.

There’s also a warning tucked inside the fable and the love story, and it’s about caring for and respecting our world. As the decades pass, Ellie and Clay notice small changes in the seas. They don’t understand what those changes mean until danger arrives at their shore and they realize the world and the water they knew is already gone.

Carlotta Brentan’s narration is marvelous. It reminded me of Julia Whelan narrating The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue, and since that’s my favorite audiobook of all time, that’s about the highest compliment I have to give.

Perfect for readers who love literary fiction, slow burning character driven stories, and impossible love stories. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Thank you Simon Audio for the gifted listen. Habits of the Sea is out now. Grad a copy at Bookshop.org and help out an indie bookstore while you're at it.

If you enjoyed this review, you might be interested in Little Wild, another character driven love story with magical realism.

About the Author

Shea Ernshaw is a #1 New York Times and USA TODAY bestselling author of The Wicked Deep, Winterwood, A Wilderness of Stairs, Long Live the Pumpkin Queen, and A History of Wild Places. Her books have been published in over twenty countries and repeatedly chosen as Indie Next Picks. She lives in a small mountain town in Oregon and is happiest when lost in a good book, lost in the woods, or writing her next novel. Follow Shea on Instagram or visit her webiste for more news and information about Shea and her books.

July Reading Wrap Up

 

This post contains affiliate links. If you buy through them, I earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. It just helps keep this space going.

July was the month of solid reads. 📚

Not every month has a standout favorite, but July gave me 15 books with only two falling below 4 stars. I’ll happily take those odds.

⭐ 5-star favorites:

📖 Keep Them Close by David Ellis

📖 Brimstone Hollow by Archer Sullivan

⭐⭐⭐⭐ Standouts:

• Objects in Lakes

• Mrs. Shim Is a Killer

• James

• The Dead Husband Cookbook

• Habits of the Sea

• Cross My Heart, Hope You Die

• It Came from Neverland

• Death Meets Cute

• Buyer Beware

• Heart of Glass

• One Good Eye

⭐⭐⭐

• The Death Row Club

• Little Red Death

July by the numbers:

📚 15 books

🎧 10 audiobooks

📱 4 ebooks

📖 1 print book

⭐ Average rating: 4.1

I bounced between library books, ARCs, influencer copies, and even my book club pick, which made for a fun mix of thrillers, mysteries, horror, literary fiction, and a few books that completely caught me off guard. 

Thank you to Minotaur Books, Simon Audio, Macmillian Audio, Harper Perennial, Sourcebooks Audio, and Poisoned Pen Press for the gifted copies.

Grab a copy of any of these books at Bookshop.org and help and indie bookstore while you're at it.

Check out what I read last moth here.

IG Live | a conversation with Archer Sullivan

 

This post contains affiliate links. If you buy through them, I earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. It just helps keep this space going.

Archer Sullivan spent time with me talking snake-handling preachers, small Appalachian towns, and her writing process. 

 Annie Gore is back, this time investigating whether a preacher's fatal snakebite was really an accident, and Archer told me things and Archer discussed growing up in small town s and books that have influenced her writing. We also got into the Annie's character and what's surprised her about writing mysteries.

Catch the replay of our conversation here. Brimstone Hollow is a ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ read for me. It's out August 11 and you can preorder a copy from Bookshop.org and help an indie bookstore while you're at it.

If you missed my full review of Brimstone Hollow, you can read it here.

About the Author

Archer Sullivan is a ninth generation Appalachian. She's moved thirty-seven times and has lived everywhere from Monticello, Kentucky to Manhattan, New York and from Black Mountain, North Carolina to Beverly Hills, California. Her work has appeared in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, Tough, Shotgun Honey, Reckon Review, Rock and a Hard Place, and The Best Mystery Stories of the Year 2024. Follow Archer on Instagram for more news and information about her books.

Cross My Heart, I Hope You Die

 

This post contains affiliate links. If you buy through them, I earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. It just helps keep this space going.

Three exes. One dead boyfriend. One very bad plan for revenge.

Cross My Heart, I Hope You Die by Mallory Arnold is a locked-room mystery that crashed into a slasher movie, and I am so here for it. Cham, Nora, and Ruby all find out they’re dating the same man, and that he’s swindled each of them too. So they do what any reasonable person would do: plot some harmless revenge at a secluded mountain cabin Ruby just inherited. A cabin that happens to sit on the old grounds of a cult that may or may not still have members wandering the woods. What could go wrong?

Everything. Everything goes wrong, and it's gory and ridiculous and so much fun. This is not a subtle book and it doesn’t want to be.

The multiple POV structure works because these three women are nothing alike, so I never lost track of who was who, even with the timeline jumping around a little. There’s real humor mixed in with the frights, which kept it from ever feeling too heavy.

The full cast narration seals the deal. Victoria Connolly, Stacy Gonzalez, Alexandra Hunter, and Gary Tiedemann all lean into the campy energy of this thing, and it makes the audio experience even better than reading it on the page would be.

Toss this in your beach bag or pool bag and binge it in a day or two. It’s popcorn thriller-slasher, and it knows exactly what it is. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Thank you to Sourcebooks Audio for the gifted listen. Out now.

Grab a copy at Bookshop.org and help an indie bookstore while you're at it.

If you enjoyed this review, you might be interested in my review of another campy thriller-horror mashup How to Kill a Guy in Ten Dates.

About the Author

Mallory Arnold is the USA Today bestselling author of How to Survive a Horror Story. She writes creepy, mysterious fiction and lives in Nashville, Tennessee, with her husband and three cats. Follow Mallory on Instagram for more news and information about Mallory and her books.

Buyer Beware

 

This post contains affiliate links. If you buy through them, I earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. It just helps keep this space going.

Two women. One house. A whole lot of reasons to never trust a real estate listing again.

Buyer Beware by Catherine Ryan Howard is exactly the kind of layered thriller I can’t stop pushing on people. You’ve got Ellie, moving into 1 Delaney Row with one suitcase and a past she’s desperate to keep buried, except someone wants her out of that house fast, and that just screams something’s off. 

Then there’s Erin, a driven student with dreams of a virology career abroad until Jason enters the picture. And Hannah, an entrepreneur who built her business from nothing and is genuinely happy on her own terms, until she meets Jason too. 

You know these threads are heading somewhere. Howard just makes you wait for it, cranking the tension a little more with every chapter. When it all clicks into place your jaw will be on the floor. 

This is a full binge read. Atmospheric, unsettling, that creeping sense that the house is either haunted, cursed, or Ellie’s just losing it. I really couldn't tell which for most of the book. The multiple POVs and shifting timelines could’ve felt like a lot, but they kept me locked in trying to piece together where it was all going. 

Narrator Ayoola Smart brings each woman to life so distinctly you never lose track of whose head you’re in.

Underneath the twists, this one’s really about female rage, and how some men have a way of making women shrink themselves and hand over their own dreams without even realizing it’s happening.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Out today. Thank you to Simon Audio for the gifted early listen.

Grab a copy at Bookshop.org and help an indie bookstore while you're at it.

If you enjoyed this review, you might be interested in my review of Killer Vibes. A directionless stoner inherits a house in a swanky neighborhood from an uncle her barely knew and quickly finds himself in a mess of trouble.

About the Author

Catherine Ryan Howard is an award-winning, #1 bestselling thriller writer from Cork, Ireland. Her work has been shortlisted for the Mystery Writers of America Edgar Award for Best Novel, the UK Crime Writers Association John Creasey/New Blood and Ian Fleming Steel Dagger Awards, and the An Post Irish Crime Fiction Book of the Year multiple times. Her novels have been included in The New York Times Best Thrillers of the Year, The Washington Post’s Best Mysteries and Thrillers of the Year, and The Sunday Times (London)’s Best Thrillers of the Year. She is published in twenty languages, and a number of her titles have been optioned for the screen. Follow Catherine on Instagram and visit her website for more news and information about her books.